The Development of Moral Judgement in Children's Writing

ABSTRACT

Moral development as evidenced in children's writing has been very little considered, despite a plethora of research findings based on children's spoken responses to moral dilemma stories. In this paper we investigate whether a hierarchical model for moral development deriving from the work of Piaget and Kolberg is useful in discerning stages of growth in moral attitudes in the autobiographical and persuasive writing of children of seven, ten and thirteen. We conclude that a cumulative stage theory of moral development is more appropriate than a discrete stage theory for use in analysing children's writing.