Chapter 2 Educational Psychology Notes

Chapter 2 Notes

Erikson: Psychosocial Development

A. Epigenetic Principle—In fetal development, certain organs of the body appear at certain specified times and eventually “combine” to form a child.
B. Psychosocial Crises—Occurs as one successfully resolves a series of turning points.
i. Crises occur when people feel compelled to adjust to the normal guidelines and expectations that society as for them but are not altogether certain that they are prepared to carry out these demands fully.
C. Stages of Psychosocial Development
a. Trust Versus Mistrust (Birth to 1 Year)
i. Infants need to learn to trust their world, if not, they will approach the world with fear and suspicion.
b. Autonomy Versus Shame and Doubt (2-3 Years; Preschool)
i. Children will either develop autonomy (willingness and ability to direct one’s behavior) or they will develop feelings of self-doubt. It all depends on if the children trust their parents.
c. Initiative Versus Guilt (4-5 Years; Preschool to Kindergarten)
i. Students will either act on their own, or will feel guilty about acting on their own.
d. Industry Versus Inferiority (6-11 Years; Elementary to Middle School)
i. Students will either persevere and do things well, or they will be treated as bothersome and feel inferior to their peers.
e. Identity Versus Role Confusion (12-18 Years; Middle through High School)
i. Role Confusion—Having no clear conception of appropriate types of behavior that others will react to favorably.
ii. The goal at this stage is development of the roles and skills that will prepare adolescents to take a meaningful place in adult society.
f. Intimacy Versus Isolation (Young Adulthood)
i. Young adults need to establish close and committed intimate relationships and partnerships at this stage. If not, they will feel isolated.
g. Generativity Versus Stagnation (Middle Age)
i. Making a family or having a positive effect on younger generations. If not, the next generation will become victims of stagnation and self-absorption.
h. Integrity Versus Despair (Old Age)
i. Integrity—The acceptance of one’s one and only life cycle as something that had to be and that, by necessity, permitted of no substitutions.
ii. Despair—Expresses the feeling that the time is now short, too short for the attempt to start another life and to try out alternate roads to integrity.
D. Identity—An optimal sense of identity . . . is experienced merely as a sense of psychosocial well-being.
E. Psychosocial Moratorium—A period marked by a delay of commitment.
F. Identity Statuses—Reflect the extent to which individuals have explored and committed themselves to a set of values on such critical issues such as occupation, religion, sex role, and politics.
a. Identity diffusion
b. Foreclosure
c. Moratorium
d. Identity achievement
i. Page 33, table 2-1 Shows Crisis, Commitment, and Characteristics of each Identity Status.
G. Criticisms of Erikson’s Theory
a. While Erikson carried out research, his conclusions were based on personal and subjective interpretations.
b. Viewed by many as a “descriptive overview of social and emotional development that does not adequately explain how and why this development takes place.”
c. Carol Gilligan argues that Erikson’s stages reflect the personality development of males more accurately than that of females.

Piaget: Cognitive Development

A. Piaget stated that humans inherit organization and adaptation tendencies.
a. Organization—The tendency of all individuals to systematize or combine processes into coherent (logically interrelated) systems.
b. 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.
i. Assimilation—Adapting by either interpreting an experience so that it fits an existing scheme
ii. Accommodation—Changing an existing scheme to incorporate the experience.
c. Schemes—Organized, generalizable patterns of behavior or thought.
d. Equilibration—The organization of schemes to achieve the best possible adaptation to their environment.
i. Disequilibrium—A perceived discrepancy between an existing scheme and something new.
e. Constructivism—The process of creating knowledge to solve a problem and eliminate disequilibrium.
B. Stages of Cognitive Development:
a. Sensorimotor Stage (Infants and Toddlers)
i. Up to the age of two, children acquire understanding primarily through sensory impressions and motor activities.
ii. Object permanence—“Out of sight, out of mind.”
iii. Deferred Imitation—Imitating behaviors of different people
b. Preoperational Stage (Preschool and Primary Grades)
i. The thinking of preschool and primary grade children centers on mastery of symbols (words), which permits them to benefit much more from past experiences.
ii. Conservation Problems—Those that test their ability to recognize that certain properties stay the same despite a change in appearance or position.
iii. 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.
iv. Decentration—The ability to think of more than one quality at a time; and is therefore not inclined to contemplate alternatives.
v. Irreversibility—The second impediment to logical thinking.
vi. Egocentrism—The third impediment. (Water example on Page 42)
c. Concrete Operational Stage (Elementary to Early Middle School)
i. 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. Schemes are developing that allow a greater understanding of such logic-based tasks.
d. Formal Operational Stage (Middle School, High School, and Beyond)
i. When children do reach the point of being able to generalize and engage in mental trial and error by thinking of hypotheses and testing them in their heads.
ii. Absent egocentrism—The inability to differentiate between the world as the adolescent thinks it should be and the world as it actually is.
C. The Role of Social Interaction and Instruction in Cognitive Development:
a. How Social Interaction Affects Cognitive Development:
i. Peer interactions do more to spur cognitive development than do interactions with adults.
b. How Instruction Affects Cognitive Development:
i. Piaget’s viewpoints were cautious, if not negative, to speed up cognitive development.

Vygotsky: Cognitive Development

A. How we think is a function of both social and cultural forces.
B. Psychological Tools—The cognitive devices and procedures with which we communicate and explore the world around us.
a. They both aid and change our mental functioning.
b. Vygotsky saw social interaction as the primary cause of cognitive development.
i. Unlike Piaget, Vygotsky believed that children gain significantly from knowledge and conceptual tools handed down to them by those who are more intellectually advanced, whether they are same-age peers, older children, or adults.
C. Spontaneous Concepts—Children learn various facts and concepts and rules, but they do so for the most part as a by-product of such other activities as engaging in play and communicating with parents and playmates.
a. Empirical Learning—Refers to the way in which young children acquire spontaneous concepts.
D. Scientific Concepts—The psychological tools that allow us to manipulate our environment consciously and systematically.
E. Theoretical Learning—Involves psychological tools to learn scientific concepts.
F. Zone of Proximal Development—The difference between what a child can do on his own and what can be accomplished with some assistance.
G. Scaffolding—Helping students answer difficult questions or solve problems by giving them hints or asking leading questions.
a. Four component model that teachers can use to optimize the effects of their scaffolding efforts and help students move through their ZPD:
i. Model desired academic behaviors
ii. Create a dialogue with the student
iii. Practice
iv. Confirmation

Piaget, Kohlberg, and Gilligan: Moral Development

A. Piaget’s Analysis of the Moral Judgment of the Child
a. Age Changes in Interpretation of Rules
b. Moral Realism Versus Moral Relativism
i. Morality of Constraint—The moral thinking of children up to the age of ten or so
ii. Morality of Cooperation—The thinking of children eleven or older.
1. Consequences determine guilt
B. Kohlberg’s Description of Moral Development
a. Expanded Piaget’s Work
b. Kohlberg’s Six Stages of Moral Reasoning
i. Stage 1—Punishment-obedience Orientation
ii. Stage 2—Instrumental relativist orientation
iii. Good boy—Nice girl orientation
iv. Law-and-Order orientation
v. Social contract orientation
vi. Universal ethical principle orientation
C. The Caring Orientation to Moral Development and Education
a. Gilligan’s View of Identity and Moral Development
i. Identity vs. Role Confusion
ii. Care Theory focuses on whether a caring relationship exists.

I obviously won’t teach these concepts directly to my students, as these are college level, or even high school level concepts (at least I didn’t learn them until college). However, it is important for my students to feel that they can trust me and that I can trust them. It builds a strong, positive, and healthy relationship that they can rely on at a young age and build on it throughout their lives in other relationships and partnerships they will have. I don’t want my students to feel inferior, or have self-esteem problems, be self-absorbed, regret, or feel guilty as they grow up. Thus, I feel it is crucial that I build a sense of community in my students at a young age. Moral and social development is also crucial, especially at the young elementary, middle school ages.