NCJ Number
142472
Journal
Journal of Moral Education Volume: 13 Issue: 2 Dated: (May 1984) Pages: 112-123
Date Published
1984
Length
14 pages
Annotation
Two moral education programs were designed to develop the maturity of moral reasoning stages of medium security prison inmates, one based on cognitive disequilibrium induction techniques of the Kohlberg orientation and the other based on the adequacy of the moral reasoning competencies approach advocated by the American Association for Values Education and Research (AVER).
Abstract
The Kohlberg approach to moral development seeks to foster both vertical and horizontal movement through and within the sequential stages of moral reasoning. Vertical movement refers to successively more differentiated and integrated structures for reasoning about dilemmas with moral content, while horizontal movement refers to the expansion of these structures to various moral norms and issues. Given certain basic cognitive capacities, development through moral reasoning stages is thought to be the product of attempts by individuals to resolve the cognitive disequilibrium aroused by the perceived inability to resolve a dilemma with one's current reasoning skills and social perspectives. The AVER approach holds that moral judgments differ in the degree to which they are rational or logically adequate and that moral decisionmaking is a complex task. The goal of moral education is to provide participants with the ability to make and act on rational decisions about moral issues. Both moral education programs were evaluated using a sample of 48 male inmates at the Chillicothe Correctional Institute in southern Ohio; 17 inmates were assigned to the Kohlberg program, 14 to the AVER program, and 17 to a social psychology course. Participants in all three groups met for 4 hours of classes weekly over an 11-week period. Both the Kohlberg and AVER programs resulted in significant and nondifferential advances in moral reasoning abilities, while inmates in the social psychology comparison group showed no advances. 105 references, 2 notes, and 2 tables