Developing Opportunities for Increased Problem-Solving, Self-Reflection, and Role-Taking

As middle school students mature into adulthood, there are many drastic changes. While these budding adolescents change physically, there are also dramatic transformations in the ways they understand and relate to the world. These transformations of the cognitive processes are both quantitative and qualitative. Just as adolescents grow in stature, other quantitative changes become evident. For example, there is a vast expansion of vocabulary, knowledge of facts, and capacity to address more class material in a shorter amount of time. However, there are also qualitative changes in the ways these students construct and relate with the world around them. Many adolescents begin to demonstrate more complexity in problem-solving, role-taking, and self-reflection. Cognitive developmental theory proposes that changes in the quality of thought, understanding, and relating are fundamentally important in the growth and maturation of young adolescents.

This qualitative shift in understanding and relating to the world is reflected in the work of Piaget. In his stage theory of cognitive development, young adolescents begin to emerge from concrete operations and progress towards formal operations (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). While many 10 year olds, using concrete operations, attempt to organize and understand the world around them through facts and descriptions, the more sophisticated adolescents begin to think abstractly and hypothetically. This qualitative change in the cognitive process to formal operations allows the adolescents to consider multiple strategies and probabilities, as well as enables them to practice a more complex form of role-taking and self-reflection.

Selman and Schultz (1990), described a qualitative transformation in the way that children and young adolescents progress towards greater awareness of the perspectives of others. While younger children, through play and interaction, exhibit difficulty differentiating between their individual perspectives and those of their peers, developing adolescents begin to conceptualize the interpersonal relationship with more complexity and elaboration. Not only do the older children and adolescents begin to understand the perspectives of others, but they are required to reflect on their own perspectives and compare these to the views, thoughts, and feelings of those around them. Such a qualitative shift in meaning-making provides an opportunity for greater richness and perspective in interpersonal relationships.

It has been theorized that the complexity of problem-solving and the depth of role-taking and reflection also have implications for moral decision-making. This has been a topic of considerable debate regarding theories of moral development. Kohlberg's cognitive developmental theory of moral development is one of the most widely researched and accepted theories in this domain. Based on his longitudinal research with preadolescent boys in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he theorized that individuals progress through six qualitatively distinct stages of moral reasoning in invariant sequence. As individuals increase in cognitive complexity and progress in moral judgment, there is a gradual movement from reasoning which focuses on authority-based concerns and self-interest to a more principled and moral level of reasoning which considers the rights and perspectives of others.

Inherent in the process of moral development is the notion that individuals begin to utilize and develop role-taking. Gielen (1991) explains, "Role-taking is fundamental to symbolic communication, social perspective-taking, and moral development since higher stages of moral development are based on more complex levels of role-taking" (p. 23). In review of the Kohlberg's (1981) stages of moral development, qualitative shifts in role-taking are reflected in the progression to higher stages. For example, in the first two stages of Kohlberg's model, the preconventional level of moral reasoning, individuals focus on avoidance of punishment and self-interest. Moving to more conventional levels of moral reasoning, the third and fourth stages, individuals shed an egocentric approach and place greater emphasis on what is right for the group. Here, more role-taking is incorporated as needs and order of the larger group are taken into consideration.

The consensus of research conducted on adolescent moral development indicates that most individuals begin to make the transition from preconventional to conventional levels of moral reasoning during early adolescence. It is during this time that young adolescents begin to utilize formal operations and demonstrate a greater capacity to take the perspectives of others. However, Kohlberg (1984) asserted that "at-risk" and delinquent youth have not necessarily progressed towards conventional levels of moral judgment. Research in the last two decades has supported this claim (Gregg, Gibbs, & Basinger, 1994; Arbuthnot & Gordon, 1988). These studies have reflected that the majority of juvenile delinquents function at a preconventional level of moral reasoning, primarily at the second stage.

Given that some individuals demonstrate lower levels of development, there has been considerable interest in the design and implementation of programs that stimulate and support moral development. One of the most popular means of sparking such development has been the use of moral discussion groups (Blatt & Kohlberg, 1975). Through the discussion of moral dilemmas, group members are challenged to consider the perspectives of others and consider new ways of thinking about the problem. As a result, they may experience a shift in the way they make meaning of the dilemma. There are numerous studies that support this intervention as a means to foster moral development. (Rest & Thoma, 1986) Given that adolescents are exposed and challenged in qualitatively new ways, this may have particular relevance for incorporating of dilemmas in the classroom.

Teachers, parents, and school administrators play an important role in supporting the development of children and adolescents. Through carefully-structured activities and curriculum design, cognitive developmental tasks such as role-taking, complex problem-solving, and self-reflection can serve as important goals in the education of middle school students. Kohlberg and Mayer (1972) argue that the main goal of education is to support this increased cognitive development. Through stimulation and support of developmental tasks, students are given an opportunity to test new ways of knowing. Instead of focusing solely on norms and facts in the curriculum, an emphasis on how the young person constructs the world and relationships may serve as the foundation for educational objectives.