Advanced Child Development Theorist Study Guide

Theorist Findings or Ideas SignificanceAbraham Maslow (1908-1970)

*see picture

Maslow stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fullfill the next one, and so on. The earliest and most widespread version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs includes five motivational needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.

Maslow wanted to understand what motivates people. He believed that people possess a set of motivation systems unrelated to rewards or unconscious desires.

Robert Coles (1929-)

Coles’ has studied children’s moral development. He stressed the important role that parents and other caregivers play by the examples they set. Young children use close adults as their models for right and wrong, but as soon as they go off to school other forces act on their moral controls. As children become adolescents and adults they find it harder to maintain a moral hard line and their “cultural literacy” begins to supersede their “moral literacy.” Coles also feels that children have a deep spiritual understanding, that many people are not aware of.

For children to adopt moral learning, parents must show moral behavior. Parents act as a guide for young children as children try to comprehend the culture and media around them.

Arnold Gesell (1880-1961)*see chart

Gesell is a maturationist; his descriptions of developmental patterns in childhood emphasize physical and mental growth that he saw as determined primarily by heredity. By carefully observing children in his campus school, Gesell established norms or typical behaviors of children throughout childhood. He categorized these typical behaviors into 10 major areas that he called gradients of growth. Gesell developed basic information about eh order in which children master various skills and the typical rate of this development.

Gesell and his staff created an extensive list of normative information that remains popular with and useful to families and teachers. A parent or teacher concerned about what is normal behavior for a given age can refer to Gesell’s gradients of growth for specific information. Parents and other caregivers need to be aware of the standard course of development.

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

B. F. Skinner’s entire system is based on operant conditioning. The organism is in the process of “operating” on the environment, which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around its world, doing what it does. During this “operating,” the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer. This special stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant -- that is, the behavior occurring just before the reinforcer. This is operant conditioning: “the behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behavior in the future.” Skinner argued that when a child’s action repeatedly

Parents and other caregivers can use rewards and punishments to try to influence a child’s behavior.He also developed what is known as the “Skinner Box” used to study behavior in animals.

Advanced Child Development Theorist Study Guide

brings positive effects, it will be repeated and learned. When negative results repeatedly occur, the child will eventually stop the action.

Sigmund Freud(1856-1939)*see chart

Freud believed that personality develops through a series of childhood stages in which the pleasure-seeking energies of the id become focused on certain erogenous areas. This psychosexual energy, or libido, was described as the driving force behind behavior.Psychoanalytic theory suggested that personality is mostly established by the age of five. Early experiences play a large role in personality development and continue to influence behavior later in life.Emotional experiences in childhood have profound effects on a persona as an adult. If certain issues are not resolved at the appropriate stage, fixation can occur. A fixation is a persistent focus on an earlier psychosexual stage. Until this conflict is resolved, the individual will remain "stuck" in this stage.

. Freud was the founding father of psychoanalysis, a method for treating mental illness and also a theory which explains human behavior. The idea that early experiences affect adult life has profound importance for anyone caring for a child

Jean Piaget(1896-1980)

*see chart

Piaget believed that children think differently than adults and stated they go through 4 universal stages of cognitive development. Development is therefore biologically based and changes as the child matures. Piaget, the first to study children in a scientific way, focused on how children learned. He said that children go through four stages of thinking that shape how they see and learn about the world.

Children should be given learning tasks that are suitable for their stage of thinking.

Lev Vygotsky(1898-1934)

Vygotsky believed that both biological development and cultural experiences influenced children’s ability to think and learn. He said social contact was essential for intellectual development. Unlike Piaget's notion that children’s development must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky argued, "learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function" (1978, p. 90). In other words, social learning tends to precede (i.e. come before) development.

The work of Lev Vygotsky has become the foundation of much research and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades, particularly of what has become known as Social Development Theory. Children should have many opportunities for social interaction to develop intellectually.

Urie Bronfenbrenner(1917-2005)

.Bronfenbrenner developed the ecological systems theory to explain how everything in a child and the child’s environment affects how the child grows and develops. Otherwise known as the Human Ecology

Bronfenbrenner’s theory helps us understand why we may behave differently when we compare our behavior in the presence of our

Advanced Child Development Theorist Study Guide

Theory, the Ecological Systems theory states that human development is influenced by the different types of environmental systems He labeled different aspects or levels of the environment that influence children's development, including the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, and the macrosystem.

family and our behavior when we are in school or at work. This theory, published in 1979, has influenced many psychologists in terms of the manner of analyzing the person and the effects of different environmental systems that he encounters.

Howard Gardner(1943-Present)*see chart

Many of us are familiar with three general categories in which people learn: visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners. The theory of multiple intelligences has emerged from recent cognitive research and "documents the extent to which students possess different kinds of minds and therefore learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways," according to Gardner . Gardner’s early work in psychology and later in human cognition and human potential led to the development of the initial six intelligences. Today there are nine intelligences and the possibility of others may eventually expand the list. These intelligences (or competencies) relate to a person’s unique aptitude set of capabilities and ways they might prefer to demonstrate intellectual abilities.

Gardner says that these differences "challenge an educational system that assumes that everyone can learn the same materials in the same way and that a uniform, universal measure suffices to test student learning. Indeed, as currently constituted, our educational system is heavily biased toward linguistic modes of instruction and assessment and, to a somewhat lesser degree, toward logical-quantitative modes as well." Gardner argues that "a contrasting set of assumptions is more likely to be educationally effective. Students learn in ways that are identifiably distinctive. The broad spectrum of students - and perhaps the society as a whole - would be better served if disciplines could be presented in a numbers of ways and learning could be assessed through a variety of means."

Daniel Levinson(1920-1994)

Levinson proposed a theory based on a series of stages that adults go through as they develop. At the center of his theory is the life structure, the underlying pattern of an individual's life at any particular time. An individual's life structure is shaped by the social and physical environment. Many individuals' life structures primarily involve family and work, although other variables such as religion, race, and economic status are often important. Levinson's four "seasonal cycles" include preadulthood, early adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood.

Daniel Levinson developed a comprehensive theory of adult development. Through a series of intensive interviews with men in 1978 and women in 1987. He was one of the founders of the field of Positive Adult Development.

Maria Children are to be respected as different from Montessori stressed that

Advanced Child Development Theorist Study Guide

Montessori(1870-1952)

adults and as individuals who differ from each other.

Children possess an unusual sensitivity and intellectual ability to absorb and learn from their environment that is unlike those of the adult both in quality and capacity.

The most important years of a child’s growth are the first six years of life when unconscious learning is gradually brought to the conscious level.

Children have a deep love and need for purposeful work. They work, however, not as an adult for the completion of a job, but the sake of an activity itself. It is this activity which enables them to accomplish their most important goal: the development of their individual selves – their mental, physical and psychological powers.Children need adults to expose them to the possibilities of their lives, but the children must determine their response to all the possibilities. The teacher, child, and environment create a learning triangle. The classroom is prepared by the teacher to encourage independence, freedom within limits, and a sense of order. The child, through individual choice, makes use of what the environment offers to develop himself, interacting with the teacher when support and/or guidance is needed. Multiage groupings are a hallmark of the Montessori Method: younger children learn from older children; older children reinforce their learning by teaching concepts they have already mastered. This arrangement also mirrors the real world, where individuals work and socialize with people of all ages and dispositions.

children learn by using their senses and that they learn best by pursuing their interests. This system of education is both a philosophy of child development and a rationale for guiding such growth. It is based on two important developmental needs of children:

1. The need for freedom within limits

2. A carefully prepared environment which guarantees exposure to materials and experiences.

Through these developmental needs, the child develops intelligence as well as physical and psychological abilities. The Montessori method of education is designed to take full advantage of the children’s desire to learn and their unique ability to develop their own capabilities. Children need to be given objects to manipulate so they can exercise their sensory learning. It is a view of the child as one who is naturally eager for knowledge and capable of initiating learning in a supportive, thoughtfully prepared learning environment. It is an approach that values the human spirit and the development of the whole child—physical, social, emotional, cognitive.

Erik Erikson(1902-1994)

*see chart

Erikson, like Freud, said personality develops through stages. He thought that each stage includes a unique psychological crisis. If that crisis is met in a positive way, the individual develops maturity. He worked on eight psychosocial stages. However, whereas Freud was an id psychologist, Erikson was an ego psychologist. He emphasized the role of culture and society and

Erikson’s psychosocial theory focuses on psychosocial conflicts throughout the lifespan. Adult stages as well as childhood stages are considered important. Interactions between the individual, society and culture shape personality. Parents and

Advanced Child Development Theorist Study Guide

the conflicts that can take place within the ego itself, whereas Freud emphasized the conflict between the id and the superego. According to Erikson, the ego develops as it successfully resolves crises that are distinctly social in nature. These involve establishing a sense of trust in others, developing a sense of identity in society, and helping the next generation prepare for the future. Erikson extends on Freudian thoughts by focusing on the adaptive and creative characteristic of the ego, and expanding the notion of the stages of personality development to include the entire lifespan.

other caregivers must be aware of a child’s needs at a particular stage and be sensitive to the child’s needs at that stage. Erikson proposed a lifespan model of development, taking in five stages up to the age of 18 years and three further stages beyond, well into adulthood. Erikson suggests that there is still plenty of room for continued growth and development throughout one’s life. Erikson put a great deal of emphasis on the adolescent period, feeling it was a crucial stage for developing a person’s identity.

Albert Bandura(1925-)

Bandura said that children learn by modeling. He disagreed with Skinner. He pointed out that although the environment shapes behavior, behavior also affects the environment. Social learning theory involves learning through the use of modeling. Example: A child watches a character on TV load a gun. The child finds a gun and ammunition in a desk. The child loads the gun.

Since children learn by modeling, parent and caregivers must provide good examples. The social learning theory proposed by Albert Bandura has become perhaps the most influential theory of learning and development. While rooted in many of the basic concepts of traditional learning theory, Bandura believed that direct reinforcement could not account for all types of learning.

Lawrence Kohlberg(1927-1987)*see chart

Kohlberg's theory of moral development outlined six stages within three different levels. Kohlberg extended Piaget's theory, proposing that moral development is a continual process that occurs throughout the lifespan.Kohlberg based his theory upon research and interviews with groups of young children. A series of moral dilemmas were presented to these participants and they were also interviewed to determine the reasoning behind their judgments of each scenario, such as "The Heinz Dilemma".

Lawrence Kohlberg modified and expanded upon Jean Piaget's work to form a theory that explained how children develop moral reasoning.

Advanced Child Development Theorist Study Guide

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Gesell’s Gradients of Growth:

1. Motor characteristics. These include bodily activity, eyes, and hands.2. Personal hygiene. These include eating, sleeping, elimination, bathing and

dressing, health and somatic complaints, and tensional outlets.3. Emotional expression. These include affective attitudes, crying, assertion, and

anger.4. Fears and dreams.5. Self and sex.6. Interpersonal relations. These include mother-child, child-child, and groupings

in play.7. Play and pastimes. These include general interests, reading, music, radio, and

cinema.8. School life. These include adjustment to school, classroom demeanor, reading,

writing, and arithmetic.

Advanced Child Development Theorist Study Guide

9. Ethical sense. These include blaming and alibiing; response to direction, punishment, praise; response to reason; sense of good and bad; and truth and property.

10.Philosophic outlook. These include time, space, language and thought, war, death, and deity.

Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

1. Verbal-linguistic intelligence (well-developed verbal skills and sensitivity to the sounds, meanings and rhythms of words)2. Logical-mathematical intelligence (ability to think conceptually and abstractly, and capacity to discern logical and numerical patterns)3. Spatial-visual intelligence (capacity to think in images and pictures, to visualize accurately and abstractly)4. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (ability to control one’s body movements and to handle objects skillfully)5. Musical intelligences (ability to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch and timber)6. I nterpersonal intelligence (capacity to detect and respond appropriately to the moods, motivations and desires of others)7. Intrapersonal (capacity to be self-aware and in tune with inner feelings, values, beliefs and thinking processes)8. Naturalist intelligence (ability to recognize and categorize plants, animals and other objects in nature)9. Existential intelligence (sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence such as: What is the meaning of life? Why do we die? How did we get here?

Kohlberg’s Moral Theory

Advanced Child Development Theorist Study Guide

Advanced Child Development Theorist Study Guide

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Psychosocial Development

Advanced Child Development Theorist Study Guide

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Maria Montessori Idea of Learning

Advanced Child Development Theorist Study Guide

Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development