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Results for “Kohlberg Approach to Moral Development”

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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1993

The moral development of medical students: a pilot study of the possible influence of medical education.

Medicine endorses a code of ethics and encourages a high moral character among doctors. This study examines the influence of medical education on the moral reasoning and development of medical students. Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview was given to a sample of 20 medical students (41.7% of students in that class). The students were tested at the beginning and at the end of their medical course to determine whether their moral reasoning scores had increased to the same extent as other people who extend their formal education. It was found that normally expected increases in moral reasoning scores did not occur over the 4 years of medical education for these students, suggesting that their educational experience somehow inhibited their moral reasoning ability rather than facilitating it. With a range of moral reasoning scores between 315 and 482, the finding of a mean increase from first year to fourth year of 18.5 points was not statistically significant at the P < or = 0.05 level. Statistical analysis revealed no significant correlations at the P < or = 0.05 level between the moral reasoning scores and age, gender, Medical College Admission Test scores, or grade point average scores. Along with a brief description of Kohlberg's cognitive moral development theory, some interpretations and explanations are given for the findings of the study.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Critical thinking, educational preparation, and development of moral judgment among selected groups of practicing nurses.

The focus of this descriptive study was the relationship between critical thinking, educational preparation, and level of moral judgment in 79 practicing nurses. The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal Test was used to measure critical thinking; information on the participating nurses' educational preparation was obtained from a personal information sheet. Moral judgment was measured by Rest's Defining Issues Test. The hypothesis that critical thinking would be positively related to moral judgment was tested by Pearson product moment correlation; the obtained coefficient of .5326 was significant at the .001 level. The hypothesis that there would be a difference between professional and technical nurses' moral judgments was tested through a one-way analysis of variance. The F ratio (F [1,77] = 9.6) was significant beyond the .01 level. Data also supported the hypothesis that critical thinking and educational preparation would predict greater variance in moral judgment than either variable alone, which was tested through multiple regression analysis (F [2,75] = 18.3, p = .01). Critical thinking and education together accounted for 32.9 percent of the variance in moral judgment. Implications of the findings are discussed for nursing research, practice, and education.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Moral decision making in neonatal intensive care.

OBJECTIVE: To gain information about the perspective that neonatal intensive-care unit nurses use to make moral decisions. DESIGN: Descriptive. SETTING: Neonatal intensive-care unit of a large teaching hospital in the midwestern United States. PARTICIPANTS: Convenience sample of 26 female nurses working in a neonatal intensive-care unit. METHOD: Audiotaped, semistructured interviews and demographic questionnaires. RESULTS: The results indicated that most (65%) of the nurses used the care perspective to make moral decisions. A small number (12%) used the justice perspective, and the remaining nurses (23%) used a combined care and justice perspective. CONCLUSIONS: Both the care and justice perspectives were found to be important for understanding how nurses make moral decisions.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Children's rights: reasoning and their level of moral development: an empirical investigation.

Children's reasoning about their rights is largely determined by their level of development. Since rights-reasoning concerns essentially moral issues, the best foundation to contextualise the developmental process mentioned would be to consider a moral-developmental approach. In this regard Kohlberg's theory of moral development has been found to be the primary theory that researchers have built on. The article focuses on an empirical investigation done with 312 South African children of varying ages, cultures and language groups into their level of moral-development and rights-reasoning. The two questionnaires used were Kohlberg's Standard Issue Score (Form B) and Melton's Children's Rights Interview. The most important findings made were that Kohlberg's theory of universalizability and unvariant order of sequence along with its applicability to gender and culture was confirmed for this South African study. Furthermore an important correlation between rights-reasoning development and level of moral ethical development was made which implies that an interdependent relationship exists between them.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

The influence of gender on conflicts of interest in the allocation of limited critical care resources: justice versus care.

After noting that the principle of autonomy has been inadequate for the resolution of many of the complex and difficult moral dilemmas involving conflicts of interest in the allocation of limited critical care resources, this paper analyzes the concepts of justice and care as alternative solutions to moral problems and applies them to the issue of repeat organ transplants to a single recipient. These concepts are found to be the basis of the notions of moral reasoning and moral orientation, respectively, which serve in moral development theory as two fundamentally different ways to approach moral problem solving. Following an elaboration of moral reasoning as found in Kohlberg's cognitive moral development theory, the influence of gender on moral reasoning is investigated. The empirical data show that women (mean Defining Issues Test score, 47.18) score significantly higher (P < or = .0001) than men (mean Defining Issues Test score, 41.77) in the use of moral reasoning based on the concept of justice for resolving moral dilemmas. Following an elaboration of moral orientation as found in Gilligan's moral theory of the ethics of care, the influence of gender on moral orientation is investigated. The empirical data show that women use the concept of care significantly more often (P < or = .0139) than their male colleagues in resolving moral dilemmas. From these data it is concluded that men are more likely than women to use justice in the resolution of moral dilemmas, such as the conflicts of interest in the allocation of limited critical care resources, but that if women do use, or are required by the social system to use, justice in the resolution of moral dilemmas, they do a better job of it than men.

Critical Care↗
PubMed1983

Moral reasoning and the student nurse.

The traditional curriculum in nurse education has tended to emphasize the acquisition of knowledge and practical skills and to ignore, for the most part, close examination of the social and moral dimensions of the nurse's role. The authors suggest that we ought to include a much more substantial consideration of moral issues in the nurse education and, in particular, they argue that Kohlberg's model of moral development could provide a theoretical framework. This model is based on a cognitive-developmental approach in which an individual's level of reasoning is assessed by the use of a variety of hypothetical dilemmas. Kohlberg claims to identify six qualitatively distinct stages and argues that the transition from one stage to the next results from the individual's active attempts to resolve conflicts arising from moral dilemmas. Some suggestions are made about the ways in which discussion of moral dilemmas might be incorporated within a moral reasoning module in the nurse education curriculum and proposals are made for methods of teaching such a module.

Cognition↗
PubMed1993

Heinz dilemma? Let the subject choose!

This description of a novel approach for studying the validity of Kohlberg's sequential and hierarchical theory of moral development involved 138 boys and 113 girls (14 to 18 years old) choosing a solution among 12 to Kohlberg's Heinz dilemma instead of being assigned one by an interviewer. The results were not supportive of the theory. The methodology of research on moral development needs to be examined.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

An ethical analysis of double bind conflicts as experienced by care workers feeding severely demented patients.

When patients with incurable dementia diseases no longer take food or fluid voluntarily, the care workers experience distress and anxiety. Thirty-nine care workers were interviewed about their thoughts, feelings and attitudes towards feeding severely demented patients. A phenomenological approach was used and the interviews were developed, attention paid to Bateson's double bind theory, Kohlberg's theory of moral development and ethical theories. Ethical theories, principles and rules, containing messages at different logical levels and the lack of empirical knowledge of the demented patients' inner world, led to the care worker's difficult double bind situations. To solve the conflicts the care workers need insight in all aspects of the problem. In order to understand all the components in a double bind situation it is important to redefine it from outside.

Beneficence↗