Political Education: Cognitive Developmental Perspectives from Moral Education

Abstract

Whilst there exist a sizeable number of studies of children and adolescents that are potentially relevant to political education, they have been designed largely within the theoretical frameworks first of attitude and latterly of socialisation models. Adler & Harrington point out in the concluding remarks to their 1970 collection The Learning of Political Behaviour that the political socialisation literature lacks longitudinal studies. Their proposal that this should be remedied by studies modeled after Piaget's and Kohlberg's work in psychology (p. i88) further indicates that the political area has so far made little use of cognitive developmental approaches. Pioneered by Piaget, this viewpoint is now firmly integrated into the mainstream of (cf. Brown & Herrnstein, 1975; Bolton, 1971; Farnham-Diggory, I972a & b) and has been extensively applied in the area of morals, notably by Kohlberg. Given this state of affairs at the outset of a political education research project (cf. Crick & Lister, I974a), there seems good reason to follow the suggestion of Adler & Harrington by investigating what research inmoral development might contribute to the furthering of political literacy. This paper will take the following course: I shall start by comparing the conception of political literacy developed by Professors Crick & Lister in their project discussion documents I to 3 with Wilson's notion of being morally educated and with Kohlberg's systematisation of the moral judgement domain. This will lead into a brief discussion of the role of a of political education. We will then move, via a brief overview of the central notions of current psychology, to an outline and comparison of cognitive developmental approaches in the moral (Kohlberg) and political areas (Connell, Adelson). This comparison, including accounts of the transition process in development, will yield implications for political education and form a basis for some research suggestions.