Moral views defended

We welcome the debate that our article on children's moral development ('Doing good', 22 February) generated. When devising systems to educate children, we draw on a number of sources including in-depth research, experience, feedback and practical implications. In the field of moral development, research by Piaget, Kohlberg and Eisenberg is crucial because it describes six stages of ethical thinking that children must move through before attaining internalised moral standards. This places most nursery-aged children in what Kolhberg calls the preconventional level. The main characteristic of this level is that the standards children use to judge right or wrong are external....