Kohlberg'S Six Stages Of Moral Reasoning Worksheet

ADVERTISEMENT

Name:________________________________
Date:___________________
Antigone
Character Analysis
Directions: You will write a character analysis of Antigone based on Kohlberg’s levels of moral development.
After reading the article, “Kohlberg’s Six Stages of Moral Reasoning” fill out the chart. When drafting the essay
try to answer this question: Does Antigone ever fully reach the final stage of moral development? You will need
to turn in a rough draft as a Daily grade (out of 10 points) and the final draft will be graded according to the
rubric below and also go into the Daily grades section.
“Kohlberg’s Six Stages of Moral Reasoning”
In the late 1950s, Lawrence Kohlberg began to collect data related to moral questions. Kohlberg had studied Jean
Piaget’s earlier work in cognitive and moral development and used this as a foundation for a 15-year study of moral
reasoning. Piaget’s work focused primarily on uncovering cognitive stages.
Kohlberg’s study also focused on a
1
developmental sequence of stages and revealed that individuals restructure their thinking about social and moral
questions just as they develop their cognitive structure from the very concrete toward the more abstract.
Specifically, Kohlberg introduced a developmental theory for moral reasoning. The theory presents six stages of moral
2
reasoning:
I. Preconventional Level
At this level the child is responsive to cultural rules and labels of good and bad, right and wrong, but interprets these
labels in terms of either the physical or the hedonistic consequences of action (punishment, reward, exchange of
favors) or in terms of the physical power of those who enunciate the rules and labels. The level is divided into two
stages:
Stage 1: The punishment and obedience orientation. The physical consequences of action determine its goodness or
badness regardless of the human meaning or value of these consequences. Avoidance of punishment and unquestioning
deference to power are valued in their own right, not in terms of respect for an underlying moral order supported by
punishment and authority (the latter being Stage 4).
Stage 2: The instrumental relativist orientation. Right action consists of that which instrumentally satisfies one’s own
needs and occasionally the needs of others. Human relations are viewed in terms like those of the market place.
Elements of fairness, reciprocity, and equal sharing are present, but they are always interpreted in a physical or
pragmatic way. Reciprocity is a matter of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” not of loyalty, gratitude, or justice.
II. Conventional Level
At this level, maintaining the expectations of the individual’s family, group, or nation is perceived 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 of
identifying with the persons or group involved in it. At this level, there are two stages:
1
As most clearly reflected in thinking, cognition means putting things together, relating events. In cognitive theories, such relating is assumed to be
an active connecting process, not a passive connection of events through external association and repetition (Kohlberg, “The Concepts of
Developmental Psychology as the Central Guide to Education,” Proceedings of the Conference on Psychology and the Process of Schooling in the
Next Decade [Washington: U.S.O.E., 1973], p. 4.)
2
Kohlberg, Lawrence, “From Is to Ought: How to Commit the Naturalistic Fallacy and Get Away with It in the Study of Moral Development,” in
Cognitive Development and Epistemology, edited by T. Mischel. (New York: 1971), p. 164.

ADVERTISEMENT

00 votes

Related Articles

Related forms

Related Categories

Parent category: Education
Go
Page of 4