Theorists
When we study and work with children we want to make sense out of what is being observed. Through explanations we have developed why children behave in certain ways. Many of these explanations have come from great theorist well known throughout education. Because of these theorist many major contributions to development have been made.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud is known for his creation of the theory of psychoanalysis. He strongly believed that we are aware of some of our thoughts but are unaware of other thoughts, which he expressed as unconscious mind. He explained that unconscious mind was the part of the mind that contains thoughts and feeling about what we are unaware of. He believed that they key to healthy psychological functioning lies in discovering the unconscious thoughts or memories associated with psychological symptoms. He also had an idea of free association which a person allows thoughts to float freely without censorship and dream analysis are ways of gaining insight into the working of the unconscious mind. From all his beginning work he theorized that our personality is made of the three parts: Id, ego and super-ego. He also had the belief that our most basic drive is the sex drive. From that he outlined five stags in children and adolescent development which he called psychosexual stages. He believed from these stages that gratification of urges is handled during of each of the stages determines the natures of an adult's personality and character.
Psychosexual Stages
1. Oral Stage- first stage; infants' biological energy is centered on the mouth area.
2. Anal Stage- second stage; toddlers' sexual energy is focused on the anus.
3. Phallic Stage- third stage; children ages 3-6 overcome their attraction to the opposite sex parent and begin to identify with the same sex parent.
4. Latency Stage- fourth stage; children ages 6-12, when the sex drive goes underground.
5. Genital Stage- fifth and final stage; people 12 and older develop adult sexuality
Erik Erickson
Erik Erickson is best known for his eight psychosocial stages, four of which are thought to be crucial to development in the early years of life ranging from birth to age 12. Each stage is characterized by a conflict or crisis that influences one's social development and in return reflects the particular culture unique to each individual. He suggested that healthy social interactions come from the successful resolution of the unique developmental tasks that one faces. He stressed his belief that children play an active role in shaping their development through kinds of experiences they have and or are given. He emphasized the role of developmental needs as a way to understand what age- appropriate social and emotional behavior should be.
Psychosocial Stages
1. Trust vs. Mistrust [0-12 months; Infancy]: Development of trust in maternal care and in one's own ability to cope; infants must learn that the world is a safe and reliable place and that basic needs will be met.
2. Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt [1-3 years; Toddler-hood]: Toddlers learn to exhibit self- control and to make choices.
3. Initiative vs. Guilt [3-5 years; Preschool years]: Children learn to initiate activities; gender identification; group play; early moral development.
4. Industry vs. Inferiority [6-12 years]: Adolescents develop allegiance to groups to groups and eventually to values and ideals.
5. Identity vs. Role Confusion [Adolescence]: Integration of previous experiences to from an identity.
6. Intimacy vs. Isolation [Early Adulthood]: Young people develop the ability to commit themselves to another person, but also to a career and a style of life.
7. Generativity vs. Stagnation [Middle Adulthood]: Adults learn to subject their wants for the good of others, including serving as a parent; concern about legacy emerges; guides the next generation.
8. Ego Integrity vs. Despair [Later Adulthood- Old Age]: Older adults define meaning for the life they have lived and prepare to face death with dignity.
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget focused his studies among the idea of children's intellectual development and how children's thinking, reasoning and perception differ from adults. His theory concentrated on the cognitive development and uses his own children from which he got most of his information. He use his studies to figure out how children think about their world. His theory is based upon four assumptions that relate to cognitive development: biological and environmental influences interact continuously to develop an individuals thinking, reasoning, and perceptual ability, cognitive development is initially a result of direct experience in an environment; eventually become capable of transforming their experience mentally through internal reflections, the pace of an individual's development is influenced by social context, and cognitive development involves major qualitative changes in one's thinking. He stressed the belief that we are constantly adapting to our environment and that we organize this through the development of schema's. He explained that we use a set of processes of adaptation; assimilation and accommodation And used equilibration as a constant seesaw between assimilation and accommodation.. Overall he hypothesized that this development happens in four cognitive stages.
Stages of Cognitive Development
1. Sensorimotor Stage [0-2 years]: Infants and toddlers use their sense and reflexes to respond to their immediate world but not think conceptually.
2. Preoperational Stage [2-7 years]: Children have an increased ability to think symbolically and conceptually about objects and people outside of their immediate environment, which is evident through children's increasing use of language and imaginative play.
3.Concrete Operational Stage [7-12 years]: Characterized by the ability to use logical thought to solve concrete problems related to concepts of space, time, causality, and number.
4. Formal Operations Stage [12 and on]: Marking the beginning of logical and scientific thinking is characterized by the ability to make predictions, think hypothetically, and think about thinking.
B.F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner theorized that all behavior can be modified and that the basic principles of learning apply to all learners, regardless of age. He assumed that specific behaviors can be increased through a range of reinforces and decreased through punishment. He also further developed the theory of behaviorism by coming up with the idea of operant conditioning. He explained this as the process that happens when the response that follows a behavior causes that behavior to happen more. He also believed that spontaneous behavior is controlled by the environment. He also looked a lot into positive and negative reinforcement and punishment. He developed his idea of behavior on his work with pigeons. He found that some ways of giving reinforcements are more effective in controlling behavior than others. He believed that punishment is not reliably effective as an alternative, which he called extinction. He explained it as the process by which a behavior stops when it receives no response from the environment.
Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura is known as the leading social learning theorist. He expanded the principles of behaviorism and conceived the theory of social learning. He recognized that children learn much of their social behavior from imitating or watching others. As a result, modeling became a major principle of learning. His work adds cognitive aspects of thinking, that what children think and believe about themselves, and how they judge their own expectations about learning strongly influence their behavior and their beliefs about their own abilities to learn. He believed that people can learn new behaviors simply from watching others rather than by direct reinforcement of their own behaviors from the environment. His theory of social cognitive learning focused on how learning occurs from watching other people but also its processed in one's mind. Some of Bandura's earliest work was specifically to show how children learn by direct observation. His classic experiment is known as the Bobo Doll Experiment, where one group of children observed an adult on television act aggressively to a Bobo doll. These children and another group of children were then brought individually into a room containing both aggressive and non aggressive toys. The children who had seen the adults attacking the Bobo doll were more likely to attack it, just like they had seen; were as the children who hadn't been exposed to the violent acts toward the Bobo doll were less likely to attack the doll. From this experiment he found that observations of a model may provoke a more generalized response based on the children's cognitive understanding of what was happening. Bandura's later development placed a greater emphasis on the cognitive aspects of behavior development and specifically on thinking about one's own ability to have control in one's life. His theory eventually changed to eliminate learning because the term was connected with the idea of conditioning. He renamed his theory the social cognitive theory to emphasize that thought has social origins but is then processed through our own individual cognitive interpretations.
Social Cognitive Learning Theory
1. Attention to a model--> noticing what some else is doing
2. Mental representation or memory of that model's actions--> Being able to remember what you saw
3. Motoric ability to reproduce the action--> Being able to do the same thing yourself
4. Motivation to imitate the action--> If or when you want to
Lev Vygotsky
Lev Vygotsky believed that learning is a social process and that children first learn new knowledge through social relations with others, which they later internalize. For him play lead development. He believed that children learn primarily through their relationships with other people, particularly in dialogue between each child and more knowledgeable person. He explained that these social relationships form the basis for later communication and thinking. He emphasized the importance of family, social interaction, adults and more capable peers, and play as primary influences on learning, and believed that as a result of it all learning occurs first on the social level and then on the individual level. His theory encompassed three major concepts. He theorized that a child has an actual and potential level of learning. He expressed the distance between what a child can do independently and what the child can do with assistance is called the Zone of Proximal Development. He stated the the Zone of Proximal Development substantially influences children's learning when they encounter a problem to solve. His second concept was the idea of scaffolding which he described as a support system that enables children to move along the learning continuum by building new competencies. Vygotsky ascribed major importance to the role of an adult in children's learning. He emphasized that through the use of the zone of proximal development, supportive adults c an guide children's learning in may ares. He view learning as a socially mediated process as dependent upon the support that adults and more mature peers provide as children try new tasks.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud is known for his creation of the theory of psychoanalysis. He strongly believed that we are aware of some of our thoughts but are unaware of other thoughts, which he expressed as unconscious mind. He explained that unconscious mind was the part of the mind that contains thoughts and feeling about what we are unaware of. He believed that they key to healthy psychological functioning lies in discovering the unconscious thoughts or memories associated with psychological symptoms. He also had an idea of free association which a person allows thoughts to float freely without censorship and dream analysis are ways of gaining insight into the working of the unconscious mind. From all his beginning work he theorized that our personality is made of the three parts: Id, ego and super-ego. He also had the belief that our most basic drive is the sex drive. From that he outlined five stags in children and adolescent development which he called psychosexual stages. He believed from these stages that gratification of urges is handled during of each of the stages determines the natures of an adult's personality and character.
Psychosexual Stages
1. Oral Stage- first stage; infants' biological energy is centered on the mouth area.
2. Anal Stage- second stage; toddlers' sexual energy is focused on the anus.
3. Phallic Stage- third stage; children ages 3-6 overcome their attraction to the opposite sex parent and begin to identify with the same sex parent.
4. Latency Stage- fourth stage; children ages 6-12, when the sex drive goes underground.
5. Genital Stage- fifth and final stage; people 12 and older develop adult sexuality
Erik Erickson
Erik Erickson is best known for his eight psychosocial stages, four of which are thought to be crucial to development in the early years of life ranging from birth to age 12. Each stage is characterized by a conflict or crisis that influences one's social development and in return reflects the particular culture unique to each individual. He suggested that healthy social interactions come from the successful resolution of the unique developmental tasks that one faces. He stressed his belief that children play an active role in shaping their development through kinds of experiences they have and or are given. He emphasized the role of developmental needs as a way to understand what age- appropriate social and emotional behavior should be.
Psychosocial Stages
1. Trust vs. Mistrust [0-12 months; Infancy]: Development of trust in maternal care and in one's own ability to cope; infants must learn that the world is a safe and reliable place and that basic needs will be met.
2. Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt [1-3 years; Toddler-hood]: Toddlers learn to exhibit self- control and to make choices.
3. Initiative vs. Guilt [3-5 years; Preschool years]: Children learn to initiate activities; gender identification; group play; early moral development.
4. Industry vs. Inferiority [6-12 years]: Adolescents develop allegiance to groups to groups and eventually to values and ideals.
5. Identity vs. Role Confusion [Adolescence]: Integration of previous experiences to from an identity.
6. Intimacy vs. Isolation [Early Adulthood]: Young people develop the ability to commit themselves to another person, but also to a career and a style of life.
7. Generativity vs. Stagnation [Middle Adulthood]: Adults learn to subject their wants for the good of others, including serving as a parent; concern about legacy emerges; guides the next generation.
8. Ego Integrity vs. Despair [Later Adulthood- Old Age]: Older adults define meaning for the life they have lived and prepare to face death with dignity.
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget focused his studies among the idea of children's intellectual development and how children's thinking, reasoning and perception differ from adults. His theory concentrated on the cognitive development and uses his own children from which he got most of his information. He use his studies to figure out how children think about their world. His theory is based upon four assumptions that relate to cognitive development: biological and environmental influences interact continuously to develop an individuals thinking, reasoning, and perceptual ability, cognitive development is initially a result of direct experience in an environment; eventually become capable of transforming their experience mentally through internal reflections, the pace of an individual's development is influenced by social context, and cognitive development involves major qualitative changes in one's thinking. He stressed the belief that we are constantly adapting to our environment and that we organize this through the development of schema's. He explained that we use a set of processes of adaptation; assimilation and accommodation And used equilibration as a constant seesaw between assimilation and accommodation.. Overall he hypothesized that this development happens in four cognitive stages.
Stages of Cognitive Development
1. Sensorimotor Stage [0-2 years]: Infants and toddlers use their sense and reflexes to respond to their immediate world but not think conceptually.
2. Preoperational Stage [2-7 years]: Children have an increased ability to think symbolically and conceptually about objects and people outside of their immediate environment, which is evident through children's increasing use of language and imaginative play.
3.Concrete Operational Stage [7-12 years]: Characterized by the ability to use logical thought to solve concrete problems related to concepts of space, time, causality, and number.
4. Formal Operations Stage [12 and on]: Marking the beginning of logical and scientific thinking is characterized by the ability to make predictions, think hypothetically, and think about thinking.
B.F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner theorized that all behavior can be modified and that the basic principles of learning apply to all learners, regardless of age. He assumed that specific behaviors can be increased through a range of reinforces and decreased through punishment. He also further developed the theory of behaviorism by coming up with the idea of operant conditioning. He explained this as the process that happens when the response that follows a behavior causes that behavior to happen more. He also believed that spontaneous behavior is controlled by the environment. He also looked a lot into positive and negative reinforcement and punishment. He developed his idea of behavior on his work with pigeons. He found that some ways of giving reinforcements are more effective in controlling behavior than others. He believed that punishment is not reliably effective as an alternative, which he called extinction. He explained it as the process by which a behavior stops when it receives no response from the environment.
Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura is known as the leading social learning theorist. He expanded the principles of behaviorism and conceived the theory of social learning. He recognized that children learn much of their social behavior from imitating or watching others. As a result, modeling became a major principle of learning. His work adds cognitive aspects of thinking, that what children think and believe about themselves, and how they judge their own expectations about learning strongly influence their behavior and their beliefs about their own abilities to learn. He believed that people can learn new behaviors simply from watching others rather than by direct reinforcement of their own behaviors from the environment. His theory of social cognitive learning focused on how learning occurs from watching other people but also its processed in one's mind. Some of Bandura's earliest work was specifically to show how children learn by direct observation. His classic experiment is known as the Bobo Doll Experiment, where one group of children observed an adult on television act aggressively to a Bobo doll. These children and another group of children were then brought individually into a room containing both aggressive and non aggressive toys. The children who had seen the adults attacking the Bobo doll were more likely to attack it, just like they had seen; were as the children who hadn't been exposed to the violent acts toward the Bobo doll were less likely to attack the doll. From this experiment he found that observations of a model may provoke a more generalized response based on the children's cognitive understanding of what was happening. Bandura's later development placed a greater emphasis on the cognitive aspects of behavior development and specifically on thinking about one's own ability to have control in one's life. His theory eventually changed to eliminate learning because the term was connected with the idea of conditioning. He renamed his theory the social cognitive theory to emphasize that thought has social origins but is then processed through our own individual cognitive interpretations.
Social Cognitive Learning Theory
1. Attention to a model--> noticing what some else is doing
2. Mental representation or memory of that model's actions--> Being able to remember what you saw
3. Motoric ability to reproduce the action--> Being able to do the same thing yourself
4. Motivation to imitate the action--> If or when you want to
Lev Vygotsky
Lev Vygotsky believed that learning is a social process and that children first learn new knowledge through social relations with others, which they later internalize. For him play lead development. He believed that children learn primarily through their relationships with other people, particularly in dialogue between each child and more knowledgeable person. He explained that these social relationships form the basis for later communication and thinking. He emphasized the importance of family, social interaction, adults and more capable peers, and play as primary influences on learning, and believed that as a result of it all learning occurs first on the social level and then on the individual level. His theory encompassed three major concepts. He theorized that a child has an actual and potential level of learning. He expressed the distance between what a child can do independently and what the child can do with assistance is called the Zone of Proximal Development. He stated the the Zone of Proximal Development substantially influences children's learning when they encounter a problem to solve. His second concept was the idea of scaffolding which he described as a support system that enables children to move along the learning continuum by building new competencies. Vygotsky ascribed major importance to the role of an adult in children's learning. He emphasized that through the use of the zone of proximal development, supportive adults c an guide children's learning in may ares. He view learning as a socially mediated process as dependent upon the support that adults and more mature peers provide as children try new tasks.
John B. Watson
John B. Watson is most notably known for his idea of classical conditioning. He viewed learning as being dependent only on observable behaviors. He claimed that he could shape the entirety of a person's learning by taking full control of all events of a child's first year of life and by discouraging emotional and social connections between parents and their children. He also focused much of his knowledge into his social cognitive theory in which individuals learn by observing others and imitating their behavior. His theories were different compared to other psychologist of his time. He wasn't so much interested in studying the impact of internal factors. He focused much of his attention on behavior and what people do. He believed that the environment is the most important factor in determining our personality, our abilities and our qualities. Most importantly his classical conditioning which he explained as the process of a stimulus, unconditioned, that naturally evokes a certain response, unconditioned, is paired repeatedly with a neutral stimulus; eventually the neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus and evokes the same response, which turns into the conditioned response. From all of his theories he came up with an experiment as prove. It was known as the Little Albert experiment. Watson applied the idea of classical conditioning to humans. He used classical conditioning to create fear in a human infant, Albert, where none had existed before. Watson knew that loud noises would frighten an infant and in fact when Watson made a loud clanging sound it startled Albert who in return began to cry. Yet when Albert was shown a white rat for the first time he was frighten at all and was actually quite curious. Rat was initially a neutral stimulus because of the no response to fear. Watson then made the loud clang along with showing the white rat, after numerous times Albert soon began to cry as soon as he saw the rat. Overtime Watson took away the clanging noise yet still every time the rat was shown Albert began to cry and show fear. This process of associating a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus is what is known as classical conditioning. Watson was also able to claim that the fear generalized to other furry creatures and objects like Santa Claus's beard.
John B. Watson is most notably known for his idea of classical conditioning. He viewed learning as being dependent only on observable behaviors. He claimed that he could shape the entirety of a person's learning by taking full control of all events of a child's first year of life and by discouraging emotional and social connections between parents and their children. He also focused much of his knowledge into his social cognitive theory in which individuals learn by observing others and imitating their behavior. His theories were different compared to other psychologist of his time. He wasn't so much interested in studying the impact of internal factors. He focused much of his attention on behavior and what people do. He believed that the environment is the most important factor in determining our personality, our abilities and our qualities. Most importantly his classical conditioning which he explained as the process of a stimulus, unconditioned, that naturally evokes a certain response, unconditioned, is paired repeatedly with a neutral stimulus; eventually the neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus and evokes the same response, which turns into the conditioned response. From all of his theories he came up with an experiment as prove. It was known as the Little Albert experiment. Watson applied the idea of classical conditioning to humans. He used classical conditioning to create fear in a human infant, Albert, where none had existed before. Watson knew that loud noises would frighten an infant and in fact when Watson made a loud clanging sound it startled Albert who in return began to cry. Yet when Albert was shown a white rat for the first time he was frighten at all and was actually quite curious. Rat was initially a neutral stimulus because of the no response to fear. Watson then made the loud clang along with showing the white rat, after numerous times Albert soon began to cry as soon as he saw the rat. Overtime Watson took away the clanging noise yet still every time the rat was shown Albert began to cry and show fear. This process of associating a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus is what is known as classical conditioning. Watson was also able to claim that the fear generalized to other furry creatures and objects like Santa Claus's beard.
Abraham Maslow
Best known for his theory of human motivation based upon a hierarchy of universal basic and growth needs. He explained his basic needs including physiological needs and safety and survival needs. He explained growth needs as emerging children's basic needs that are being met. He stated that growth needs include the need for love and belonging. It also includes the need for esteem that comes from recognition, approval, and achievement from both peers and adults and leads to a sense of competence and can- do feelings. He suggested that these needs motivate individual behavior and lead to healthy development. This healthy development is a continual series of choices that each person makes throughout a lifetime in which he or she must choose between satisfying basic or growth needs. He believed that as these needs are met that individuals naturally tend to seek higher needs. To him children whose basic safety needs are clearly being met will naturally seek stronger needs for love, belonging, and so forth, up the hierarchy of needs.
Best known for his theory of human motivation based upon a hierarchy of universal basic and growth needs. He explained his basic needs including physiological needs and safety and survival needs. He explained growth needs as emerging children's basic needs that are being met. He stated that growth needs include the need for love and belonging. It also includes the need for esteem that comes from recognition, approval, and achievement from both peers and adults and leads to a sense of competence and can- do feelings. He suggested that these needs motivate individual behavior and lead to healthy development. This healthy development is a continual series of choices that each person makes throughout a lifetime in which he or she must choose between satisfying basic or growth needs. He believed that as these needs are met that individuals naturally tend to seek higher needs. To him children whose basic safety needs are clearly being met will naturally seek stronger needs for love, belonging, and so forth, up the hierarchy of needs.
Urie Bronfenbrenner
Most people know Bronfenbrenner with the development of the Head Start Program. He also emphasized the importance of social and cultural influences on development. His theory emphasized the ecological contexts that influence development. To him children are shaped by the social and cultural world in which they live in but they also shape their worlds and the people in them. He explained that the bi-directional social and cultural contexts are interrelated, influence the other, and all impact a developing child. Each system is a constant interaction with another and influences the others, acting together as a set of building blocks, each embedded inside each other, yet acting separately but functioning as a working unit.
Ecological Systems
1. Mircrosystem: Where children lives and experiences are most of his or her activities and relationships, from in the home to school to neighbors and friends.
2. Mesosystem: Linking two or more of the children's mircosystem's, such as the connection between family and school and the relationship between the family and neighborhood.
3. Exosystem: Linking two or more social settings, one of which doesn't include the child but indirectly influences the child.
4. Macrosystem: Including the values, beliefs, laws and customs of a child's culture and ethnicity that are transmitted from generation to generation and affect the interactions among the family, school, and community in the child's immediate world.
5. Chronosystem: Including the dimensions of time with ever- changing life events as they affect the child. This influence can be external, such as divorce or death, or internal, such as a child's growth process.
Most people know Bronfenbrenner with the development of the Head Start Program. He also emphasized the importance of social and cultural influences on development. His theory emphasized the ecological contexts that influence development. To him children are shaped by the social and cultural world in which they live in but they also shape their worlds and the people in them. He explained that the bi-directional social and cultural contexts are interrelated, influence the other, and all impact a developing child. Each system is a constant interaction with another and influences the others, acting together as a set of building blocks, each embedded inside each other, yet acting separately but functioning as a working unit.
Ecological Systems
1. Mircrosystem: Where children lives and experiences are most of his or her activities and relationships, from in the home to school to neighbors and friends.
2. Mesosystem: Linking two or more of the children's mircosystem's, such as the connection between family and school and the relationship between the family and neighborhood.
3. Exosystem: Linking two or more social settings, one of which doesn't include the child but indirectly influences the child.
4. Macrosystem: Including the values, beliefs, laws and customs of a child's culture and ethnicity that are transmitted from generation to generation and affect the interactions among the family, school, and community in the child's immediate world.
5. Chronosystem: Including the dimensions of time with ever- changing life events as they affect the child. This influence can be external, such as divorce or death, or internal, such as a child's growth process.