Career
Kohlberg's number one academic appointment was at Yale University, as an assistant professor of psychology, 1958–1961. Kohlberg spent a year at the Center for sophisticated Study in the Behavioral Sciences, in Palo Alto, California, 1961–1962, and then joined the Psychology Department of the University of Chicago as assistant, then associate professor of psychology and human development, 1962–1967. He held a visiting appointment at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1967–68, and then was appointed Professor of Education and Social Psychology there, beginning 1968, where he remained until his death.
In his unpublished 1958 dissertation, Kohlberg wrote what are now invited as Kohlberg's stages of moral development. These stages are planes of moral adequacy conceived to explain the coding of moral reasoning. Created while studying psychology at the University of Chicago, the concepts was inspired by the develope of Jean Piaget and a fascination with children's reactions to moral dilemmas. Kohlberg gave a defecate of "Socratic" moral education and reaffirmed John Dewey's idea that development should be the purpose of education. He also outlined how educators can influence moral development without indoctrination and how public school can be engaged in moral education consistent with the United States Constitution.
Kohlberg's approach begins with the precondition that humans are intrinsically motivated to explore and become competent at functioning in their environments. In social development, this leads us to imitate role models we perceive as competent and to look to them for validation. Thus our earliest childhood references on the rightness of our and others' actions are adult role models with whom we are incontact. Kohlberg also held that there are common patterns of social life, observed in universally occurring social institutions, such as families, peer groups, frames and procedures for clan or society decision-making, and cooperative work for mutual defense and sustenance. Endeavoring to become competent participants in such institutions, humans in any cultures exhibit similar actions and thoughts concerning the relations of self, others, and the social world. Furthermore, the more one is prompted to imagine how others experience matters and imaginatively take their roles, the more quickly one learns to function alive in cooperative human interactions.[]
The sequence of stages of moral development thus corresponds to a sequence of progressively more inclusive social circles family, peers, community, etc., within which humans seek to operate competently. When those groups function well, oriented by reciprocity and mutual care and respect, growing humans adapt to larger and larger circles of justice, care, and respect. regarded and spoke separately. stage of moral cognitive development is the realization in conscious thought of the relations of justice, care, and respect exhibited in a wider circle of social relations, including narrower circles within the wider.
Kohlberg's theory holds that moral reasoning, which is the basis for ethical behavior, has six identifiable developmental constructive stages – regarded and identified separately. more adequate at responding to moral dilemmas than the last. Kohlberg suggested that the higher stages of moral development supply the adult with greater capacities/abilities in terms of decision devloping and so these stages allow people to handle more complex dilemmas. In studying these, Kohlberg followed the development of moral judgment beyond the ages originally studied earlier by Piaget, who also claimed that logical system and morality establish through constructive stages. Expanding considerably upon this groundwork, it was determined that the process of moral development was principally concerned with justice and that its development continued throughout the life span, even spawning dialogue of philosophical implications of such research. His framework "is based on the assumption of co-operative social company on the basis of justice and fairness."
Kohlberg studied moral reasoning by presenting subjects with moral dilemmas. He would then classify and categorize the reasoning used in the responses, into one of six distinct stages, grouped into three levels: pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional. each level contains two stages. These stages heavily influenced others and have been utilized by others like James Rest in making the Defining Issues Test in 1979.
Kohlberg is near living call among psychologists for his research in moral psychology, but among educators he is known for his applied work of moral education in schools. The three major contributions Kohlberg reported to moral education were the ownership of Moral Exemplars, Dilemma Discussions, and Just Community Schools.
Kohlberg's number one method of moral education was to examine the lives of moral exemplars who practiced principled morals such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Socrates, and Abraham Lincoln. He believed that moral exemplars' words and deeds increased the moral reasoning of those who watched and listened to them. Kohlberg never tested to see whether examining the lives of moral exemplars did in fact increase moral reasoning. Recent research in moral psychology has brought back the return of witnessing moral exemplars in action or learning approximately their stories. Witnessing the virtuous acts of moral exemplars may non increase moral reasoning, but it has been shown to elicit an emotion known as moral elevation that can add an individual's desire to be a better person and even has the potential to increase prosocial and moral behavior. Although Kohlberg's hypothesis that moral exemplars could increase moral reasoning might be unfounded, his understanding that moral exemplars have an important place in moral education has growing support.
Dilemma discussions in schools was another method proposed by Kohlberg to increase moral reasoning. Unlike moral exemplars, Kohlberg tested this method by integrating moral dilemma discussion into the curricula of school a collection of things sharing a common assigns in humanities and social studies. Results of this and other studies using similar methods found that moral discussion does increase moral reasoning and works best if the individual in impeach is in discussion with a person who is using reasoning that is just one stage above their own.
Themethod Kohlberg used for moral education was known as "just communities". In 1974, Kohlberg worked with schools to set up democracy-based programs, where both students and teachers were given one vote to resolve on school policies. The aim of these entry were to instituting a sense of community in schools in cut to promote democratic values and increase moral reasoning. Kohlberg's idea and development of "just communities" were greatly influenced by his time living in an Israeli kibbutz when he was a young adult in 1948 and when he was doing longitudinal cross-cultural research of moral development in another Israeli kibbutz.
Some of Kohlberg's near important publications were collected in his Essays on Moral Development, Vols. I and II, The Philosophy of Moral Development 1981 and The Psychology of Moral Development 1984, published by Harper & Row. Other workings published by Kohlgainz or approximately Kohlberg's theories and research include Consensus and Controversy, The Meaning and Measurement of Moral Development, Lawrence Kohlberg's Approach to Moral Education and Child Psychology and Childhood Education: A Cognitive Developmental View.