The Effectiveness of a Proposed Educational Program Based on Kohlberg Moral Development Theory on Improving the Moral Thinking of Students at the School of Basic Education at Kuwait

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Curriculum & Instruction, School of Basic Education. Kuwait.

Abstract

The current study aimed at investigating the impact of an educational program, based on Kohlberg Theory of Moral Development, on improving the moral thinking of a sample of School of Basic Education’s students at the State of Kuwait.
     In order to accomplish the study goals, an educational program was designed following the assumptions of Kohlberg Theory. One of Kohlberg’s three proposed strategies for teaching moral education, which includes: 1) role model or pattern, 2) presenting and discussing a moral dilemma, and just community school; was adopted in the study. Specifically, presenting and discussing an ethical dilemma strategy was used by presenting (24) stories which have ethically a controversial nature.
     A Quasi-Experimental Design was adopted in the current study with a sample of (32) female students from School of Basic Education. The study also manipulated the Moral Thinking Scale designed by (Abdelfattah, 2000), which she designed based on the Scale of Identifying Positions by Kohlberg. 
     The study results revealed that there is a statically significant difference between students’ scores on the pre-test and post-test, which indicated that there is a positive impact for the educational program in improving students’ moral thinking. Additionally, the results showed that students’ moral thinking varies between the third and fourth stage of thinking taxonomy presented by Kohlberg. 
     In light of the study results, some suggestions and recommendations were made in hope to contribute to improving strategies and methods for teaching moral education.

Keywords


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