Resources that fit

Units and bundles for this topic

Kohlberg: Moral Reasoning and Dilemma Discussion is the place to start. The Moral Development & Socialization Bundle adds Critiquing Kohlberg, G. H. Mead and Fend for less than four single units, and Upper Secondary Complete covers all 24 units for whole-course planning.

The teaching problem

Why Kohlberg goes wrong in class, and how the four units fit together

The most common error is treating the stage as a property of the decision. In the unit's first case, a student finds a wallet and four classmates all recommend returning it. A worries a camera recorded them, B hopes for a reward, C wants friends to be able to trust them, and D says social order cannot work if everyone keeps lost property. The teacher guide reads these as simplified versions of stages 1 to 4. A fifth person asks whether the owner urgently needs the money, which names a real need but is not a full reasoning structure. Returning the wallet tells you almost nothing on its own. The justification carries the information.

The second error is the opposite: assuming any exception to a rule is higher-level thinking. The deadline case gives three positions. A wants the deadline kept so organization stays dependable for everyone, which sits close to stage 4. B says the rule should be reviewed when illness blocks equal access, which can be read as close to stage 5 because it tests a rule against a general right. C would make an exception "because I like the person." That is an exception too, but it rests on sympathy, and the guide suggests asking C whether the same exception would apply to someone they dislike.

The four units in the strand build on each other. Kohlberg teaches the stage model and dilemma discussion. Critiquing Kohlberg tests it: Gilligan's care critique, the problem of comparing scores across cultures with translated dilemmas, and Kohlberg's own Just Community approach to school democracy. G. H. Mead offers a social account of how people come to take others' perspectives at all, which deepens the idea of perspective-taking behind the stages. Fend's functions of schooling then ask what schools do for society, and whether selection and integration are compatible with the fairness questions raised in the earlier units. You can teach any unit alone, but the critique unit works best once students know the stages.

A sequence that works

A suggested order through the units

Each unit is self-contained, but this order moves from the model to its critics and then to wider questions about socialization and school.

1. Reasons over verdictsBegin with the wallet case and its four reasons for the same action. Students compare decision and justification, cautiously link A to D with stages 1 to 4, and explain why the fifth statement cannot be classified with confidence. Classification applies to arguments, never to the people who say them.
2. Reading the six stages criticallyUse the deadline case to work through the six stages and their limits. Stage 6 is treated as a theoretical endpoint with weak empirical support, and fluent moral vocabulary is not evidence of a stage. Students learn that a stage number without explanation has little analytical value.
3. Running a dilemma discussionA team promised to keep a member's mistake secret, but silence may win them a prize another team deserves. Students write an individual position, collect arguments in groups, test a third option and write a second position. The guide is clear that a majority vote does not replace reasoning.
4. Gilligan and cross-cultural critiqueIn Critiquing Kohlberg, students weigh identical deadlines, quietly taking over a task, or a private talk with equivalent alternatives for a classmate with heavy caring duties. They then examine two research teams that score the same translated dilemma by different criteria.
5. Just Community, Mead and FendClose with democracy in practice: an assembly majority wants a shared room for high-performing classes only. Students plan a fair 45-minute meeting. Mead and Fend then extend the strand into how the self develops socially and what functions schooling serves.

Where it goes wrong

Misconceptions to plan for

Discussion norms

Running dilemma discussions safely

Moral dilemmas can get personal quickly, so the units use fictional cases throughout and keep the focus on arguments. The teacher guides say nobody should diagnose themselves or disclose personal experiences, and assessment concerns concepts and reasoning, not moral character or identity. The dilemma unit names a clear limit: a classroom exercise should not undermine real vulnerability, protection needs or fundamental rights. Students should always be able to keep personal distance and take part in writing instead of speaking. Cases are also chosen so that the question cannot be settled by missing facts, which keeps the discussion on values and obligations.

The guides also suggest rotating discussion roles. A concept checker looks for unclear definitions, an evidence checker asks for support, and an alternative-perspective role raises an objection without attacking the speaker. Rotating means the same students do not always end up as the critics. Silent preparation before discussion helps students who are less confident speaking, and role-play that requires enacting devaluation or violence is ruled out. Feedback uses three sentence starters: what is convincing, what still needs evidence, and the next specific revision. Students then get time to act on it.

Course fit

Using the units in psychology and sociology courses

Kohlberg and Gilligan appear in many psychology courses under moral or social development, and the Just Community material connects to education and citizenship topics. The units use original teaching summaries rather than primary-text extracts, with references to Kohlberg and Hersh's 1977 review, Gilligan's In a Different Voice and Power, Higgins and Kohlberg's book on moral education. Students can follow these for further study, but every task can be completed from the workbook alone. The cross-cultural lesson in Critiquing Kohlberg also gives students a rare chance to look at research method: sampling, coding rules and assessor agreement.

If time is short, the two Kohlberg units together give a full arc from model to critique in eight 90-minute lessons. Each ends with a writing workshop and a 90-minute practice assessment scored out of 100, with 80 points for content and 20 for communication. Different judgments earn equal credit when they are accurate, backed by evidence from the case and justified with explicit criteria, so students are not marked down for disagreeing with the suggested answer. Mead and Fend each take another four lessons if you want the full strand.

Questions teachers ask

Frequently asked questions