"Moral or Not?"

By Melissa Rohr

College of Education
Long Island University, C. W. Post
September , 2010

During today's class, we continued our discussion about cognitive development and started the discussion about moral development. Vygotsky, Kohlberg, and Piaget's theories of development were introduced today. Upon learning about Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, I became highly interested. It's true this is a slight gap between what a child can do, and what they need help doing and that gap happens to be the ZPD. In regards to scaffolding, this most definitely is a concept that needs to be carried over to the classroom, however it seems quite difficult because most of the time there will likely be twenty plus students in the classroom, all and different levels of learning and all with different needs.

In regards to morals, it is my personal belief that people behave morally because of societal standards and standards within their own family. Although this sounds like they have to abide by the rules, it is not exactly rules that I am talking about, its just a standard almost a way of life. Piaget's moral realism and moral relativism come from two different sides of the spectrum. One stresses constraint, and the other stresses cooperation. Me personally, I would say I am a mixture of both in that consequences and being strict are important at times, however motivation, intention and effort are just as important. It is very important for a teacher to fall somewhere in the middle. Kohlberg's theory about the three different stages of moral development (preconventional, conventional, and post conventional) is interesting because each stage focuses on a new age group and as they go on, the ideas associated with each become more abstract. It in a way ties in with Piaget's cognitive theory. It seems as if moral development comes along with cognitive development, but at a bit of a slower pace.