Kohlberg’s Dilemmas

Moral scenarios have been utilized in computer based systems in order to help students to develop their skills in analyzing the ethical dimensions of a particular context. For example, Winter & McCalla (1999) built a game for exploring ethical decisions for the ethics class at the University of Saskatchewan. The moral scenarios were designed as binary trees, where there was also only one possible outcome for each choice. Another game is Conundrum (Mckenzie & Mccalla 2009) which uses ethical scenarios to challenge a learner’s preconceived notions about the consequences of their ethical choices. Evalua- tion of both systems showed promising results about using this kind of moral scenarios in developing ethical reasoning. Kohlberg’s dilemmas and other moral dilemmas especially designed for school children have been used in AEINS as the teaching moments. An example of transforming a Kohlberg’s dilemma to a teaching moment is as follows:

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“Gina was a twelve year old girl. Her mother promised her that she could go to a spe- cial rock concert coming to their town if she saved up from baby-sitting and lunch money to buy a ticket to the concert. She managed to save up the fifteen dollars the ticket cost plus another five dollars. But then her mother changed her mind and told Gina that she had to spend the money on new clothes for school. Gina was disappointed and decided to go to the concert anyway. She bought a ticket and told her mother that she had only been able to save five dollars. That Saturday she went to the performance and told her mother that she was spending the day with a friend. A week passed without her mother finding out. Gina then told her older sister, Louise, that she had gone to the performance and had lied to her mother about it. The elder sister, Louise, wonders whether to tell their mother what Gina did.”

Example of the interview questions from Kohlberg’s to his student:

1. Should Louise, the older sister, tell their mother that Gina lied about the money or should she keep quiet?

2. In wondering whether to tell, Louise thinks of the fact that Gina is her sister. Should that make a difference in Louise’s decision?

3. Does telling have anything to do with being a good daughter?

This dilemma has been transformed to a graph structure story with interleaved deci- sion points. The unfolding story depends on the student’s actions at these points. Kohlberg’s dilemmas as a teaching moment

Your little sister Gina wants to talk to you; she seems to have a big secret Gina is ready to tell you her secret;

Gina is telling you that their mum asked her to to save money to buy the school clothes which costs 25 pounds. Gina saved the money but she bought a concert ticket for 20 pounds and told her mum that she saved 5 pounds only. Gina is asking you not to tell anyone and if mum asks you, you should not tell her the truth..

Your friend John heard the conversation between you and your sister accidentally; he is approaching you.

John said that he is sorry as he heard what Gina said by accident. John is asking if you think you should tell your mum that your sister lied about the money?

Learner (taking the role of the elder brother/sister): yes

John is wondering if you think that by telling your mum this makes you a good son? Learner: yes

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Learner: no

Gina is very angry and said that she will not be your friend anymore. Do you insist to disagree with Gina?

Learner: no

Gina is glad because you agreed to lie for her sake. John thinks this a big mistake and you will be in a big trouble when your mum knows. Do you agree with John?

Learner: yes

As seen the dialogue tries to emphasize the wrong beliefs and encourage the good ac- tions. The moral agent follows the Socratic Method in order to either help the student to evaluate the moral dilemma from different perspectives, as in Kolberg’s example, or present opinions and asks questions in order to lead the student to discover himself any contradiction(s) present in any course of action not based on moral principles. The dia- logues continue until the story ends with either a negative reward or a positive one based on the computation model of the student’s actions. The student model is updated after each student’s action, however it is only used by the pedagogical model after the dilemma ends.

Providing feedback was a real challenge. It was not adequate to have feedback of the following forms ‘your answer is right’ and ‘your answer is wrong.’, which may distract the student and decreases his engagement level. As we discussed previously, the narrative environment offers the chance for the feedback to be tailored within the context of the story. So the consequences of the student’s interactions with the teaching moment are implicitly provided within the story as it unfolds. This kind of feedback is referred to as formative feedback. Based on the student’s actions, the system is able to present the student with more than one possible outcome for the dilemmas. For example, the above situation will end with the sister ‘Gina’ getting upset from the student and the mother punishing ‘Gina’. If the student chooses not to tell their mother, a guilty feeling may accompany him and/or he may choose to advise the little sister not to repeat such an action again. Through this experience, the student will get the chance to reason more deeply about those dilemmas and see what outcome(s) satisfies him most. Therefore, extending the student model to include the student’s beliefs reflected via his interaction with the system can help to evaluate what the student has learned from the activity.

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Figure 5.4: Graph representation of a teaching moment