Stages of Moral Growth in Children's Moral Education

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Development emerges when individuals construct and reconstruct their knowledge of their world as a result of interaction with the environment Nucci (2000). Without critical thinking there would be no actual development of student personal ideology and understanding of the concept of right and wrong, of the moral and the immoral. According to Piaget’s theory, teachers must provide students with ample opportunities for personal development through hands-on problem solving rather than through indoctrination of a predetermined set of norms and rules. Piaget (1932) cited in May (1971) identifies four stages of moral development: 1. egocentrism 2. heteronym 3. transition 4. autonomy While egocentrism is the stage when children are generally more involved with themselves, thus limiting their innate moral awareness to what surrounds themselves and how they interact with the world, the heteronym stage is one in which the child tries to understand the importance of rules associated with good behaviour and attempts to follow them. At this stage the child begins to understand that obedience and any exhibition and practice of virtues are rewarded while disobedience and vices are punished. In truth, traditionally, a major concentration of moral education was intentionally taught at this level in western education for a long time, and it still is evidenced in today’s classroom, wherever it may be. (Harmin , 1990). The transition stage is the stage <age?> at which values are initially beginning to be understood. Children here begin to appreciate how rules make things function and how they can adhere to and break rules and how rules apply to them in their personal and school life. However, it is the final stage of moral autonomy at which children’s individual exercises are centered on their behaviour and they tend to act in accordance with their emerging and evolving code
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