Social and Moral Development

Charles Birchfield

AED 202

01/27/2013

Jeffery Call

I think for this assignment I need to define the words moral and social. I feel I

should do this because for a long time when one or both of those words were mentioned I

begin to question my moral and social development. I think I questioned it because I

didn’t quite understand what the words meant, especially for myself. I think everyone

questions their morality from one time or another and we all think about how we have

developed socially, depending on the group of people that we are around. Children do not

questions these things, they just adjust accordingly. After reading several different

definitions on the internet and in the dictionary, moral and social can be broken down

very simple, the meaning of moral is knowing right from wrong and social means relating

to others. These are very simple explanations to two very simple words, that for the age

groups of 6-8 and 13-15 become a very important part of their development as they grow

up.

I have read many different things about moral and social development while

researching for this paper and I have found one website written by a Dr. C Boeree to be

very interesting. He writes about the Kohlberg theory on moral development in children,

Lawrence Kohlberg is a Psychologist who researched and interviewed many young

children to explain the development of moral reasoning, he did this by presenting

different moral dilemmas to children and then he interviewed them.

The Boeree ( 2009) website uses Kohlberg’s Theory to talk about the stages of

moral development in children, this theory is broken down into three different levels and

these levels are broken down into six specific stages. The first level is for infants and

very young children