Moral Development Theory: Y Awrence Ohlberg

MORAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY
BY: LAWRENCE KOHLBERG

 Lawrence Kohlberg adopted and built on Piaget’s
work, and set the groundwork for the present debate
within psychology on moral development.
 Like Piaget, he believed that children form ways of

thinking through their experiences which include
understandings of moral concepts such as justice,
rights, equality, and human welfare.
 Kohlberg followed the development of moral

judgment and extended the ages covered by Piaget,
and found out that the process of attaining moral
maturity took longer and occurred slower than Piaget
had thought.
 If Piaget designed specific tasks (Piagetian tasks) to
learn about the cognitive development of children.
Kohlberg utilized moral dilemmas). He was interested
in analyzing the moral reasoning behind the
responses.
 From his research, Kohlberg identified six stages of

moral reasoning grouped into three major levels. Each
level represents a significant change in the social-
moral reasoning or perspective of this person.
Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development
PRE-CONVENTIONAL
- Moral reasoning is based on the consequences/result
of the act, not on whether the act itself is good or
bad.
Stage 1: Punishment/Obedience
One is motivated by fear of punishment. He will act
in order to avoid punishment
Whatever leads to punishment is wrong
Stage 2: Mutual Benefit
One is motivated to act the benefit the one may
obtain later. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
CONVENTIONAL
- Moral reasoning is based on the conventions or norms
of society. This may include approval of others, law and
order.
Stage 3: Social Approval
One is motivated by what other expects in behavior –
good boy, good girl. The person acts because he/she
values how he/she appears to others. He/she gives
importance on what people will think or say.
Behavior in ways that conform to good behavior.
Stage 4: Law and Order
One is motivated to act in order to uphold law and
order. The person will follow the law because it is the
law. Importance of doing one’s duty
POST- CONVENTIONAL
Moral reasoning is based on enduring or consistent
principles. It is not just recognizing the law, but the
principles behind the law.
Stage 5: Social Contract
Laws that are wrong can be changed. One will act
according to social justice and the common good.
Differences between moral and legal right.
Recognition that rules should sometimes be broken.
Stage 6: Universal Principles
This is associated with the development of one’s
conscience. Having a set or standards that drives one to
possess moral responsibility to make societal changes
regardless of consequences to oneself.
SOCIO-CULTURAL THEORY
BY: LEV VYGOTSKY

 Lev Vygotsky was born in Russia in 1896. His work
began when he was studying learning and
development to improve his own teaching.
 The key theme of Vygotsky’s theory is that social

interaction plays a very important role to cognitive
development.
 He believed that individual development could not be

understood without looking into the social and
cultural context within which development happens.
 Scaffolding is Vygotsky’s term for the appropriate
assistance given by the teacher to assist the learner
accomplishes a task.
 When Vygotsky was a young boy he was educated

under a teacher who used the Socratic method. This
experience, together with his interest in literature and
his work as a teacher, led him to recognize social
interaction and language. His theory became known
as the Socio-cultural theory of development.
Social Interaction
- The community takes on a major role in one’s
development
- Vygotsky emphasized that the effective learning
happens through participation in social activities
Cultural Factors
- Piaget believed that as the child develops and
matures, he goes through universal stages of
cognitive development that allows him to move from
simple to explorations with senses and muscles to
complex reasoning.
Language
- Opens the door for learners to acquire knowledge
that others already have
- Learners can use language to know and understand
the world and solve problems.
- For Vygotsky, “talking to oneself” will lead to Private
speech – a form of self talk that guides the child’s
thinking and action
Zone of Proximal Development
- When child attempts to perform a skill alone, she may
not be immediately proficient at it. So, alone she may
not perform at a certain level of competency. We
refer to this as the zone of actual development.
However with the guidance of a More
Knowledgeable Other (MKO), competent adult or
a more advanced peer, the child can perform a higher
level of competency.
- The zone represents a learning opportunity where a
knowledgeable adult such as a teacher or a more
advanced peer can assist the child’s development
ECOLOGICAL
THEORY
BY: URIE BRONFENBRENNER
 Bronfenbrenner’s model also known as the Bio
ecological Systems theory presents child
development within the context of relationship
systems that compromise the child’s development. It
describes multipart layers of environment.
 The term “bio ecological” points out that the child\s

own biological make-up impacts as a key factor on
one’s development.
The Five Environmental System
1. The Microsystem
The microsystem’s setting is the direct
environment we have in our lives. Your family, friends,
classmates, teachers, neighbors and other people who
have a direct contact with you are included in your
micro system. The theory states that we are not mere
recipients of the experiences we have when socializing
with these people in the micro system environment, but
we are contributing to the construction of such
environment.
2. The Mesosystem
The mesosystem involves the relationship
between the microsystem’s in one’s life. This means that
your family experience may be related to your school
experience. For example, if a child is neglected by his
parents, he may have a low chance of developing
positive attitude towards his teachers. Also, the child
may feel awkward in the presence of peers and may
resort to withdrawal form a group of classmates.
3. The Exosystem
The exosystem is the setting in which there is a
link between the context where in the person does not
have any active role, and the context where in is
actively participating. Suppose a child is more attached
to his father than his mother. If the father goes abroad
to work for several months, there may be a conflict
between the mother and the child’s social relationship,
or on the other hand, this event may result to a tighter
bond between the mother and the child.
4. The Macrosystem
The macrosystem setting in the actual culture of
an individual. The cultural contexts involve the
socioeconomic status of the person and/or his family,
his ethnicity or race and living in a still developing or a
third world country. For example, being born to a poor
family makes a person work harder every day.
5. The Chronosystem
The chronosystem includes the transition and
shifts in one’s lifespan. This may also involve in socio-
historical contexts that may influence a person. One
classic example of this is how divorce, as a major life
transition, may affect not only the couple’s relationship
but also their children’s behavior. According to majority
of research, children are negatively affected on the first
year after the divorce. The next years after it would
reveal that the interaction within the family.
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
THEORY
BY: JEAN PIAGET

 Jean Piaget’s prominent work is his theory on the
four stages of cognitive development. Piaget believed
that the child plays an active role in the growth of
intelligence and learns by doing. He regarded the
child as a philosopher who perceives the world only
as he has experienced it.
 The theory of cognitive development focuses on
mental processes such as perceiving, remembering,
believing, and reasoning. Reasoning is the essence of
intelligence and reasoning is what Piaget studied in
order to discover “how we come to know”
 He explained that these stages unfold over time and
all children will pass through them all in order to
achieve an adult level of intellectual functioning.
Basic Cognitive Concepts
 Schema
- Piaget used the term “schema” to refer to the
cognitive structures by which individuals intellectually
adapt to and organize their environment
- It is an individual’s way to understand or create
meaning about a thing or experience.
 Assimilation
- This is the process of fitting a new experience into an

existing or previously created cognitive structure or
schema.
 Accommodation
- This is the process of creating a new schema
 Equilibration
- Piaget believe that people have the natural need to
understand how the world works and to find order,
structure, and predictability in our life.
- Equilibration is achieving proper balance between
assimilation and accommodation.
- When our experience do not much our schemata or
cognitive structures, we experience cognitive
disequilibrium. This means there is a discrepancy
between what is perceived and what is understood.
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Stage 1: Sensori-motor Stage
- During this stage senses, reflexes, and motor abilities

develop rapidly.
- The term sensor-motor focus on the prominence of
the senses and muscle movement through which the
infant comes to learn about himself and the world.
- Object permanence, this is the ability of the child to
know that an object still exist even when out of
sight. This ability is attained in the sensory motor
stage.
Stage 2: Pre-Operational Stage
- The child in the pre-operational stage is not yet able

to think logically.
- With the acquisition of language, the child is able to
represent the world through mental images and
symbols, but in this stage, these symbols depends on
his own perception and his intuition.
- The preoperational child is completely egocentric.
Although he is beginning to take greater interest in
objects and people around him, he sees them form
only one point of view his own.
 Symbolic Function – this is the ability to represent
objects and events. A symbol is a thing that represent
something else.
 Egocentrism - tendency of the child to only see his

view point and to assume that everyone also has his
same point of view. The child cannot take the
perspective of others
 Centration – refers to tendency of the child only focus

on the aspect of a thing or event and exclude other
aspects.
 Irreversibility – pre-operational children still have the
inability to reverse their thinking.
 Animism – tendency of children to attribute like

human traits or characteristics to inanimate objects.
 Transductive Reasoning – refers to the pre-

operational child’s type of reasoning that is either
inductive or deductive. Reasoning appears to be from
particular to particular.
Stage 3: Concrete Operational Stage
- This stage of concrete begins when the child is able to

perform mental operations.
- Decentering, ability of the child to perceive different

features of objects and situations. No longer is the
child focused or limited to one aspect or dimension.
- Reversibilty, during the stage of concrete, the child

can now follow that certain operations can be done in
reverse.
- Conservation, ability to know that certain properties
of objects like number, mass, volume or area do not
change even if there is a change in appearance.
Because of the development of child’s ability of
decentering and also reversibility, the concrete
operational child can now jugde right.
- Seriation refers to the ability to order or arrange

things in a series based on one dimension such as
weight, volume or size.
Stage 4: Formal Operational Stage
- Thinking becomes more logical
- Hypothetical reasoning, ability to come up with

different hypothesis about a problem and to gather
and weigh data in order to make a final decision or
judgment
- Analogical reasoning, ability to perceive the
relationship in one instance and then use the
relationship to narrow don possible answers in
another similar situation or problem.
- Deductive reasoning, ability to think logically by
applying a general rule to a particular instance or
situation.
PSYCHOANALYSIS
THEORY
BY: SIGMUND FREUD

 Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality
argues that human behavior is the result of the
interactions among three component parts of the
mind: the id, ego, and superego. This theory, known
as Freud's structural theory of personality, places
great emphasis on the role of unconscious
psychological conflicts in shaping behavior and
personality. Dynamic interactions among these
fundamental parts of the mind are thought to
progress through five distinct psychosexual stages of
development. Over the last century, however, Freud's
ideas have since been met with criticism, in part
because of his singular focus on sexuality as the main
driver of human personality development.
Level of Mental Life
1. Unconcious
- Contains all the feeling, urges or instinct that are
beyond are awareness but it affect our feelings,
expression and actions.
2. Preconscious
- Facts stored in a part of the brain, which are not
conscious but are available for possible use in the
future.
3. Conscious
- Only level of mental life that are directly available to
us.
- The awareness of our own mental process.
Personality
Consist of three parts:
1. Id
- the most primitive of the three structures, is
concerned with instant gratification of basic physical
needs and urges. It operates entirely unconsciously
(outside of conscious thought). For example, if your id
walked past a stranger eating ice cream, it would most
likely take the ice cream for itself. It doesn't know, or
care, that it is rude to take something belonging to
someone else; it would care only that you wanted the
ice cream.
2. Superego
- The superego is concerned with social rules and
morals similar to what many people call their
"conscience" or their "moral compass." It develops as
a child learns what their culture considers right and
wrong. If your superego walked past the same
stranger, it would not take their ice cream because it
would know that that would be rude. However, if both
your id and your superego were involved, and your id
was strong enough to override your superego's
concern, you would still take the ice cream, but
afterward you would most likely feel guilt and shame
over your actions.
3. Ego
- The rational level of personality

- Operates an reality principles – does realistic and
logical thinking.
- The balance between Id and Superego
Psychosexual Stages of Development
 Freud believed that the nature of the conflicts

among the id, ego, and superego change over
time as a person grows from child to adult.
Specifically, he maintained that these conflicts
progress through a series of five basic stages,
each with a different focus: oral, anal,
phallic, latency, and genital. He called his idea
the psychosexual theory of development, with
each psychosexual stage directly related to a
different physical center of pleasure.
1. Oral Stage
- Birth to 18 months
- Pleasure centers to the mouth
2. Anal Stage
- 18 months to 3 years old
- Pleasure focuses on bowel movement
3. Phallic Stage
- 3 years to 6 years
- Pleasure zone is the sex organ/genitals
4. Latency Stage
- 6 years to 11 years, until puberty
5. Genital Stage
- 12 years onward
POWER POINT
PRESENTATION ABOUT
THEORIES
SUBMITTED BY: WILLYN ANAUD

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MORAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY

BY: LAWRENCE KOHLBERG

 Like Piaget, he believed that children form ways of

 Kohlberg followed the development of moral

 From his research, Kohlberg identified six stages of

BY: LEV VYGOTSKY

 The key theme of Vygotsky’s theory is that social

 He believed that individual development could not be

 When Vygotsky was a young boy he was educated

 The term “bio ecological” points out that the child\s

BY: JEAN PIAGET

- This is the process of fitting a new experience into an

Stage 1: Sensori-motor Stage

- During this stage senses, reflexes, and motor abilities

- The child in the pre-operational stage is not yet able

 Egocentrism - tendency of the child to only see his

 Centration – refers to tendency of the child only focus

 Animism – tendency of children to attribute like

 Transductive Reasoning – refers to the pre-

- This stage of concrete begins when the child is able to

- Decentering, ability of the child to perceive different

- Reversibilty, during the stage of concrete, the child

- Seriation refers to the ability to order or arrange

- Hypothetical reasoning, ability to come up with

BY: SIGMUND FREUD

- The rational level of personality

 Freud believed that the nature of the conflicts

- Pleasure centers to the mouth

- Pleasure focuses on bowel movement

- Pleasure zone is the sex organ/genitals

SUBMITTED BY: WILLYN ANAUD

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