Motivation and Moral Development
Objective
Students will look at six different levels of motivation behind a person's actions.
Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg identified six levels of moral development:
- Avoid punishment
- Seek rewards
- Please others
- Help society
- Improve the rules
- Follow a personal code
We can use these as a tool to discuss students' social-emotional needs as well as dig deeply into character motivation.
Steps
- First, we introduce the idea that one positive action can have different motivations - and those motivations can be positive or negative.
- Then, students learn about Levels 1 and 2 and note characters and historic figures who match up with those levels.
- Next, students learn about Levels 3 and 4 and note characters and historic figures who match up with those levels.
- In this part, students learn about Level 5 and look for characters and historic figures who fit this level.
- Finally, they'll learn about Level 6 and note how characters can match up with different levels depending on which point in a story we're looking at.