Social and Moral Development Case Study

1) I think the most effective would be when the parents invite other kids over to play. This way they get to know the other children in the class more one on one and they will learn to resolve conflicts with that person. In the classroom if they have a conflict with another student, they can just move on and play with someone else. If they are playing at their home they don't really have the option to play with someone else so they have to work it out or not play.

2) The children in their class are in the Initiative vs. Guilt stage. In this stage, children learn what is socially acceptable. By using literature, they children can hear from the stories what kinds of things are socially acceptable in making friends and they can start to imitate and learn from those stories. Children will remember it longer if it is a story and not just something the teacher has told to them. They will learn better from the examples of literature and stories. They will learn how to work well with others to accomplish a task that needs to be done.

3) Using stories and literature can help students to start to reason morally if you stop and ask them questions about it. Kohlberg used stories and dilemmas, like Heinz's Dilemma, to get kids thinking about what is morally right and wrong. Teachers can use literature to do the same. When reading a story to the students, the teacher can stop and ask the kids questions that get them thinking. Open ended questions like, "What do you think Suzy should do in this situation?" will get the kids to start thinking and help with their moral reasoning.

4) Reading a letter from a friend makes it seem more real to the students than simply reading it from a story book. I think they are more likely to try to think of solutions the would be realistic and work if they think they can actually respond and give advice to the person who needs help. Making the situation real to the students will help them move from Piaget's heteronomous moral stage to the autonomous moral stage. They will start to see that people have different rules or set ways of making friends and that those don't always have to be the only way to look at making friends. For example, a shy student might learn that they can go out of their own comfort zone to try to make friends with someone else instead of just letting others come to them. Thinking of new strategies also helps in their cognitive development because they learn through discussion how to talk out more than one possibility to solve a problem.