31 Facts About Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development.

Lawrence Kohlberg served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

Lawrence Kohlberg's work reflected and extended not only Piaget's findings but the theories of philosophers George Herbert Mead and James Mark Baldwin.

Lawrence Kohlberg was the youngest of four children of Alfred Kohlberg, a Jewish German entrepreneur, and of his second wife, Charlotte Albrecht, a Christian German chemist.

Lawrence Kohlberg's parents separated when he was four years old and divorced finally when he was 14.

Lawrence Kohlberg attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and served in the Merchant Marine at the end of World War II.

Lawrence Kohlberg worked for a time with the Haganah on a ship smuggling Jewish refugees from Romania into Palestine through the British Blockade.

Lawrence Kohlberg was in Palestine during the fighting in 1948 to establish the state of Israel, but refused to participate and focused on nonviolent forms of activism.

Lawrence Kohlberg lived on a kibbutz during this time, until he was able to return to America in 1948.

At the time it was possible to gain credit for courses by examination, and Lawrence Kohlberg earned his bachelor's degree in one year, 1948.

Lawrence Kohlberg then began study for his doctoral degree in psychology, which he completed at Chicago in 1958.

Lawrence Kohlberg found a scholarly approach that gave a central place to the individual's reasoning in moral decision making.

In 1978, Lawrence Kohlberg invited Katz to participate in the conference of Law in a Free Society, which led to the research published in 1980 "Moral Education and Law-Related Education".

Lawrence Kohlberg proposed a form of "Socratic" moral education and reaffirmed John Dewey's idea that development should be the aim of education.

Lawrence Kohlberg outlined how educators can influence moral development without indoctrination and how public school can be engaged in moral education consistent with the United States Constitution.

Lawrence Kohlberg's approach begins with the assumption that humans are intrinsically motivated to explore and become competent at functioning in their environments.

Lawrence Kohlberg held that there are common patterns of social life, observed in universally occurring social institutions, such as families, peer groups, structures, and procedures for clan or society decision-making, and cooperative work for mutual defense and sustenance.

In studying these, Lawrence Kohlberg followed the development of moral judgment beyond the ages originally studied earlier by Piaget, who claimed that logic and morality develop through constructive stages.

Lawrence Kohlberg studied moral reasoning by presenting subjects with moral dilemmas.

Lawrence Kohlberg is most well known among psychologists for his research in moral psychology, but among educators he is known for his applied work of moral education in schools.

Lawrence Kohlberg believed that moral exemplars' words and deeds increased the moral reasoning of those who watched and listened to them.

Lawrence Kohlberg never tested to see if examining the lives of moral exemplars did in fact increase moral reasoning.

Unlike moral exemplars, Lawrence Kohlberg tested this method by integrating moral dilemma discussion into the curricula of school classes in humanities and social studies.

The final method Lawrence Kohlberg used for moral education was known as "just communities".

In 1974, Lawrence Kohlberg worked with schools to set up democracy-based programs, where both students and teachers were given one vote to decide on school policies.

Lawrence Kohlberg's response to Carol Gilligan's criticism was that he agreed with her that there is a care moral orientation that is distinct from a justice moral orientation, but he disagreed with her claim that women scored lower than men on measures of moral developmental stages because they are more inclined to use care orientation rather than a justice orientation.

One problem with Lawrence Kohlberg's focus on reason was that little empirical evidence found a relationship between moral reasoning and moral behavior.

Lawrence Kohlberg recognized this lack of a relationship between his moral stages and moral behavior.

Lawrence Kohlberg then proposed a model of the relationship between moral judgments and moral action.

On January 17,1987, Lawrence Kohlberg parked at the end of a dead end street in Winthrop, Massachusetts, across from Boston's Logan Airport.

Lawrence Kohlberg left his wallet with identification on the front seat of his unlocked car and apparently walked into the icy Boston Harbor.