The Journal of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children

The World Council for Gifted and Talented Children
participant is faced with someone’s responses, which may be in a higher stage than his/ her own
(Tirri and Pehkonen, 2002). This usually increases level of moral judgment. Kohlberg started involving
whole schools, including any teachers, students, or faculty that wanted to participate, in discussing
real-life moral dilemmas of the participants’ school situation, a technique referred to as just
community, which has been proven very valuable (Power, Higgins, and Kohlberg ,1989; Kohlberg
and Turiel, 1971).
Kohlberg claims that there is a core of moral values that are universal, in other words, the
sequence of stages is invariant, and the same for every person of each culture. As a result, certain
moral values, such as the respect for human life, and not causing harm to others, are upheld in all
cultures.
Lawrence Kohlberg (1958) based his theories on Piaget’s ideas. Unlike Piaget, however,
Kohlberg presents a more precise conceptualization and discrimination of the stages, and the
dimension of heteronomy-autonomy that underlie the stages. His method allows for quantified
scores of judgment of moral judgment. The six stages proposed by Kohlberg are subsumed in three
levels: pre conventional (stages one and two), conventional (stages three and four), and post
conventional (stages five and six).
The pre conventional level is characteristic of younger children, some adolescents, and
many criminals. There is not yet any sense of real morality, or any internalization of values. The
conventional level is typical of the majority of adolescents and adults in U.S. society, and probably
all Western societies and even non-Western societies as well (Snarey, 1985). At the post
conventional level individuals have come to question the morality of the status quo and are able to
change laws and cultural rules. Approximately 5 percent of adults reach the post conventional level,
usually after age twenty or twenty-five. At stage one, the orientation is toward punishment and
obedience; at stage two, morality is geared toward pleasure and satisfaction of one’s own needs; at
stage three, morality centers on pleasing others and fulfilling conventional roles; at stage four, the
emphasis is on law and order; at stage five, the person tries to change unfair laws through
democratic channels; and at stage six individual conscience prevails.
John Snarey’s (1985) review of the literature supports this notion. He analyzed more that
forty studies conducted in twenty-seven different cultures, which support Kohlberg’s claim for
universality, although the higher stages (five and six) did not appear in all cultures. However, Richard
Shweder and Haidat (1991) argue for the role of culture, based on their research in India (Shweder,
Mahapatra, and Miller, 1990): They did not find distinctions between conventional and moral
transgressions.
Contrary to this relativistic view of morality, some neo-Kohlbergians, such as Larry Nucci
(1981), distinguish between moral and conventional domains, and present evidence that even
preschool children distinguish between the severities of transgressions of each domain.
The main purpose of the current study is to identify the differences in moral Judgment levels
among female students according to their giftedness and grade levels. In specific, the study
attempted to answer the following questions: Does moral judgment differ due to the differences in
giftedness and grade levels? And is it possible to efficiently predict the moral judgment for gifted and
average female students through non verbal intelligence, creativity, and achievement?
Method
Study tools
Three research instruments were utilized in the study: (1) Raven’s progressive matrices test
is a nonverbal intelligence test consists of 48 matrices. Each one consists of 6 or 8 figures. The test
has developed and standardized by Abdelraouf (1999) to be used in the Kuwaiti society for people of
6-18 years. Raven’s test could be administered as an individual or a group test. (2) Torrance creative
verbal test (form B) consists of six activities, the students of age up to 20 years will be asked to
guess the corresponding answers. It is required from each student to provide reasons for a given
behavior, and give alternative or uncommon uses of things. In addition, the test time limit is 30
minutes. The psychometric properties of the test has been positively assessed (Torrance, 1980). And
(3) The moral maturity test prepared by Kohlberg through his dissertation on 1958 and then
translated and validated by Qashqoosh in Egypt and some middle east societies. The test studied
moral judgment by presenting subjects with moral dilemmas. Then categorize and classify the
judgment used in the responses, into one of six distinct stages, grouped into three levels: pre-
26 Gifted and Talented International – 26(1), August, 2011; and 26(2), December, 2011.