Compare and Contrast Two Theories That Describe Moral Development.

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In order to compare and contrast the two theories, we first need to know what moral development actually is. Moral development is used to describe the establishment and growth of what a child thinks is right and wrong (Colman, 2009). By the time a child reaches adulthood, it is assumed that they should already know the rules as to what is expected of them, with regards to their behaviour in both their social and personal lives, the development of morality varies for culture to culture and even country to country. Because of this assumption a number of studies have been carried out in order to discover when a child acquires their sense of morality (Martin, Carlson, & Buskist, 2013). The two more widely published studies are by Piaget, J (1932) and Kohlberg, L (1969, 1976). Piaget’s study was on children who were given a problem scenario and then asked to answer a question and explain their answer, then depending on this answer they were then put into one of three stages. Kohlberg however followed on from this study and expanded it further (Schaffer, 1997). While he kept the way the study was performed the same i.e. using a problem scenario, in contrast he doubled the number of stages to moral development. Kohlberg did this by using three levels each containing two stages. Kohlberg’s participants who were aged between ten and seventeen years (Martin et al., 2013), where given a scenario (for which there is no right or wrong answer) of a man named Heinz whose wife was dying of cancer, there was however a drug that could keep her alive. This drug was cheap to make but very expensive to buy. Heinz did not have the money or any way of getting the money to pay for the drug. So Heinz broke into the pharmacy and stole the drug. The participants were then asked Should Heinz of stolen the drugs? (Lehalle, 2008 as cited by Jackson & Goossen, 2008). Piaget in comparison
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