Stephanie needs a more positive model to follow, she is more likely to follow or model someone who is warm and responsive to her (Troop, 2015). A child is more likely to follow a model if they notice they benefit from their actions (Troop, 2015). In Stephanie’s comment, she mentions that her “mother looks cool” when she steals things from stores, Stephanie sees this as beneficial behavior because she doesn’t have to pay for the things she’s stealing and appears “cool” by doing so. Stephanie has also noticed that her parents cheat on their taxes. The teacher’s comments mentioned that Stephanie has started cheating on her homework. According to this theory, Stephanie could be copying what she sees her parents doing, because she sees that they benefit from …show more content…
This theory was proposed by Piaget. He believed that morality happens in two stages, the first stage is known as heterogeneous morality, which describes Stephanie’s behavior (Troop, 2015.) This stage says that children think every “wrong” action will have a punishment, whether it was an accident or not, this is known as immanent justice (Troop, 2015.) Stephanie shows that she has a hard time understanding appreciation of intentions, this is understanding that there is a difference between someone doing something to her on purpose, or on accident (Troop, 2015.) Therefore, her aggressiveness towards other students may be a form of enforcing this justice, even if the other children hurt her on accident. Another part of this theory explains that children think about right and wrong before they act, and that children also have an advanced moral reasoning (Troop, 2015.) Based on the example that Stephanie sees from her parents, she may not know that what she is doing is