Elliot Turiel Moral Development

A Brief History of Turiel Elliot Turiel was born in 1938 PhD in Psychology from Yale American psychologist and Chancellor’s Professor at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley Publications 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 Turiel based his theory of moral development off of psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s framework of moral reasoning. 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.

Preconventional reasoners There are three types of reasoners: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Preconventional reasoners reason according to the self perspective. They ignore or social norms and do not use them in their reasoning process. Conventional reasoners Use social rules and norms to guide their moral reasoning. Postconventional reasoners 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 There is a key difference between a child's developing concepts of morality, and other parts of social knowledge, like social convention. The three domains of knowledge: the moral principles of how individuals ought to treat one another the societal regulations designed to promote the smooth functioning of social groups and institutions the psychological the understanding of self, others, and beliefs about individuality

This is an issue of social convention rather than morality. What's The difference? Morality is about fairness and and the minimization of harm to others. This concept is easy for children to understand Social Convention is made up of concepts like politeness and respect. Because these are abstract they are more difficult for children to understand. 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. This is an issue of social convention rather than morality.



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!

Critiques Some psychologist argued that the researchers of the Domain theory did not take into account the children's’ lack of ability to evaluate intention. In some cultures there is a blurred line between manners and morality

Works Cited http://www.ehow.com/about_5397176_social-domain- theory.html http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.dworin/theories_of_moral_d evelopment http://tigger.uic.edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/overview.html http://www.whoislog.info/profile/elliot-turiel.html