Educational Psychology
Chapter 2
Pg. 28-35
Erikson: Psychosocial Development
· Erikson described psychological growth from infancy through old age.
· Erikson’s theory portrays people as playing an active role in their own psychological development through their attempts to understand, organize, and integrate their everyday experiences.
· This theory highlights the important role that cultural goals, aspirations, expectations, requirements, and opportunities play in personal growth, a theme discussed Chapter 5.
Basic Principles of Erikson’s Theory
Epigenetic Principle: Erikson based his description of personality development on the epigenetic principle, which states that, in fetal development, certain organs of the body appear at certain specified times and eventually “combine” to form a child.
Psychosocial Crisis: In Erikson’s view; personality development occurs as one successfully resolves a series of turning points, or psychosocial crises. Crises occur when people feel compelled to adjust to the normal guidelines and expectations that society has for them but are not altogether certain that they are prepared to carry out these demands fully.
Stages of Psychosocial Development
The following destinations, age ranges, and essential characteristics of the stages of personality development are proposed by Erikson in Childhood and Society (1963)
Trust Versus Mistrust (Birth to One Year) The basic psychosocial attitude for infants to learn is that they can trust their world. The parents’ “consistency, continuity, and sameness of experience” in satisfying the infant’s basic needs fosters truth.
Autonomy Versus Shame and Doubt (Two to Three Years; Preschool) Just when children have learned to trust (or mistrust) their parents, they must exert a degree of independence.
Initiative Versus Guilt (Four to Five Years; Preschool to Kindergarten) The ability to participate in many physical activities and to use language sets the stage for initiative, which “adds to autonomy the quality of undertaking, planning, and ‘attacking’ a task for the sake of being active and on the move.”
Industry Versus Inferiority (Six to Eleven Years; Elementary to Middle School) A child entering school is at a point in development when behavior is dominated by intellectual curiosity and performance. “He now learns to win recognition by producing things…He develops a sense of industry.”
Identity Versus Role Confusion (Twelve to Eighteen Years; Middle Through High School) The goal at this stage is development of roles and skills that will prepare adolescents to take a meaningful place in adult society. The danger at this stage is role confusion: having no clear conception of appropriate types of behavior that others will react to favorably.
Intimacy Versus Isolation (Young Adulthood) To experience satisfying development at this stage, the young adult needs to establish close and committed intimate relationships and partnerships with other people.
Generativity Versus Stagnation (Middle Age) “Generativity…is primarily the concern of establishing and guiding the next generation.” Erikson’s use of the term generativity is purposely broad.
Integrity Versus Despair (Old Age) Integrity is “the acceptance of one’s one and only life cycle as something that had to be and that, by necessity, permitted of no substitutions…Despair expresses the feeling that the time is now short, too short for the attempt to start another life and to try out alternate road to integrity.”
Helping Students Develop a Sense of Industry
Between kindergarten and sixth grade, most children are eager to demonstrate that they can learn new skills and successfully accomplish assigned tasks. One factor that has long been known to have a detrimental effect on one’s sense of industry is competition for a limited number of rewards.
There are at least two reasons that this practice may damage a student’s sense of industry.
1. Grading on a curve limits the top rewards to a relative small number of students regardless of each student’s actual level of performance.
2. Curve grading also guarantees that some students have to receive failing grades regardless of their actual level of performance.
The solution to this problem is to base grades on realistic and attainable standards that are worked out ahead of time and communicated to the students.
Helping Students Formulate an Identity
The most complex of Erikson’s stages is identity versus role confusion; he wrote more extensively about this stage than any other. Because this stage is often misunderstood, let’s use Erikson’s own words to describe the concept of identity: “An optimal sense of identity. . . is experienced merely as a sense of psychosocial well-being.
Taking a Psychosocial Moratorium One aspect of identity formation that often causes difficulty for adolescents is defining the kind of work they want to do-in other words, choosing a career. Psychosocial moratorium-should be a period of adventure and exploration, having a positive or least neutral, impact on the individual and society.
Adolescent Identity Statuses
Erikson’s observations on identity formation have been usefully extended by James Marcia’s notion of identity statuses. Identity statuses, of which there are four, reflect the extent to which individuals have explored and committed themselves to set of values on such critical issues as occupation, religion, sex role, and politics. Marcia developed this idea as a way to test scientifically the validity of Erikson’s notions about identity.
After analyzing interview records with these two criteria in mind, Marcia established four identity statuses, described which vary in their degree of crisis and commitment:
· Identity diffusion
· Foreclosure
· Moratorium
· Identity Achievement
Cultural, Ethnic, and Gender Factors in Identity Status Although the foreclosure status is the historical norm for adolescents in Western societies, things can and do change. For example, individuals in moratorium were more numerous during the 1960’s and 1970’s than during the 1980’s. This was a time of great social and cultural upheaval, and many adolescents reacted ot the uncertainty produced by these changes by not making a commitment to occupational, sexual, and political values.
Criticisms of Erikson’s Theory
Although Erikson’s theory has in general been supported by research, several aspects have been criticized. For example, while Erikson occasionally carried out research investigations, most of his conclusions were based on personal and subjective interpretations that have been only partly substantiated by controlled investigations of the type that most psychologists value.
Applying Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development
1. Keep in mind that certain types of behaviors and relationships may be of special significance at different age levels.
2. With younger preschool children, allow plenty of opportunities for free play and experimentation to encourage the development of autonomy, but provide guidance to reduce the possibility that children will experience doubt. Also avoid shaming children for unacceptable behavior.
3. With older preschool children, encourage activities that permit the use of initiative and provide a sense of accomplishment. Avoid making children feel guilty about well-motivated but inconvenient (to you) questions or actions.
4. During the elementary and middle school years, help children experience a sense of industry by presenting tasks that they can complete successfully.
5. At the high school level, recognize that there are benefits to helping students develop a sense of who they are and how they fit into adult society.
6. Remember that the aimlessness of some students may be evidence that they are engaging in psychosocial moratorium. If possible, encourage such individuals to focus on short-term goals while they continue to search for long-time goals.
7. Use technology to help adolescents define and develop their political values.
Pg. 38-45
PIAGET: Cognitive Development
Basic Principles of Piaget’s Theory
Piaget postulated that human beings inherit two basic tendencies: organization (the tendency to systematize and combine processes into coherent general systems) and adaption (the tendency to adjust to the environment).
Organization
Organization refers to the tendency of all individuals to systematize or combine processes into coherent (logically interrelated) systems. When we think of tulips and roses as subcategories of the more general category flowers, instead of as two unrelated categories, we are using organization to aid our thinking process.
Schemes
As children interact with their environment, parents, teachers, and agemates, they form organized, generalizable patterns of behavior or though known as schemes, and these become the basis for understanding and adapting to the world in which they live.
Adaptation
The process of creating a good fit or match between one’s conception of reality (one’s schemes) and the real-life experiences one encounters is called adaptation. According to Piaget, adaptation is accomplished by two subprocesses: assimilation and accommodation. A child may adapt by either interpreting an experience so that it fits an existing scheme (assimilation) or changing an existing scheme.
Relationships Among Organization, Adaptation, Schemes
To give you a basic understanding of Piaget’s ideas, we have talked about them as distinct elements. But the concepts are all related. In their drive to be organized, individuals try to have a place for everything (accommodation) so they can put everything in its place (assimilation).
Equilibration, Disequilibrium, and Learning
Piaget believed that people are driven to organize their schemes to achieve the best possible adaptation to their environment. He called this process equilibration. But what motivated people’s drive toward equilibration? It is a state of disequilibrium, or a perceived discrepancy between an existing scheme and something new.
Constructing Knowledge
Meaningful learning, then, occurs when people create new ideas, or knowledge (rules and hypotheses that explain things), from existing information (e.g., facts, concepts and procedures). To solve a problem, we have to search our memory for information that can be used to fashion a solution. This process of creating knowledge to solve a problem and eliminate a disequilibrium is referred to by Piagetian psychologists and educators and constructivism.
Stages of Cognitive Development
Organization and adaptation are Piaget called invariant functions. This means that these though processes function the same way for infants, children, adolescents, and adults. Schemes, however, are not invariant. They undergo systematic change at particular points in time.
Organization and adaptation are what Piaget called invariant functions. This means that these though process function the same way for infants, children, adolescents and adults.
Sensorimotor Stage (infants and Toddlers)
Up to the age of two, children acquire understanding primarily through sensory impressions and motor activities. Therefore, Piaget called this the sensorimotor stage. Because infants are unable to move around much on their own during the first months of postnatal existence, they develop schemes primarily by exploring their own bodies and senses.
Preoperational Stage (Preschool and Primary Grades)
The thinking of preschool and primary grade children (roughly two to seven years old) centers on mastery of symbols (such as words), which permits them to benefit much more from past experiences.
Perceptual Centration: The strong tendency to focus attention on only one characteristic of an object or aspect of a problem or event at a time.
Decentration: The ability to think of more than one quality at a time-and is therefore not inclined to contemplate alternatives.
Irreversibility: Young children cannot mentally pour the water from the tall, thin glass back into the short squat one (thereby proving to themselves that the glasses contain the same amount of water).
Egocentrism: Youngsters find sations and in experimental situations in which they are asked to describe how something would look like if viewed by someone else, preschool children reveal that.
Concrete Operational Stage (Elementary to Early Middle School)
Through formal instruction, informal experiences, social contact, and maturation, children over the age of seven gradually become less influenced by perceptual centration, irreversibility and egocentrism.
Formal Operational Stage (Middle School, High School and Beyond)
When children do reach the point of being able to generalize and engage in mental trail and error by thinking up hypotheses and testing them in their heads, they are at the stage of formal operations, according to Piaget.
Adolescent egocentrism: The inability to differentiate between the world as the adolescent thinks it should be and the world as it actually is was referred by David Elkind.
The Role of Social Interaction and Instruction in Cognitive Development
How Social Interaction Affects Cognitive Development
When it comes to social experiences, Piaget clearly believed that peer interactions do more to spur cognitive development than do interactions with adults. The reason is that children are more likely to discuss, analyze and debate the merits of another child’s view of some issue (such as who should have which toy or what the rules of a game should be) than they are to take serious issue with an adult.
How Instruction Affects Cognitive Development
Piaget’s beliefs about the ability of instruction to speed up cognitive development were decidedly cautious, if not negative. One the one hand, he said that formal instruction by expert adults might hasten the development of a particular stage’s schemes, but only if they were well on their way to being completed.
Pg. 50-55
Vygotsky: Cognitive Development
From the time Piaget’s work first became known to large numbers of American psychologists in the early 1960’s until the 1980’s, it was the dominant explanation of cognitive development. Not that Piaget didn’t have his critics.
How One’s Culture Affects Cognitive Development
Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development is often referred to as a sociocultural theory because it maintains that how we think is a function of both social and cultural forces.
The Importance of Psychological Tools
Vygotsky believed that the most important things a culture passes on to its members (and their descendants) are what they called psychological tools. These are the cognitive devices and procedures with which we communicate and explore the world around us.
How Social Interaction Affects Cognitive Development
The difference between Vygotsky’s views on the origin and development of cognitive processes and those of other cognitive developmental psychologists is something like the old question, “which came first the chicken or the egg?”
How Instruction Affects Cognitive Development
Vygotsky drew a distinction between the type of information that preschool children learn and type of information that children who attend school learn (or should learn). During early childhood, children acquire what Vygotsky called spontaneous concepts. This is, they learn various facts and concepts and rules (such as how to speak one’s native language and how to classify objects in one’s environment), but they do so for the most part as a byproduct of such other activities as engaging in a play and communicating with parents and playmates.
