Moral Reasoning of Students in Different Cultural, Social, and Educational Settings

Abstract

Cross-cultural research on the development of moral reasoning was carried out using about 115 adolescent subjects representing urban middle-class and lower-class, kibbutz-born and Youth Aliyah (disadvantaged urban youth educated in the kibbutz), Moslem and Christian Arab groups in Israel. Kohlberg's moral dilemmas were used to determine levels of moral reasoning, and the data analysis was done in terms of his six moral stages. Analysis of variance was used to determine whether differences between groups were significant. The results indicate the following. (1) The level of moral reasoning of kibbutz-born youth was higher than that of the other groups studied. (2) Middle-class and Youth Aliyah samples showed higher level of moral reasoning than lower-class samples. Youth Aliyah students, whose origin was urban lower class, had a level of moral reasoning almost a full stage higher than the comparable lower-class students. (3) The Christian and Moslem Arab middle-class samples showed similar levels of moral ...