In the frame of the international project, "Environment and School Initiatives," a pilot study has been carried out with the aim to elucidate existing levels of moral reasoning in environmental dilemmas (in analogy to Kohlberg) in a group of 11- and 15-year-old students. (LZ/Author)

Examined the variability in the development of moral judgment by reanalyzing a set of Kohlberg's data studies on the concept of structured wholeness, a deep cognitive organization unifying different surface judgments given by the same subject. Although the results failed to show total consistency they also show that it is not meaningful to claim…

The relationships of age, gender, and educational level with moral development in 94 middle-class 28- to 55-year-old adults (32 males and 62 females) were studied. Subjects were administered Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview (MJI). Males scored higher on the MJI than females. Findings support the continued development of moral judgment through…

Maintains that although Kohlberg emphasized the importance of perspective taking in moral reasoning, his view of developmental stages is inconsistent with this position. Argues that a modification of Kohlberg's conception of stages drawing on Piagetian theory would result in a view of moral reasoning as a process of coordinating all perspectives…

Gains in moral judgement, as measured by the Defining Issues Test (DIT), correlate strongly with advancing education. Curricula that are strongly biblically based may not promote, and students with a strong fundamentalist orientation may not demonstrate, such moral growth. Students at an interdenominational, but very conservative seminary,…

The present study investigates whether epistemic cognition in moral domain (dubbed "metaethical cognition") develops analogously to epistemic reasoning regarding empirical knowledge. The study's conceptual framework distinguishes two main areas of metaethical cognition (beliefs about the nature of moral judgments and conceptions of the process of…

During the Lebanon War (1982), many Israeli reserve soldiers disobeyed the command to join their units for service in Lebanon. Several of these soldiers were publicly labeled "sarvanim" meaning "refusers" in Hebrew, and were jailed in military prisons. Kohlberg's (1976) cognitive developmental approach to moralization, which…

The application of Information Integration Theory (Anderson, 1981), a general model of social judgment, overcomes shortcomings in the evaluation of moral development by offering a clear distinction between moral values and reasoning. To test the applicability of Anderson's theory to moral development research, two experiments were conducted using…

Research on moral development from a cognitive-developmental perspective has been undertaken predominantly with Western subjects and most often with males. To investigate variables associated with moral reasoning among Palestinian Arabs, 259 male and female university students between the ages of 18 and 26 completed Rest's Defining Issues Test…

This presentation: (1) outlines three educational approaches to moral development; (2) explains Piaget's stages of moral judgment; (3) reviews Piaget's ideas about the development of children's concepts of justice; and (4) discusses comments by contemporary educators concerning moral education and its implications. Outlined in Part I are character…

This study explored the relationship between children's sense of justice for a criminal offender and their cognitive level. Subjects were 60 children, 10 boys and 10 girls at each of the following developmental or cognitive levels: preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Each child was individually pretested for cognitive…

Reviews research and theory on the earliest development of moral behavior among infants and very young children. Lists a range of behaviors which are said to demonstrate the development of moral behavior. Includes illustrative anecdotes and a three-page bibliography. (JDH)

This critique of Nisan's (1987) study of morality and convention addresses methodological considerations for cross-cultural research on children's moral and conventional concepts. (PCB)

Study 1 involved a standard interview of first- and third-graders, who consistently rated hypothetical conventional infractions as affectively neutral but tended to regard moral transgressions as affectively negative. Study 2 experimentally manipulated affect prior to a controlled recall task involving moral and conventional stories. (Author/KS)

Reviews Kohlberg's research on moral development and criticizes standard issue scoring, a measure of individual developmental stages of moral judgment. Discusses problems with the Moral Judgment Interview's content and scoring, suggesting longitudinal, comparative, and gender-related research needed to resolve problems of validity and reliability.…