Q.3 Elaborate the theories of personality development by focusing on the role of family in the personality development of a child.
Course: Elementary Education
Course Code 8623
Topics
Theories of personality development- Freud's Psychosexual Developmental Theory
- Erikson's Psychosocial Developmental Theory
- Behavioral Child Development Theories
- Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory
- Bowlby's Attachment Theory
- Attachment Theory: Bandura's Social Learning Theory
- Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory
AIOU Solved Assignment |Semester: Autumn/Spring | B.Ed/Bacherlors in Education /Masters in Education / PHD in Education | BEd / MEd / M Phil Education | ASSIGNMENT Course Code 8623| Course: Elementary Education
Answer:
Child Development
Theories and Examples
Child development
theories focus on explaining how children change and grow over the course of
childhood. Such theories center on various aspects of development including
social, emotional, and cognitive growth.
The study of human
development is a rich and varied subject. We all have personal experience with
development, but it is sometimes difficult to understand how and why people
grow, learn, and act as they do.
Why do children behave
in certain ways? Is their behavior related to their age, family relationships,
or individual temperaments? Developmental psychologists strive to answer such
questions as well as to understand, explain, and predict behaviors that occur
throughout the lifespan.
In order to understand
human development, a number of different theories of child development have
arisen to explain various aspects of human growth.
The Background of Child
Development Theories
Theories of development
provide a framework for thinking about human growth and learning. But why do we
study development? What can we learn from psychological theories of
development? If you have ever wondered about what motivates human thought and
behavior, understanding these theories can provide useful insight into individuals
and society.
How Our Understanding of
Child Development Has Changed Over the Years
Child development that
occurs from birth to adulthood was largely ignored throughout much of human
history. Children were often viewed simply as small versions of adults and
little attention was paid to the many advances in cognitive abilities, language
usage, and physical growth that occur during childhood and adolescence.
Interest in the field of
child development finally began to emerge early in the 20th century, but it
tended to focus on abnormal behavior. Eventually, researchers became
increasingly interested in other topics including typical child development as
well as the influences on development.
How Studying Child
Development Allows Us to Understand Changes That Take Place
Why is it important to
study how children grow, learn and change? An understanding of child
development is essential because it allows us to fully appreciate the
cognitive, emotional, physical, social, and educational growth that children go
through from birth and into early adulthood.
Some of the major
theories of child development are known as grand theories; they attempt to
describe every aspect of development, often using a stage approach. Others are
known as mini-theories; they instead focus only on a fairly limited aspect of
development such as cognitive or social growth.
Major Child Development
Theories
The following are just a
few of the many child development theories that have been proposed by theorists
and researchers. More recent theories outline the developmental stages of
children and identify the typical ages at which these growth milestones
occur.
Freud's Psychosexual
Developmental Theory
Psychoanalytic theory
originated with the work of Sigmund Freud. Through his clinical work with
patients suffering from mental illness, Freud came to believe that childhood
experiences and unconscious desires influenced behavior.
According to Freud,
conflicts that occur during each of these stages can have a lifelong influence
on personality and behavior.
Freud proposed one of
the best-known grand theories of child development. According toFreud’s psychosexual
theory, child development occurs in a series of stages focused on different
pleasure areas of the body. During each stage, the child encounters conflicts
that play a significant role in the course of development.
His theory suggested
that the energy of the libido was focused on different erogenous zones at
specific stages. Failure to progress through a stage can result in a fixation
at that point in development, which Freud believed could have an influence on
adult behavior.
So what happens as children
complete each stage? And what might result if a child does poorly during a
particular point in development? Successfully completing each stage leads to
the development of a healthy adult personality. Failing to resolve the
conflicts of a particular stage can result in fixations that can then have an
influence on adult behavior.
While some other child
development theories suggest that personality continues to change and grow over
the entire lifetime, Freud believed that it was early experiences that played
the greatest role in shaping development. According to Freud, personality is
largely set in stone by
the age of five.
Erikson's Psychosocial
Developmental Theory
Psychoanalytic theory
was an enormously influential force during the first half of the twentieth
century. Those inspired and influenced by Freud went on to expand upon Freud's
ideas and develop theories of their own. Of these neo-Freudians, Erik Erikson's
ideas have become perhaps the best known.
Erikson's eight-stage
theory of psychosocial development describes growth and change throughout life,
focusing on social interaction and conflicts that arise during different stages
of development.
While Erikson’s theory
of psychosocial development shared some similarities with Freud's, it is
dramatically different in many ways. Rather than focusing on sexual interest as
a driving force indevelopment, Erikson believed that social interaction and experience
played decisive roles.
His eight-stage theory
of human development described this process from infancy through death. During
each stage, people are faced with a developmental conflict that impacts later
functioning and further growth.
Unlike many other
developmental theories, Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory focuses on
development across the entire lifespan. At each stage, children and adults face
a developmental crisis that serves as a major turning point. Successfully
managing the challenges of each stage leads to the emergence of a lifelong
psychological virtue.
Behavioral Child
Development Theories
During the first half of
the twentieth century, a new school of thought known as behaviorism rose to
become a dominant force within psychology. Behaviorists believed that
psychology needed to focus only on observable and quantifiable behaviors in
order to become a more scientific discipline.
According to the
behavioral perspective, all human behavior can be described in terms of
environmental influences. Some behaviorists, such as John B. Watson and B.F.
Skinner insisted that learning occurs purely through processes of association
and reinforcement.
Behavioral theories of
child development focus on how environmental interaction influences behavior
and are based on the theories of theorists such as John B. Watson, Ivan Pavlov,
and B.F. Skinner. These theories deal only with observable behaviors.
Development is considered a reaction to rewards, punishments, stimuli, and
reinforcement.
This theory differs
considerably from other child development theories because it gives no
consideration to internal thoughts or feelings. Instead, it focuses purely on
how experience shapes who we are.
Two important types of
learning that emerged from this approach to development are that classical
conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning involves learning
by pairing a naturally occurring stimulus with a previously neutral stimulus.
Operant conditioning utilizes reinforcement and punishment to modify
behaviors.
Piaget's Cognitive
Developmental Theory
Cognitive theory is
concerned with the development of a person's thought processes. It also looks
at how these thought processes influence how we understand and interact with
the world. Piaget proposed an idea that seems obvious now, but helped revolutionize
how we think about child development: Children think differently than
adults.
Theorist Jean Piaget
proposed one of the most influential theories of cognitive development. His
cognitive theory seeks to describe and explain the development of thought processes
and mental states. It also looks at how these thought processes influence the
way we understand and interact with the world.
Piaget then proposed a
theory of cognitive development to account for the steps and sequence
ofchildren's intellectual development.
- The Sensorimotor Stage:A period
of time between birth and age two during which an infant's knowledge of
the world is limited to his or her sensory perceptions and motor
activities. Behaviors are limited to simple motor responses caused by
sensory stimuli.
- The Preoperational Stage:A
period between ages 2 and 6 during which a child learns to use language.
During this stage, children do not yet understand concrete logic, cannot
mentally manipulate information and are unable to take the point of view
of other people.
- The Concrete Operational
Stage:A period between ages 7 and 11 during which children gain a better
understanding of mental operations. Children begin thinking logically about
concrete events but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical
concepts.
- The Formal Operational Stage:A
period between age 12 to adulthood when people develop the ability to
think about abstract concepts. Skills such as logical thought, deductive
reasoning, and systematic planning also emerge during this stage.
Bowlby's Attachment
Theory
There is a great deal of research on the social
development of children. John Bowbly proposed one of the earliest theories of
social development. Bowlby believed that early relationships with caregivers
play a major role in child development and continue to influence social
relationships
throughout life.
Bowlby's attachment
theory suggested that children are born with an innate need to form
attachments. Such attachments aid in survival by ensuring that the child
receives care and protection. Not only that, but these attachments are
characterized by clear behavioral and motivational patterns. In other words,
both children and caregivers engage in behaviors designed to ensure proximity.
Children strive to stay close and connected to their caregivers who in turn
provide a safe haven and a secure base for exploration.
Researchers have also
expanded upon Bowlby's original work and have suggested that a number of
different attachment styles exist. Children who receive consistent support and
care are more likely to develop a secure attachment style, while those who
receive less reliable care may develop an ambivalent, avoidant, or disorganized
style.
Attachment Theory
Bandura's Social
Learning Theory
Social learning theory
is based on the work of psychologist Albert Bandura. Bandura believed that the
conditioning and reinforcement process could not sufficiently explain all of
human earnings. For example, how can the conditioning process account for
learned behaviors that have not been reinforced through classical conditioning
or operant conditioning?
According to social
learning theory, behaviors can also be learned through observation and
modeling. By observing the actions of others, including parents and peers,
children develop new skills and acquire new information.
Bandura's child
development theory suggests that observation plays a critical role in learning,
but this observation does not necessarily need to take the form of
watching a live model. Instead, people can also learn by listening to verbal
instructions about how to perform a behavior as well as through observing
either real or fictional characters display behaviors in books or films.
Vygotsky's Sociocultural
Theory
Another psychologist
named Lev Vygotsky proposed a seminal learning theory that has gone on to
become very influential, especially in the field of education. Like Piaget,
Vygotsky believed that children learn actively and through hands-on
experiences. His sociocultural theory also suggested that parents, caregivers,
peers and the culture at large were responsible for developing higher order
functions.
In Vygotsky's view,
learning is an inherently social process. Through interacting with others,
learning becomes integrated into an individual's understanding of the world.
This child development theory also introduced the concept of the zone of
proximal development, which is the gap between what a person can do with help
and what they can do on their own. It is with the help of more knowledgeable
others that people are able to progressively learn and increase their skills
and scope of understanding.
