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Elliot Turiel
Moral Development
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A Brief History of Turiel
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Elliot Turiel was born in 1938
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PhD in Psychology from Yale
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American psychologist and Chancellor’s Professor at the
Graduate School of Education at the University of California,
Berkeley
Publications
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The Culture of Morality: Social Development, Context, and Conflict,
from Cambridge University Press (2002)
The Development of Morality, published in Handbook of Child
Psychology (1998)
Notes from the Underground: Culture, Conflict, and Subversion,
published in Piaget, Evolution, and Development (1998)
Dominance, Subordination, and Concepts of Personal Entitlement
in Cultural Contexts, published in Child Development (with C.
Wainryb, 1994).
+ The Start of Turiel’s Ideas
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Turiel based his theory of moral development off of
psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s framework of moral
reasoning.
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Kholberg stated that, “moral judgments may be defined as
judgments of value, as social judgments, and as judgments
that oblige an individual to take action.”
Kohlberg’s theory:
There are three types of reasoners:
preconventional, conventional, and
postconventional.
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Preconventional reasoners
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reason according to the self perspective. They ignore or social
norms and do not use them in their reasoning process.
Conventional reasoners
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There are three types of reasoners: preconventional,
conventional, and postconventional.
Use social rules and norms to guide their moral reasoning.
Postconventional reasoners
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Understand the social rules, but do not carefully follow them when
making moral decisions. They instead use the basic principles
behind the social norm to lead their behavior.
Elliot Turiel used this theory to construct his Domain theory
+ Domain theory
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There is a key difference between a child's developing
concepts of morality, and other parts of social knowledge,
like social convention.
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The three domains of knowledge:
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the moral
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the societal
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principles of how individuals ought to treat one another
regulations designed to promote the smooth functioning of
social groups and institutions
the psychological
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the understanding of self, others, and beliefs about
individuality
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What's The difference?
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Morality is about fairness and and the minimization of harm
to others. This concept is easy for children to understand
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Social Convention is made up of concepts like politeness and
respect. Because these are abstract they are more difficult for
children to understand.
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A good example of this difference is an elevator. It is socially
acceptable and polite to be quite in an elevator. A child sees
an elevator and understands because there is no immediate
harm or unfairness regarding breaking this social rule, it is
okay to yell.
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This is an issue of social convention rather than morality.
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The Domain theory stated that children construct moral,
societal, and psychological concepts at the same time rather
then one after another
Morality includes concepts of physical harm, psychological harm,
the distribution of resources, freedoms, and rights.
Children build morality based on experience
Children can learn moral and conventional values start at
age three!
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Critiques
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Some psychologist argued that the researchers of the
Domain theory did not take into account the children's’ lack
of ability to evaluate intention.
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In some cultures there is a blurred line between manners and
morality
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Works Cited
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http://www.ehow.com/about_5397176_social-domaintheory.html
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http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.dworin/theories_of_moral_d
evelopment
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http://tigger.uic.edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/overview.html
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http://www.whoislog.info/profile/elliot-turiel.html