Since 1980s Kohlberg’s theory of moral cognitive development has great influences on Chinese moral education. The Chinese scholars introduced Kohlberg’s theory into Chinaand made some theoretical comments first and then made some empirical research in Chinese schools and universities. More and more empirical and cross-cultural research results jointly made by both Chinese and Western scholars have been published since the beginning of the new century. Post-Kohlberg theories began to be introduced into China, such as DIT, MJT and Social cognitive domain theory and so on. All of these theories have important enlightenment on Chinese moral education and facilitate the reform and innovation of the Chinese moral education to some extent. There are still some arguments with Kohlberg and post-Kohlber g theories in the empirical research made by Chinese scholars and so more research should be needed in the future.
Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) is a well-known child psychologist, educator and moral philosopher and he is also the creator of the school of moral cognition and the main representative of moral cognitive development in Western countries. Since Piaget in 1932 advocated the theory of moral development stages in his book Moral Judgment of Children, Kohlberg inherited and further developed Piaget’s theory to make his own research on children’s moral cognition development for about 30 years. In 1960s Kohlberg proposed his model of moral development stage which is known as “three levels and six stages” and founded a theoretical system for moral cognitive development and education based on the model. It is due to his creative contribution to modern theory of moral cognitive development and practice of moral education that has broad influence on the academic world education in many countries among which China’s moral education is influenced greatly within resent 30 years.
The research on Kohlberg and his theory in China started from 1980s and up to now it has lasted for about 30 years. The main research products include the translation of Kohlberg’s works and some other related articles as well as the theoretical and empirical research based on his theory that could be divided into the following three parts.
The Chinese scholars translated Kohlberg’s original works into Chinese since 1980s, including Moral Development and Moral Education translated by Dongxing Wu [
The theoretical research on Kohlberg’s ideas including Benyu Guo’s translated work entitled Moral Cognitive Development and Moral Education―Kohlberg’s Theory and Practice [
The Chinese scholars made some empirical research on Kohlberg’s strategy of moral education such as “A tentative analysis on the experimental research of Kohlberg’s ‘Just Community’” [
Generally speaking, there are two main features for the research of Kohlberg’s moral education theory in China: firstly, the research of the Chinese scholars on Kohlberg’s theory of moral cognitive development have been increasing rapidly, and especially in recent 10 - 15 years, more and more empirical and cross-cultural research results jointly made by both Chinese and Western scholars have been published; secondly, Chinese scholars’ interest has been changed from Kohlberg’s theory and practice to post-Kohlberg’s theory and moral education, such as Defining Issue Test created by J. Rest and his colleagues, Moral Judgment Test developed by German psychologist G. Lind. The social cognitive domain theory advocated by E. Turiel has also been paid more and more attention by Chinese scholars [
The Chinese moral education has a very long cultural tradition that has been lasted for over 5000 years. The present Chinese moral education since 1949, however, is actually a so-called “large moral education” [
In Chinese moral education the values of a moral subject are not sufficiently recognized and therefore the values from government or some authorities would be usually imposed to a moral subject such as a student in the school or a child in the family or even a staff in the organization. Kohlberg pointed out that moral education is never the recitation of moral rules or forced discipline, because moral development occurs through a natural sequence of stages; therefore, their approach defines the aim of moral education as “the stimulation of the next step of development” [
Since the beginning of the 21 century, the Chinese moral education has made a reform, especially in the primary and secondary schools. That moral education should “return to life” has become a value approach of the Chinese moral educational reform in 21 century. Prof. Jie Lu in Nanjing Normal University acted as one of the top leaders of the present Chinese moral education. She advocated that “The root of moral education is actually in the authentic education. It could both teach students to get the methods and skills for their existence and guide people to acquire the significance and values for existence. It makes people either know on what they depend to live or know why they are alive, so as to possess the significant world special for human beings. Education, moral education has played important parts in constructing people’s significant world. Modern education has shown a tendency to return to its original nature” [
The traditional Chinese moral education usually treats students as pure receivers of a certain moral values and therefore teachers used to tell students what they should do. But the students trained in this educational system would be necessarily lack of creativity, independency and autonomy; on the contrary they would have blind obedience and lose their own autonomous personality. According to Kohlberg, the moral conflict stimulated by moral dilemma could make a student to choose a certain behavior in accordance with his or her moral judgment. Only when a child has some moral conflict can he or she make some choices according to his or her moral judgment. And thus in the classroom the students’ morality could be developed only through the classroom discussion of some moral dilemmas because it could raise the moral conflict in children’s mind to promote them to make their own moral judgment. The research of moral psychology has approved that conflict is helpful to the moral learning of students [
Kohlberg regarded the idea that “It must raise among students the true moral conflict and different opinions” as one of the three principles of moral education methods and therefore he proposed the dilemma discussion method that makes some scenarios to invoke the moral conflict in which the moral questions are asked in order for students to answer. The students have to “project” their inner ideas within their mind that reflect their own levels and stages of moral development. This kind of method has been proved to be practicable and feasible [
In traditional Chinese moral education, people usually paid much attention to the combination of children’s moral cognition and behavior with the emphasis on the latter. However, the moral cognition has been changed into the so-called moral knowledge in which the people can recite the ancient axioms but do not necessarily follow such teachings in their behavior. In other words, people’s moral cognition does not develop correspondently with their knowledge because they seldom make any moral judgment according to some law. What they have to listen to and obey is what an authority or government official said. More and more scholars in present China has recognized the drawbacks of such moral education and suggested [
First of all, the two conceptions of moral cognition and moral knowledge need to be differentiated, the focus of the former is on the moral judgment and reasoning and therefore students have to think deeply and make their own moral judgment according to their moral values. However, the moral knowledge focuses mainly on the recitation of some rules and norms and principles without any profound exploration of the implications within the knowledge. What it examines is actually a person’s memory but not the real thinking. From this differentiation it can be said that moral cognition is much more important than the moral knowledge, and thus the moral discussion should become one of the major method in classroom moral education.
Secondly, moral cognition could promote a person to behave in consistence with his moral judgment to a large extent, although it could not determine all the behavior. Moral behavior directly depends on one’s moral choice which is based mainly on one’s moral judgment. As it is well known, moral behavior is a kind of responses to a certain situation on face of which a person should have to define and interpret it according to his or her standard of moral judgment that is actually one’s moral criteria or values [
With the development and deepening of the research in China, since 1990s more and more Chinese scholars noticed the development of post-Kohlberg theories and moral education in Western countries, especially in the US. The new approaches in this field at present Chinese moral education can be summarized as follows.
Defining Issues Test (DIT) is a new developed moral measurement devised by James Rest in 1979 in the University of Minnesoda that is still in its continuous revision and development up to now. The earliest scholars who made their research by using DIT in China are the following.
Xin Ling Wang in 1987 used DIT1 and Rocket’s instrument of Values to make an empirical research in order to investigate the features of high school students’ value system and moral development as well as the correlation between them. The results show that the second grade in Junior high school is the key period of the students’ moral judgment that is strongly dependent on their values. Xinyin Chen is the earliest to introduce DIT into China and translate it into Chinese, and she and Yu Xiang [
Since the beginning of the 21 century more and more people started to do the research by using DIT. Fang Ding’s researches [
Shaogang Yang and his student Huihong Wu [
Besides the research by the scholars in mainland China, the scholars in China’s Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan also make a series of researches by using both DIT1 and DIT2. For example, Hing-Keung Ma [
Hong Kong scholar Irene Hau-Siu Chou [
All the above research has much enlightenment on Chinese moral education and has made us deeply reflect on some implications of people’s moral development. Some questions have been asked by the scholars in China and the world as following.
According to Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, people’s morality develops along a series of 3 levels and 6 stages that have been demonstrated widely valid and universal and have nearly no cross-cultural differences by many researches [
Some research has found that the moral reasoning of Chinese children matured earlier than that of American children in their teenage years, but their moral development in stage 4 and 5 was slower than that of American children [
Feminist criticized that Kohlberg’s theory focuses too much on the justice and right orientations that are mainly characteristic of male. In the United States [
Kohlberg’s theory of moral cognitive development has elaborated the regular pattern of moral development, which has enlightened moral education both in the West as well as China. After its birth, there have emerged lots of theoretical and empirical researches, which prove their universality across cultures and also promote their development. In the latest 30 years, post-Kohlberg theories develop rapidly, but there are some arguments with Kohlberg and post-Kohlberg theories in the empirical research made by Chinese scholars and so more research should be needed in the future.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.
Zhang, Q. (2018) Research on Kohlberg’s Theory and Practice in China. Open Access Library Journal, 5: e4823. https://doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1104823