THEORIES DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Children are not miniature adult. They think differently, they see the world differently, and they live by different moral and ethical principles than adults do.

One of the first requirements of effective teaching is that the teacher understand how students think and how they view the world. There are ages at which children simply do not have the maturity to learn certain concepts no matter how well or how long the the concepts are taught. Effective teaching strategies must take into account students’ ages and stage of development.

In this century, however, developmental psychologists discovered that children do not develop gradually, but rather go through a series of stages of development. The abilities that children gain in each subsequent stage are not simply “more of the same”, at each stage children develop qualitatively different understandings, abilities, and beliefs. Skipping stages is impossible, although at any given point the same child may exhibit behaviors characteristic of more than on stage.

There are three major theories of human development that are widely accepted :jean piaget’s theory of cognitive development, erik erikson’s theory of personal and social development, and lawrence kohberg’s theory of moral of development. Each of these theories describes a set of stages through which children and adolescents go as they grow and develop.

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A.    Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

Jean piaget is probably the best known child psychologist who ever lived. He was born in switzetland in 1896, and by age eleven had already published his first scientific paper abou birds. Only after receiving his doctorate in biology did he become interested in psychology,. Piaget thought of himself as applying biological principles and methods to the of human development, and many of the terms he introduced to psychology were drawn directly from biology.

• Principal concepts in piaget’s theory

Piaget saw the development of a child’s intellectual, or cognitive, abilities as progressing through four distinc stages. Each stages is characterized by the emergence of new abilities, which allows for a major reorganization in the child’s manipulation of and active interaction with the environment. In piaget’s view, knowledge comes from action (see wadsworth, 1989)

Schemes . The building blocks of piaget’s theories are his ideas about how children and adolescents organize their thingking and behavior and how they change their thinking as they grow.. Schemes can be simple, as when a baby knows how to grasp an object within reach, or complex, as when a high school student learns how to attack mathematical problems. Schemes can also be classified as behavioral (grasping, driving a car) or cognitive (solving problems, categorizing concepts). For example, most young infants will discover that one thing you can do with objects is bang them. When you do this, the object makes a noise and you see the object hitting a surface. This tell you something about the object. Babies also learn about objects by hiting them, sucking on them, and throwing them. Each of these behaviors is a scheme. When babies encounter a new object, how are they know what this object is all about ? according to paiget, they will use the schemes they have developed and will find out if the object makes a loud or sort sound when banged. What it tastes like, wheather it gives milk, and maybe wheather it rolls or just goes “thud”

Assimilation. Assimilation occurs when the baby uses a scheme (such as banging or biting) on a new object. Assimilation is basically the process of incorporating a new object or even into a existing scheme. Therefore assimilation involves more than simply taking in new information. It also involves the ‘filtering or modification of input’ (piaget and inhelder, 1973) so that the input fits. Give young infants small objects and they are likely to grasp them, bite them, and bang them- in other words, they will try to use existing schemes on these unknown things.

Accomodation. Piaget use the term accomodation to desriibe this changing of an existing scheme to fit new objects. Example of accomodation would be the actions of a high school freshman who has always breezed through assigned homework, but then encounters more complex assignments from demanding techears.

Equilibration . This process of restoring balance is called equilibration. According to piaget, learning depends on this process. When equilibrium is upset, children have the opportunity to grow and develop. Teachers can take advantages of equilibration by creating situations that cause disequilibrium and therefore spark students’ curiosit. Science teachers who introduce new concepts by presenting startling experiment use this technique.

• The stages

Sensorimotor stage (birth to two years). This stage is called sensorimotor because during it babies and young children explore their world by using their senses and their motor skills.

All infants have inborn behaviors, which are often called reflexes. Touch a newborn’s lips and the baby will begin , place your finger in the palm of an infant’s hand and the infant will grasp it. The earliest schemes that children develop help them explore their own bodies. Soon, however, they turn to external objects like ratles and cups, which they grasp, hit and suck-discovering by accident that these actions have interesting results.

Another hallmark of the sensorimotor stage is the emergence of trial and error learning. Suppose a desired object is placed out of the infant’s reach but on top of a blanket that can be reached. Very young infants might try a few times reach for the object, but would soon give up. Older infants, however, having failed to reach the object directly, would try to get it in other ways. They would probably discover eventually that the object can be gotten by pulling on the blanket.

Preoperational stage (2 to 7 years). While infants can learn about and understand the world only by phsically manipulating objects, the preschooler has greater ability to think about things, and can use symbols to mentally represent objects. For example, the letter ‘a’ can stand for “apple’. One of piaget’s earliest and most important discoveries was that young children lacked the principle of conservation. For example, if u pour milk from a tall, narrow beaker into a short, wode one in the presence of a preoperational child, the child will firmly believe that the tall glass has more milk. The child focuses on only one aspect (the hight of the milk), ignoring all others, and cannot be convinced that the amount of milk is the same.

If preoperational children could think this way, then they could mentally reverse the process of pouring the milk and realize that if the milk were poured back into the tall beaker, its quantity would not change.

Another characteristic of the preoperational child’s thinking is its focus on states. In the milk problem the milk was poured from one beaker to another. Preschoolers ignore this pouring process and focus only on the beginning state (milk in a tall beaker) and end state (milk in a wide beaker).

Three characteristics of preschools’ thinking are centration, irreversible, and egocentrims.

·      Centration is focus only on the characteristic of the object.

·      Irreversible is child’s failure to understand that an operation may take two or more direction.

·      Egocentrism is inability to distinguish between a person’s perspective with others.

Concrete operational stage (seven to eleventyears). During the elementary school years the cognitive abilities of children undergo dramatic changes. . Elementary school children no longer have difficultles with conservation problems (such as the milk and block problems) because they have acquired the concept of reversibility. For example they can now see that the amount of milk in the short, widw beaker must be The same as that in the tall beaker because if the milk were poured back in the tall beaker, it would be at the same level as before.

It is no coincidence that throughout the world children start formal schooling at an age close to the beginning of the concrete operational stage. Most of what children are taught in school requires the skills that appear in this stage. For example, school aged children who have entered the concrete operational stage can make sense of the question, ‘if i had three candy bars and you had two, how many would we have all together ? they can visualize the situation without actually seeing the candy bars or being distracted by irrelevant aspects of the situation. They can form concepts and see relationships between things.

A final ability that children acquire during the concrete operational stage is class inclusion.. Concrete operational children, on the other hand, have no trouble with this type of problem because they have additional tools of thinking. They no longer suffer from irreversibility of thinking and can now re-create a relationship between a part and the whole. Second, concrete operational thought is decentered, so that the child can now focus on two classes simultaneously. Third, the concrete operational child’s thiking is no longer limited to reasoning about part to part relationship.

Formal operational stage (eleven years to adulthood). Sometime around the onset of puberty children’s thinking begins to develop into the form characteristic of adults. The preadolescent begins to be able to think abstrctly and to see possibilities beyond the here and now. These abilities continue to develop into adulthood.

With the stage of formal operational thought comes the ability to deal with potential or hypothetical situations so that the “form” is now separate from the “content”. Consider the following problem : a three-foot-tall man jogged ten miles today and five miles yesterday. How many miles did the man jog ? elementary school in the concrete operational stage might not answer, not because they cannot add ten and five, but bacause cannot imagine a three foot tall man. Since their thought is concrete, they are unable to draw conclusions from situations that may be possible but are unfamiliar.

Inhelder and piaget described one task that will be approached differently by elementary school students in the concrete operational stage and by adolescents in the formal operational stage. The children or adolescents were given a pendulum consisting of a string with a weight at the end. They could change the length of the string, the amount of weight, the height from which the pendulum was released, and the force with which the pendulum swings back and forth. Essentially, the task was to discover a principle of physics, which is that only the length of the string makes any difference in the speed of the pendulum (the sorter the string, the faster it swings).

The formal operational stage brings cognitive development to a close for piaget. What began as a set of inborn reflexes has developed into a system of cognitive structures taht makes human thought what it is. This does not mean, however, that no intellectual growth takes place beyond adolescence. According to piaget, the foundation has been laid and no new structures need to develop, all that is needed is the addition of knowledge and the development of more complex schemes. However, some researchers (for example, commons, richards, and khun, 1982) have taken issue with piaget’s belief that the formal operational stage is the final one.

• Criticisms Revisions Of Pieget’s Theory

One important piegetian principle is that development preccedse learning. That is, pieget held that developmental stages were largly fixed, and that such concepts as conservation could not be taught. However, research has established some cases in which peagetian tasks can be taught to children at earlier developmental stages (gardner, 1982). Piaget responded to such demonstrations by arguing that the children must have been on the verge of the next developmental stage already- but the fact remains that some (though not all) of the piagetian tasks can be taught to children weel below the age at which they usually appear without instruction.

Other critics have argued that pieget underestimated childrents abilities by using confusing, abstrack language and overly difficult tasks. Several reasearchers have found that young childrent can succed on simpler forms of pieget’s task that require the same skills ( Donaldson, 1978,black,1981). For example, Gelman found that young children could solve the conservation problem involving the number of blocks in a row when the task was presented in a simpler way with simpler language. Boden found that the same formal opertional task produced passing rates from 19 to 98 percent, depending on the complexities of the instruction.

B.     Erikson’s Theory Of Personal And Social Development

As children improve their cognitive skills, they are also developing self-concepts, ways of intracting with oher, attitudes toward the world. Understanding these personal and social developments is critical to the teacher’s abilitiy to motivate, teach, and successfully intract with students at various ages.

This section focuses on a theory of personal and social development proposed by erik erison, which in adaptation of the developmental theories  of the great [sychiatrist Anna freud. Erikson’s work is often called a psychosocial theory because it relates, principles of psycological and social development like piaget, erikson had no formal training in psychology, but as a young  on he was trained by freud as a psychoanalyst.

•  The Stages

Stage I

Trust versus mistrust (birth to eighteen months). The goal infancy is to develop a basic trust in the world. Erikson defined basic trust as an essential trustfulness of others as well as as a fundamental sense of one’s own trustworthiness. This shows the dual nature of this crisis : infants not only have their need met, but they also help in the meeting of the mother’sneeds. The mother or maternal figure, is usually the first important person in the child’s world. Sheis the one who must satisfy the infant’s need for food and affection. If the mother is inconsistent or rejecting, she becomes a source offrustation for the infant rather than a source of pleasure. This creates in the infant a sense of mistrust for his or he world that may persist throughout cchildhood and into adulthood.

Stage II

Autonomy versus doub (eighteen mounth to 3 years). By the age of two, most babies can walk and have learned enough about language to communicate with other people.. Erikson believes that children at this stagehave the dual desire to hold on and to let go. Parent who are flexible enough to permit their children to explore freely and do things for themselves, while at the same time providing an everpresent  guiding hand,  encourage the establishment of sense of autonomy. Parents who are overly restrictive and harsh give their children a sense of powerlessness and incompetence. This can lead to shame and doubt in one’s abilities.

Stage III

 Initiative versus guilt 3 to 6 years). During this period children’s continually maturing motor and language skill permit them to be increasingly aggressive and vigorous in the exploration of both their social and their physical environment. The troublesome threes are accompanied by a growing sense of children to run, jump play, slide and throw. Being firmly convinced that he is a  person on his own, the child must now find out what kind of person he may become. Parents who severely punish children’s attempts at intiative will make them feel guilty abput their natural urges both during this stage and later in life.

Stage 1V.

The fourth stage is characterized by the conviction  i am want i learn. Entry into school brings with it a huge expansion in the child’s social world. Teacher and peers take on increasing importance  for the child while the influence of parents decreases. Children now want to make things. Success brings with it a sense of industry, a good feeling about oneself and one’s abilities. Failure, on the other hand, creates a negative self image, a sense of inadequacy that may hinder future learning. Failure need not bereal. It can be an inability to measure up to one’s own standards or those of parents, teachers, or brothers and sisters.

Stage V.

Identify versus role confusion. The question, who am i ? becomes important during adolescence. To answer it, adolescents increasingly turn away from parents and toward peer groups. Erikson believes that during adolescence the individual’s rapidly changing physiology, coupled with pressures to make decisions about future education and career, creates the need to question and redefine the psychosocial identity established during the earlier stages.

Adolescence is a time of change. Teenagers experiment with various sexual, occupational, and educational roles as they try to find out who they are and who they can be. This new sense of self, or ego identity, is not simlpy the sum of the prior identifications. Rather, it is a reassembly or an alignment of the individual’s basic drives with his endowment (resolutions of the previous crises ) and his opportunities (need, skill, goal, and demands of a adolescence and approaching adukthood.

Stage VI

intimacy versus isolation  (young adulthood). once young people know who they are and where they are going, the stage is set for the sharing of their life with another. “ the young adult is now ready to form a new relationship of trust and intimacy with another individual, a “partner in friendship, sex, competition, and cooperation.”. The young adult who does not seek out such intimacy, or whose repeated tries fail, may retreat into isolation.

Stage VII

Generatively versus self-absorption (middle adulthood).  Generatively refers to “the interest in establishing and guiding the next generation” (Erikson, 1980. _P. 103). Typically, this comes through raising one’s own children.. During this stage people should continue to grow; if they don’t, a sense of “stagnation and interpersonal impoverishment” develops, leading to self-absorption or self-indulgence (Erikson, 1980, _p. 103).

Stage VIII

integrity versus Despair (Late Adulthood). In the final stage of psychosocial development people look back over their lifetime and resolve their final identity crisis. Acceptance of accomplishments, failures, and ultimate limitations brings with it a sense of integrity; a realization that one’s own responsibility.

• Moral Reasoning

Society could not function without rules that tell people how to communicate with one another, how to avoid hurting others, and how to get along in life generally.

 Just as children differ from adults in cognitive and personal development, they also differ and their moral reasoning. Piaget studied this difference by watching children play games. First we will look at the two stages of moral reasoning described by Piaget, then we will discuss a similar theory  developed by Lawrence Kohlberg. There is a relationship between the cognitive stages of development and the ability to reason about moral issues.  Kohlberg believed that the development of the logical structures propose by Piaget are necessary to, although not sufficient for, advances in the area of moral judgment and  reasoning.

• Piaget’s theory of moral development

Piaget  spent a great deal of time watching children play marbles and asking them about the rules of the game. He felt that by understanding how children reasoned about rules, he could understand their moral development. Children of about two years old simply played with the Marbles. From two to six they expressed an awareness of rules but did not understand their purpose or the need to follow them.

 Between the ages of six and ten, Piaget found, children began to acknowledge the existence of rules. Though they were inconsistence in following them. Children at this age also had no understanding that game rules are arbitrary and something that a group can decide by itself.. It was not until the age of ten or twelve years at Piaget found that children conscientiously used and followed rules. At this age every child playing the game followed the same set of rules.

Heteronomous morality	Autonomous morality
Based on relations of constraint, for example , the complete acceptance by the child of adult prescriptions	Based on relations of cooperation, mutual recognition of equality among autonompus individual, as in relation between people who are equals.
Reflected in attitudesof moral realism : rules are seen as  inflexible requirements, external in origin and authority, not open to negotiation, and right is a matter of literal obedience to adults and rules.	Reflected in rational moral attitudes : rules are viewed as products of mutual agreement, open to renegotiation, made legitimate by personal acceptance and common consent, and right is a matter of acting in accordance with the requirements of cooperation and mutual  respect.
Badness is judget in terms of the objective form and consequences of actions, fairness isequated with the content of adult decisions, arbitrary and severe punishments are seen as fair.	Badness is viewed as relative to the actor’s intentions, fairness is defined as equal treatment, or taking account of individual needs, fairness of punishment is defined by appropriateness to the offense.
Punishment is seenas an automatic consequence of the offense, and justice as inherent.	Punishment is seen as affected by human intention.

Piaget ( 1964 ) labeled the first stage of moral development heteronymous morality ; it as also been called the stage of “moral realism” or morally of constraint “ “ heteronymous” means being subject to rules imposed by others selling then what to do and what not to do. Violations of rule are believed to bring automatic. Eventually “ get theirs.” This reasoning creates in the child belief that moral rule are fixed and unchangeable.

The second stage is labeled autonomous morality or “moral of cooperation.” It arises as the child’s social world expands to include more and more peers.  By continually interacting and cooperating with other children, the child’s ideas about rule and there fore morality begin to change. Rule are now what we make them to be. Punishment for transgressions is no longer automatic but must be administered with a consideration of the transgressors’ intention and extenuating eriumstances.

C.     Khalberg’s Stages Of Moral Reasoning

Kohlberg’s stage theory of moral reasoning is an elaboration and refinement of piaget’s. Kohlberg’s levels and stages are sumarrized in tabel 2.3. like piaget, kohlberg studied how children (and adult)reason about rules hat govern their behavior in certain situation. Kohlberg did not study children’s game playing, but rather probed for their responses to a series of structured situations or moral dilemmas.

   On the basis of the answers he received, Kholberg proposed tha people pass through a series of Six stages of moral judgment or reasoning  He grouped these six stages into three levels : preconventional, conventional,and postconventional. these three levels are distinguished by how the child or adult defines what he or she perceives as a correct or moral behavior.

   Stage 1. Which is on the preconventional level, is very similar in form and content to piaget’s stage of heterononius morality. Children simply obey authority figures to avoid being punished. In stage 2.children’s own needs and desires become important, yet they are aware of the interests of other people. In a concrete  sense they weigh the interests of all parties when making moral judgment’s,but they are still “looking out for number one”.

   The conventional level begins at stage 3. Here morality is defined in terms of cooperation  with peers, just at it was in piaget’s stage of autonomous morality. This is the stage at which children have an unquestioning belief in the Golden Rule (Hogan and Elmer,1978). Because of the decrease  in egocentrism that accompanies  concrete operations,children are cognitively capable of putting themselves in someone else’s shoes. Thus they  consider the feellings of others when taking moral decisions. No longer do they simply do what will not get them punished (stage 1) or what makes them feel good (stage2).

   At stage 4 society ‘s rules and laws replace those the peer group. A desire for social approval no longer actermines moral judgment. Laws are followed without questation, and breaking the law can never be jusfied. Most adults are probably at this stage.

   Stage 5 signals etrance into the posconventional level.. Here there is a realization that the laws and values of a society a somewhat arbitrary and particular to that society (Hogan and Emler, 1976). Laws are seen as necessary to preserve the social order and to ensure the basic right life and liberty. In stage 6 one’s ethical principles are self-chosen and based on abstract concepts such as justice and the equaliry  and value  of human rights. Laws that violate these principles can and should be disobeyed “justice is above the law”,.

   Kholberg (1969). He theorized that the way  children progress from one stage to the next is by interacting with others whose reasoning is one or, at most, two stages above their own. Thus in dealing with children, teacher must first try to determine their opproximate stage of moral reasoning.. After the child’s resoning advances to this stage, the teacher can advance again. All this must be done over an extended perioid of time, however. Teachers can help students progress in moral development by weaving discussion of justice and moral issues into their lesson, particulary in response to events that occur in the classroom (see Nucci,1987).

• Limitation Of Kholberg’s Theory

        The most important limitation of Kholberg’s theory is that it deals with moral reasoning rather than with actual behavior. Many individuals at different stages behave in the same way, can individual at the same stages often behave in different ways (Haan et kl, 1968:fodor, 1971).in a classic study of moral behavior  Hartshorne and may (1928) presented children of various ages with opportunities to cheat oor steal, thinking they would not be caught. Very few children behaved  honestly in every case, and very few behafeddishonesdy in, every case. This study showed that moral behavior does not conforn to simple rules, but is far more complex. Similarly, the link berween children’s moral reasoning and moral behavior may be guitewea’ (Burton , 1976). Children may have learned to say certain things about moral devision at various ages, but what they do may be another matter.

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

There are three major theories of human development that are widely accepted :jean piaget’s theory of cognitive development, erik erikson’s theory of personal and social development, and lawrence kohberg’s theory of moral of development.

            Piaget divided children’s cognitive development into four stages. The first is the sensorimotor stage (birth to two years ). The second is the preoperational stage (two to seven years ). the next stage is known as the concrete operational stage (seven to eleven). the fourth stage in piaget’s theory is the formal operational stage ( eleven to adulthood).

Eric Ericson,  In his theory, personal and social development is a lifelong process. Stage 1 : trust versus Mistrust (birth to eighteen months). Stage : 2 autonomy versus  Doubt (eighteen months to three yaers ). stage 3 : Initiative versus Guilt (three on years ). Stage 4 : industry versus inferiority (six to twelve years ). Stage 5 : identity versus role confusion (twelve to eighteen years), stage 6 : intimacy versus isolation (young adulthood ) stage 7 : generativity versus self-absorption ( middle adulthood ). Stage 8 : integrity versus despair  (late adulthood),

   Kholberg’stheory  of moral development is based on children’s  responses to moral dilemmas. The three main stage are preconventional ,when children simply obey authority figures to avoid being punished, conventional, when children consider the feelings of others in making moral  decisions; and postconventional, when people realize that laws and values are somewhat  arbitrary and relative  to each society.

   Adults can help children advance to the next stage of cognitive of moral development by allowing them to freely explore problems, at the same time challenging their reasoning introducing concepts from the next higher stage.