Case of Study

In my case of study I wanted to see the behavior and the reasoning of children. And I took Kohlberg theory in order to base my experiment.

I have the opportunity of being working with children at church. I work with children of 1 – 12 years old. And the experience that I have been going through is a really interesting because you can see them interacting with other children. People might think that there exist some groups of children and that they get in group with their similar, but most of the “elder” children enjoys to play with younger children. In my analysis I could say that not all the children think in the same way. Not all the children act in the same way. They are unique and the fact that in some cases they act in a similar way does not mean that they are exactly or have exactly the same mind.

I would like to mention many cases of the children that I see every week at church, but I have to choose only one for my project.

Objective: To probe that Kolhberg theory about Pre-Conventional Morality is presented in children, in this specially case, a six yeras old girl.

Child’s Profile
Name	Keyry Abigail Carrillo
Age	6 years old
Likes	Play soccer, Running, Going to school
	She is a very active child. In some cases is a little bit difficult to control her.

   

Kohlberg in his theory in the preconventional morality said that: People make decisions based on what is best for themselves, without regard for others' needs or feelings. They obey rules only if established by more powerful individuals; they may disobey if they aren't likely to get caught. "Wrong" behaviors are those that will be punished. Moral code is shaped by the standards of adults and the consequences of following or breaking their rules.

I told the children in general a story, but I paid special attention to Keyry’s answer. This story was similar to Heinz’s story that Kohlberg mentioned. I told them that there was a family with nothing to eat. The family was an elder brother of 15 years old and two little children of 5 and 6 years old. The elder brother go out to look for something to eat for him and his brothers but at the end of the day he could not get anything to eat so he decided to do something and he went to steal some bread for him and his little brothers.

I asked to the children if the elder brother’s action was ok or not. The answer of this little girl was that it was a bad action, she told me that steal thing or food is bad. I asked why it was a bad action and I explain to her that they were hungry and they needed to eat. She told me that her parents told her that steal is a bad action.

I could see the reaction of this little girl and I could understand better the theory of Kohlberg when he said that moral code is shaped by the standards of adults.

It could appear that children know what is good or what is bad, but when they are in an early age they just know what parents say. When they are growing up they know the difference of bad and good actions by themselves.

Also Kohlberg said that Children recognize that others also have needs. They may try to satisfy others' needs if their own needs are also met ("you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours"). They continue to define right and wrong primarily in terms of consequences to themselves.

I noticed that when I was talking to them, Keyry wanted to go out, but I told her that when I finish then she could go out. After that she tried to stay quiet and pay attention to what I was saying. In this little situation I could see that she for almost 2 minutes approximately was paying attention, but after that she got distracted and started to do other things. In this situation I perceive that she wanted to go out because she was trying to behave. I asked her to wait and she waited for a moment. We both had an objective I wanted to finish my talk to them and she wanted to out. It was “you pay attention, you go out”.

My conclusion is that the behavior of children is pretty similar in many cases. Their attitudes could be predictable and maybe the strategies that we as teacher have to use with them could result similar too, but there will be some variation depending of the children and we have to modify our strategy for any child.

It is really interesting see how is children development and knowing the different theories of child development created for some psychologist is really useful in order to understand their stages. 

Children development theories are necessary for teachers in order to look for some strategies that will help young students to learn better things, in our case, English.