The Neo-Kohlbergian Tradition and Beyond:

Kohlberg's cognitive developmental paradigm has been enormously influential, spawning hundreds of research projects in this country and around the world. From Kohlberg we have much for which to be grateful. For example, he was among the vanguard against the behaviorist majority who helped bring about the cognitive revolution. He helped bring American attention to the work of Piaget. He provided a new way to look at morality beyond that of virtues and traits. He did not shrink from difficult problems, trying to do the impossible in tackling the naturalistic fallacy on philosophers' terms. He encouraged contrary viewpoints and supported alternative research paradigms (e.g., Gilligan, 1982). He developed the just community approach to education which my colleague Clark Power addresses in this volume. The cognitive revolution, although still evolving, has moved far beyond the stereotyped ages and stages of Piaget and Kohlberg. Critics have pointed out the oversimplified perspectives and globality of their theories, noting that the view from the ground is much more complicated and messy. Yet there is more empirical support for Kohlberg's general theory than ever before. Thus it is important to give it a second look, with the caveats and modifications necessary to fit the data. First I will describe the criticisms of Kohlberg's approach and then describe how neo-Kohlbergian theory addresses them. But then I too will move beyond Kohlberg, describing an Narvaez Page 2 approach that seeks to incorporate cognitive science and social-cognitive psychology into a moral psychology theory. Finally, I discuss some implications of these moves for deliberative character education in the classroom and in everyday life. 1 Like the theory of his intellectual mentor, Jean Piaget, Kohlberg's theory has fallen on hard times among psychologists for a variety of reasons. Stage theories generally are viewed as too broad-brushed, missing much of development, and underestimating early signs of change in younger children and infants. 1999; 2000). We sought to address the issues raised by critics and to exploit the massive data collected with the Defining Issues Test, an objective measure of moral judgment. The Defining Issues Test (or DIT) consists of several dilemmas and sets of considerations for respondents to rate and rank according to how important they are for making a decision about the dilemma. Data have been collected on tens of thousands of respondents from around the world. Our re-conceptualization of Kohlberg's theory is based on DIT data that have been collected …