_______________________________ is the last of kohlberg's stages of moral development (also known as part of the postconventional level).
Although moral reasoning does not necessarily lead to moral action, the latter is based in part on one's capacity to reason about moral choices. Kohlberg was more concerned with the reasoning of the action than the action itself. And that reasoning when acted upon becomes our motivation. KOHLBERG'S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT. Lawrence Kohlberg was a moral philosopher and student of child development. He was director of Harvard's Center for Moral Education. His special area of interest is the moral development of children - how they develop a sense of right, wrong, and justice. Kohlberg observed that growing children advance through definite stages of moral development in a manner similar to their progression through Piaget's well-known stages of cognitive development. KOHLBERG'S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT. BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. An outstanding example of research in the Piagetian tradition is the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. Kohlberg has focused on moral development and has proposed a stage theory of moral thinking which goes well beyond Piaget's initial formulations. After obtaining hundreds of responses to moral dilemmas, one groundbreaking cognitive-developmental psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg, proposed that the development of moral reasoning is characterized by a sequence of six stages grouped into three general levels of morality: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Kohlberg's body of work on the stages of moral development has been utilized by others working in the field. One example is the Defining Issues Test (DIT) created in 1979 by James Rest, originally as a pencil-and-paper alternative to the Moral Judgement Interview. Lawrence Kohlberg was a 20th century American psychologist who developed a theory about how individuals develop morality, known as Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development. According to Kohlberg, moral development occurs at the preconventional, conventional and postconventional stages. Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development constitute an adaptation of a psychological theory originally conceived by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Kohlberg began work on this topic while a psychology graduate student at the University of Chicago in 1958, and expanded upon the theory throughout his life. In the 20th century, an American psychologist named Lawrence Kohlberg developed a model that explained how individuals develop morality. This model is known as Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development. Kohlberg's model is composed of three stages, each of which includes two phases. The three stages are preconventional morality, conventional morality and postconventional morality. The table below lists and describes Kohlberg's three levels and six stages of moral reasoning. Sources: Colby & Kohlberg, 1984; Colby et al., 1983; Kohlberg, 1976, 1984, 1986; Reimer, Paolitto, & Hersh, 1983; Snarey, 1995. Excerpt from Child Development and Education, by T.M McDevitt, J.E. In the context of moral dilemmas, biblical action flows from the following: 1  Knowing the issues involved in a moral dilemma. 2  Understanding the biblical imperatives, principles and values pertinent to the moral dilemma. 3  Believing in these imperatives and principles.  Integrating them into our value structure.
Postconventional morality