Kohlberg

Kohlberg is a very interesting fellow.  He lives along the same line of Piaget but with a slightly different approach, looking more at the moral development of a student.  He breaks it down into three different levels, with two sub levels on each.  The first being preconventional, or before rules.  The two sub levels here are obedience vs punishment, good or bad action is determined by the physical consequence.  The other is personal reward, what do I get out of the situation.  The next stage is the conventional stage, AKA rules.  The sub levels here are good boy/nice girl, good means 'nice'.  The other is law and order, laws are absolute.  The authority must be respected.  The last stage is the postconventional, abstract rule breaking.  The sub levels here are social contract, what is good according to the society it is associated with.  A groups definition of good.  The other is universal ethical principle, what is right and wrong is individually decided and thought in the abstract.

Here is a youtube video that you can check out to double check your understanding of Kohlberg's stages that I briefly went over.

With this background of Kohlberg, I now take a look at the students that I observe each week.  I would say that most live in this preconventional-conventional stage.  Some touch in the postconventional, but for the most part the students are staying in those beginning stages with their moral development.  They are very concerned about what the results of a choice will do for them and there grade.  Another group of students are concerned about meeting the rules of the class exactly, even if the situation deems it to be changed.

For example, one week I was observing my teacher's theatre 3 class learn about viewpoints.  It was a hands on lesson and the students had to get up on the stage and move around to learn about the different viewpoints.  Some of the students showed a conventional moral development.  The teacher would tell the students that whenever they walked between two students, those students were a door that you had to move through in a fun and different way.  Some of the students took it very literal and every single "door" that they past through they jumped or dove or did something big and different because those were the rules and they needed to be met (law and order).  Other students however would only go through the motions.  Slightly raising an arm or not even doing anything but walk around the room.  The lacked to see any reward from this because there was no punishment for not doing the task.

Now with this type of activity, it is hard to be watching every student the entire time to make sure they are doing what is being asked, so helping the students develop that moral reasoning as the teacher is a bit harder.  However, rules could have been laid that allows the students to help motivate each other to participate, since they are all walking around each other.  But that can be tough because you don't want the students to be distracted looking for those not participating rather than fully engaging themselves.