Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
I. Preconventional Level
At this level, the child is responsive to cultural rules and labels of good and bad,
right or wrong, but he interprets the labels in terms of either the physical or
hedonistic consequences of action (punishment, reward, exchange of favors) or
the physical power of those who enunciate the rules and labels. The level is
divided into the following three stages:
At this level, the individual perceives the maintenance of the expectations of his
family, group, or nation as valuable in its own right, regardless of immediate and
obvious consequences. The attitude is not only one of conformity to personal
expectations and social order, but of loyalty to it, of actively maintaining,
supporting, and justifying the order and identifying with the persons or group
involved in it. The level consists of the following two stages:
The individual makes a clear effort to define moral values and principles that
have validity and application apart from the authority of the groups of persons
holding them and apart from the individual's own identification with the group.
The level has the two following stages:
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This quotation is taken from the table in "the Proceedings of the Conference on
Psychology and the Process of Schooling in the Next Decade: Alternative
Conceptions", Editor Maynard C. Reynolds. Kohlberg's contribution was entitled
"The concepts of Developmental Psychology as the Central Guide to Education:
Examples from Cognitive, Moral, and Psychological Education." The document is
further marked "A publication of the Leadership Training Institute/Special
education, sponsored by the Bureau of Educational Personnel Development,
U.S. Office of Education". Unfortunately, the reprint copy I have is not dated. The
latest reference in it is 1971, but one sentence in the paper gives 1972 as the
date of the same reference, which I think it possibly an error. I attributed 1971 as
the year for the levels in the form quoted here.
I obtained my copy of the reprint from "The Center for Moral Education" at
Harvard University many years ago. That organization is no longer listed as part
of Harvard's organization, and email inquiries have gone unanswered.
As I look at other reprints, I find a 1973 Journal of Philosophy article which does
not include the Stage 0. Another article in 1975 also does not have the Stage 0 in
it.
Kohlberg contrasts Stage 0 with other theories in a couple of other tables in the
article, so he may have made a "custom alteration" to the theory for the purpose
of this particular set of comparisons.
In table 4, his Stage 0 is ranked with Peck & Havighurst (1960) amoral, C.
Sullivan, Grant & Sulivan (1961) presocial, Harvey Hunt & Schroeder (1961)
Sub-1, Sovinger (1966) presocial, and Vanden Daele (1968) excitation oriented.
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One of the most influential critiques of the Kohlberg theory is to be found in Carol
Gilligan’s In a Different Voice (1982). Gilligan argues that Kohlberg’s rule-oriented
conception of morality has an orientation toward justice, which she associates
with stereotypically male thinking, whereas women and girls are perhaps more
likely to approach moral dilemmas with a "care" orientation. One important issue
in moral theory that the Kohlberg-Gilligan debate raises is that of the role and
importance of moral feelings in the moral life. The Philosophy of Childhood,
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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Caution
by Charles Kramer
Level I: Pre-conventional methods: The use of the words "the child is responsive"
is so general that the reader may wonder whether the author has and provides
evidence that "every" child is responsive. Does he assume that all age groups
are concerned, that children of all cultures have been assessed and that a
significant number of children have been observed interpreting labels in terms as
indicated. If so, how many children, Boys and Girls, Caucasian or from all ethnic
groups and/or of different IQ, spoken or written language performance levels,
and where have indeed been observed so as to authorize the generalizations
stated about the abstract "pre-conventional" level and stages?
Is this verified for a given percentage of various samples of children (How, when,
where, by whom) or is this valid for a very large "parent population" including
representative samples of children, mixing origin, years of schooling, personal
status (orphan, one-parent family, only child and children with brothers and
sisters, in the US, Australia, Africa, Japan , China, etc.), health condition, physical
and/or mental skills development etc.? When was the data collected, how, by
whom, using which