Practising moral judgement within the day care center: A look at the educator's moral decision under stress

Many dilemmas in the day-care center call for moral decisions. What is the educator's source of moral knowledge? How does s/he apply such knowledge in real life? This paper presents a study which examined these questions within the cognitive developmental approach to moralization (Kohlberg, 1976). It compares the performance of thirty eight experienced early childhood educators on real life moral decision, with their hypothetical moral knowledge. The results suggest that the educators' hypothetical moral knowledge explains 28.9% of the variation in their real life moral decision. The phenomenon of inconsistency between the two types of moral knowledge is explained.