The discussion method of moral dilemma is an important method put forward by Kohlberg's theory of moral cognitive development stage in children's moral education practice. Based on the story of moral dilemma, it allows children to discuss the moral problems in the story and answer the relevant questions raised around the story, so as to judge the development stage of children's moral cognition and guide and promote its further development. The key of this method is to induce children's cognitive conflict with dilemma stories, promote positive moral thinking, and thus promote the development of children's moral judgment. The proposal and advocacy of this method is the concrete embodiment of Kohlberg's early moral education with moral cognition as the core and special attention to the development of children's moral judgment and reasoning ability. In his view, "the sign of children's moral maturity is that they have the ability to make moral judgments and put forward their own moral principles, instead of following the moral judgments of adults around them" (Qu Baokui, editor-in-chief: Pedagogy anthology? Education and Human Development, 72 1 page, Beijing: People's Education Press, 1989). Therefore, he defined the purpose of moral education as promoting the development of moral judgment and moral thinking ability. He believes that the development of a person's moral judgment generally goes through "three levels and six stages", which is a process from low to high. Kohlberg explained the moral development process model of "three levels and six stages" in detail, and then made a major revision. In the late 1970s, he summarized this model as follows: the first level is the pre-custom level, including the first stage-taking punishment and obedience as the value orientation stage, and the second stage-taking personal utilitarian purpose and exchange as the value orientation stage; The second level is the custom level, including the third stage-the value orientation stage of coordinating interpersonal relationships, and the fourth stage-the value orientation stage of maintaining social order and fulfilling personal obligations; The third level is the post-custom level, which includes five stages with social contract as the value orientation and six stages with universal moral principles as the value orientation. He believes that a child's age has a great relationship with his moral development stage. Generally, 0 to 9 years old is the first level, 9 to 15 years old is the second level, and it develops to the third level after 16 years old. But age is not the determining factor. Although the development stage cannot be skipped and the development direction is irreversible, there are individual differences in the development speed, some are fast, some are slow, and some may stay at a certain stage for a long time. Kohlberg advocates the strategy of education, especially the story of moral dilemma, to promote its development to a higher stage.
The specific steps and requirements of implementing the moral dilemma discussion method are: first, measure the actual stage of students' moral development according to the moral judgment measurement table, and group students according to the test results; Then choose appropriate moral dilemma stories and questions to guide students to discuss. When teachers tell students stories about moral dilemmas, they should be able to fully understand and retell the plot in the story, so that students can really know what the moral dilemmas and contradictions in the story are. When organizing students' discussion, we should give students some time to think and prepare, and ask some related questions about the moral problems in the story to inspire students to think. The discussion can be carried out in groups first, and then concentrated, so that everyone has a full opportunity to express their personal opinions. Teachers should pay attention to let students compare and debate different schemes, stimulate students' conflicts in moral cognition, thus triggering deeper thinking and logical reasoning, allowing adjacent students to have opportunities to communicate with each other in the stage of moral development, and allowing students with lower level to learn moral reasoning at a higher stage. The discussion should not pursue a consistent conclusion, but achieve the purpose of improving students' moral reasoning ability and cognitive level through discussion. Before the discussion is over, students should be guided to make a summary and continue to think deeply about this problem. Kohlberg believes that this method is different from traditional education in principle: it does not emphasize the "correct answer" of adults in front of students and teach them high-level ethics that they can't understand at present, but triggers students' positive thinking and cognitive conflict on moral issues, provides them with opportunities to learn moral reasoning and provides a stage for thinking mode higher than their current moral level. Because research shows that children refuse to accept information below their current cognitive level, they can't understand information above their two stages. "Adult's moral reasoning can only be assimilated into children's thinking if it is one stage higher than children's current level." So this method has an empirical basis. The discussion method of moral dilemma has effectively promoted the development of children's moral judgment, but also indirectly affected moral behavior to some extent. However, Kohlberg also saw that this method needed to be supplemented and improved, so he further advocated combining moral discussion with curriculum teaching, and adding some real-life moral issues to moral discussion, so that the development of moral judgment could influence students' behavior more and more effectively.
Yajie's Theory of Moral Cognitive Development
Children's moral cognition mainly refers to children's understanding of the code of conduct of right and wrong, good and evil and its implementation significance. It includes the mastery of moral concepts, the development of moral judgment ability and the formation of moral beliefs. Piaget was the first psychologist who systematically studied children's moral cognition. His book "Children's Moral Judgment" published in 1932 is a milestone in the study of children's moral development in developmental psychology.
The developmental stages of children's moral cognition
Piaget divided the development of children's moral cognition into three orderly stages according to their understanding and application of rules, their understanding of negligence and lying, and their investigation and research on justice:
The first stage: pre-moral stage (from birth to 3 years old). Piaget believes that children of this age are in the pre-operational thinking period, and their consideration of problems is still self-centered. They ignore the rules and entertain according to their own imagination. Their behavior is impulsive, their feelings are generalized, their behavior is directly dominated by the results of their behavior, and their moral cognition is not conservative. For example, if the same rules of action come from parents, they are willing to abide by them, but if they come from their peers, they will not. They don't really understand the meaning of rules, and they can't distinguish justice, obligation and obedience. Their behavior is neither moral nor immoral.
The second stage: heteronomous morality stage or moral realism stage (3 ~ 7 years old). This is a relatively low-level moral thinking stage, which has the following characteristics:
First, unilaterally respect the sense of power, and have a sense of obligation to abide by adult standards and obey adult rules. In other words, heteronomy is manifested in some emotional reactions and some remarkable structures unique to moral judgment. Its basic characteristics are: first, absolute obedience to parents, authorities or elders. Children think that obedience to authority is "good" and disobedience is "bad". The second is to respect and abide by the rules themselves, that is, to regard the rules stipulated by people as fixed. Piaget called this structure moral realism.
Second, we should judge an action from its material consequences, not from its subjective motives. For example, it is considered that breaking more cups is worse than breaking fewer cups, whether the cups are broken intentionally or unintentionally.
Third, there is an absolute tendency to treat behavior. Children of moral realism always take an extreme attitude when evaluating the right or wrong behavior, either completely right or completely wrong, thinking that others see it the same way, and can't put themselves in other people's perspective. Piaget and Guerder in Britain said when talking about the characteristics of children in this period: "Moral realism leads to an objective view of responsibility, and the evaluation of an act is based on its compliance with the law, regardless of whether it is a malicious motive that violates this principle or a well-intentioned but unintentional violation of the rules. For example, before children understand the social value of not lying (because of the lack of full socialization), adults tell them not to lie, before deliberate deception is really different from games or pure wishes. Therefore, telling the truth has become something other than children's subjective personality, which leads to moral realism and objective responsibility, thus making children think that the seriousness of all commitments seems to be not the degree of intentional deception, but the degree of difference from reality. "
Fourth, we are in favor of the punishment of origin. We think that the punished behavior itself shows that it is bad, and we confuse moral laws with natural laws. We think that improper behavior will be punished by natural forces. For example, tell a 7-year-old child that a little boy stole candy from the store and ran away. When crossing the street, I was knocked down by a car and asked the child, "Why did the car hit that boy?" The answer is that he stole candy. In the eyes of children with moral realism, punishment is a kind of retribution, which aims to make the experience of the negligent person consistent with his mistakes, rather than taking punishment as a means to change children's behavior.
The third stage: independent morality or moral subjectivism. Piaget believes that children enter the stage of moral subjectivism at the age of 7 ~ 12, and the morality at this stage has the following characteristics:
First, children have realized that rules are created by people on the basis of mutual cooperation, so it can be changed according to people's wishes. Rules are no longer considered to be imposed outside of themselves.
Second, when judging behavior, we should not only consider the consequences of the behavior, but also consider the motivation of the behavior. The research shows that children aged 65,438+02 all think that children who are positive and motivated but lose a lot are better than those who have poor motivation and only cause small losses. Considering the motivation of behavior, attention can be paid to taking care of the weak or young when punishing.
Third, in the relationship of mutual respect with authority and peers, children can evaluate their own views and abilities higher and judge others more realistically.
Fourth, you can put yourself in others' shoes, and your own judgment is no longer absolute. You can see several possible viewpoints.
Fifth, the proposed punishment is milder, more directly targeted at the mistakes made, compensatory, and regards mistakes as lessons for those who are at fault.
Children who have reached the stage of self-discipline and morality are no longer bound by their elders when playing games. They can participate in games on an equal footing with children of the same age, understand each other's positions and make rules together, abide by the rules and hold games independently.
Piaget believes that the order of these stages of children's moral development is fixed, and children's moral understanding is a process from heteronomous morality to independent morality. Children in heteronomous morality stage judge according to external moral laws. They only pay attention to the external results of their actions, without considering their motives. Their standard of right and wrong depends on whether they obey the orders or regulations of others. This is a kind of moral judgment which is dominated by the value standard outside itself. In the later period, children's moral judgment has been able to judge right or wrong with new standards such as equality or inequality, justice or injustice, which is a kind of moral judgment dominated by children's own subjective values and belongs to the level of self-discipline. Piaget believes that only by reaching this level can children have real morality.