PAMELA M.

BALAGTAS
BEED 2E
GENERAL DIRECTION:
Write what you remember most about the ideas of the following theories. Focus on what
you think are their most important ideas about the development of learners.
1. Sigmund Freud

In Psychosexual Theory of Freud, personality develops during early childhood:

In the oral phase, children are focused on the pleasures that they receive from sucking
and biting with their mouth. In the Anal phase, this focus shifts to the anus as they begin toilet
training and attempt to control their bowels. In the Phallic stage, the focus moves to genital
stimulation and the sexual identification that comes with having or not having a penis. During
this phase, Freud thought that children turn their interest and love toward their parent of the
opposite sex and begin to strongly resent the parent of the same sex. He called this idea the
Oedipus Complex as it closely mirrored the events of an ancient Greek tragic play in which a
king named Oedipus manages to marry his mother and kill his father. The Phallic/Oedipus stage
was thought to be followed by a period of Latency during which sexual urges and interest were
temporarily nonexistent. Finally, children were thought to enter and remain in a final Genital
stage in which adult sexual interests and activities come to dominate.

2. Erik Erikson

In Erikson's Psychosocial theory, every human being passes through several distinct and
qualitatively different stages in life, from birth to death. It focused on how peoples' sense of
identity develops; how people develop or fail to develop abilities and beliefs about themselves
which allow them to become productive, satisfied members of society. The key idea in Erikson's
theory is that the individual faces a conflict at each stage, which may or may not be successfully
resolved within that stage. For example, he called the first stage 'Trust vs Mistrust'. If the quality
of care is good in infancy, the child learns to trust the world to meet her needs. If not, trust
remains an unresolved issue throughout succeeding stages of development.
 Erikson’s stages are, in chronological order in which they unfold: trust versus mistrust;
autonomy versus shame and doubt; initiative versus guilt; industry versus inferiority; identity
versus identity confusion; intimacy versus isolation; generativity versus stagnation; and integrity
versus despair. Each stage is associated with a time of life and a general age span. For each
stage, Erikson's theory explains what types of stimulation children need to master that stage and
become productive and well-adjusted members of society and there is one important problem or
issue to solve in order to develop a healthy sense of self. Failure to successfully complete a stage
can result in a reduced ability to complete further stages and therefore a more unhealthy
personality and sense of self.

3. Jean Piaget
In Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development, the cognitive growth occurred in stages
that’s why he proposed four major stages of cognitive development. This focus on how children
think and reason differently at different periods in their lives. It tells that everyone passed
through an invariant sequence of four qualitatively distinct stages. Invariant means that a person
cannot skip stages or reorder them. Although every normal child passes through the stages in
exactly the same order, there is some variability in the ages at which children attain each stage.
The four stages are: sensorimotor - birth to 2 years; preoperational - 2 years to 7 years; concrete
operational - 7 years to 11 years; and formal operational (abstract thinking) - 11 years and up.
Each stage has major cognitive tasks which must be accomplished. In the sensorimotor stage, the
mental structures are mainly concerned with the mastery of concrete objects. The mastery of
symbols takes place in the preoperational stage, children begin to think symbolically, learn to use
words, develop memory, imagination and language development occurs. In the concrete stage,
children learn mastery of classes, relations, numbers and can apply logical reasoning, but only to
real objects which can be seen. The last stage deals with the mastery of thought, use of logic to
solve problems, view the world around them, and plan for the future.
4. Lawrence Kohlberg
Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development was interested in how children develop their
ability to make moral decisions. Kohlberg’s best known experiments is known as the Heinz
Dilemma. In this experiment, Kohlberg presented a story about an ethical dilemma faced by a
character named Heinz that was used by Kohlberg to assess the moral reasoning skills of those
he asked to respond to it. Having exhausted every other possibility, Heinz must decide whether
to steal an expensive drug that offers the only hope of saving his dying wife. The Heinz
dilemma, does not consider the correctness of an answer, but instead, it focuses on what is the
reason behind such answer. For me, it best explains how the morality of a person develops
through time. The results from the Heinz Dilemma gave Kohlberg the ability to classify six
developmental stages of moral reasoning within three levels. For Kohlberg, moral development
is a continuous process that occurs through the entire lifespan. He believed that individuals could
only progress through these stages one stage at a time. That is, they could not "jump" stages.
5. Urie Bronfenbrenner
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory posits that an individual’s development is
influenced by his or her interactions with various aspects and spheres of their environment. His
bioecological theory has provided links to why children develop differently and what aspects of
development are in the child’s control and which are not. It looks not only into the biological
aspect of development, but also the ecology behind it and the environment involved. His theory
is important for educators to understand because it allows the educator to build fundamental
relationships with their students and create a communication rich classroom that involves the
parents. Bronfenbrenner’s work also displays how the community and culture that the children
are surrounded by greatly influence their development as well. Things such as media, school and
state policies, or a child’s neighborhood can shape how he or she develops. Bronfenbrenner
creates three separate systems (microsystem, exosystem, and macrosystem) that can all act
individually on the child, but also can act in unison on the child. The child has control over the
events in his or her microsystem, but the exosystem and macrosystem are out of the child’s
control. Bronfenbrenner clearly states how each system is vital for every child’s development
and from that, real life events can be related back to a certain system. Events such as
relationships between peers, parents, and teachers all are shaped in a child’s microsystem. Events
that take place in a child’s neighborhood or community all are shaped in a child’s exosystem.
Societal expectations and norms all are shaped in a child’s macrosystem. From Bronfenbrenner’s
theory, it has provided a framework for parents and teachers to build effective relationships from
and surround the child with a positive environment. With immediate relationships and a positive
environment, it will allow the child to develop and succeed to his or her fullest potential possible.
His focus, in other words, was not simply on the environment, or context, but on the ecological
system that included the developing individual.