Running Head: PEPSI Screening 1

PEPSI Screening

Samantha Milton

EDU 220- College of Southern Nevada

March 6, 2017

PEPSI Screening 2
Introducing Alexander

Referred to as Alexander for his protection and privacy. Alexander is a fourteen-year-old boy

who is currently living in Las Vegas, Nevada. He lives full time with his mother and one of his sisters, his

other sister is married and has a family of her own but lives very close! His parents have been separated

since he was nine years old. He sees his dad a few times a week and is working on gaining a relationship

back with him. Alexander and his mother are extremely close and rely on each other heavily for

emotional and moral support.

Alexander attends Sig Rogich Middle School, a public middle school in the Clark County School

District. He is in eighth grade and is very nervous about the transition to high school. He works hard in

school but doesn't always receive high grades. The school does not come easily to him and he gets

discouraged easily. He does want to be successful in school though, so he tried his hardest.

What is a PEPSI analysis?

The PEPSI model has been developed to assist in viewing a child across five areas of development. The

five charting areas are (P)physical, (E)emotional, (P)philosophical, (S)social, and (I)intellectual. It works

as a hands-on device providing guidelines for recognizing, confirming a pattern of child behaviors, and

insight into child needs. The PEPSI model was designed by Dr. J'Anne Ellsworth to help understand

children as a whole.

Physical Development

Alexander is very involved with an array of active sports. His favorites are football, soccer, and is the

newest interest, paintball. His diet is not as healthy as it could be and as a typical teenage boy does, he

spends hours sitting in front of his Xbox. Alexander has recently had some signs that puberty will be

hitting him soon, but is worried that he will be going through the typical physical changes late.

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According to MedlinePlus.org, "The sudden and rapid physical changes that adolescents go through make

adolescents very self-conscious. They are sensitive and worried about their own body changes." So it is

normal that Alexander is feeling uncertain about himself and feels the need to compare his body/growth

to others. Also, cliffnotes.com claims, "An early sign of maturation is the adolescent growth spurt or a

noticeable increase in height and weight. The male growth spurt usually begins between ages 10 and 16,

and ends by age 18." So Alexander should not worry about being a "late bloomer", he seems to be right

on track! In our book, Psychology Applied to Teaching by Jack Snowman and Rick McCown, some

examples of physical development in the age group of Alexander (grades 6,7, and 8) perfectly relate to

how Alexander is feeling. Those examples include, "late-maturing boys may feel inadequate, the average

age of puberty: girls eleven; boys fourteen, teenagers experience different degrees of emotional turmoil,

and self-efficacy beliefs for academic and social tasks become strong influences on behavior." As I stated

before, Alexander struggles in school sometimes and has s tough relationship with his father. It is clear

that he gets emotional and even angry sometimes over these things.

Emotional Development

There are so many factors that go into emotional development, especially at Alexander's age.

There is stress, anxiety, confusion, the influence of egocentric thought, gender, ethnicity, sexual

preference and much more. According to the American Psychological Association, "Emotional

development during adolescence involves establishing a realistic and coherent sense of identity in the

context of relating to others and learning to cope with stress and manage emotions, processes that are life-

long issues for most people." Alexander faces the typical stresses and struggles as other students his age

but doesn't always know how to handle them as well, and it doesn't seem like he is making an effort to

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learn to cope with the negative feelings and reactions he has to the stressful or upsetting things in his life.

As stated in the text, Psychology Applied to Teaching, “As a result of the continued influence of

egocentric thought, middle school students are typically self-conscious and self-centered. Because
emerging adolescents are acutely aware of physical and emotional changes that are taking place within

them, they assume that everyone else is just as interested in, and is constantly evaluating, their

appearance, feelings, and behavior.” Alexander has provided countless examples of this exact behavior.

He believes that his family, especially his mother, should always put him before everything. Whether it is

needing help with his homework or needing to be driven to paintball, he truly feels that everyone should

drop what they are doing and attend to his wants/needs. While this self-centered behavior is normal with

students ranging from 11-14 or so, Alexander takes this to a level above and reacts with anger when he

does not get his way. This is where I feel he falls behind in his emotional development. He is not able to

rationalize his thoughts, especially the negative ones, and overreacts very easily and very often. One

overreaction Alexander has very often is anger. Psychology today states, “Anger can counsel retaliation,

instead of finding a constructive way to address the wrong to make things better.” As I stated before,

Alexander struggles with controlling his anger far more often than the normal adolescent his age.

Philosophical Development

How adolescents think, reason, and understand can change more dramatically then obvious

physical changes around this age. According to the American Psychological Association, “They are now

able to analyze situations logically in terms of cause and effect and to entertain hypothetical situations and

use symbols, such as metaphors, imaginatively (Piaget, 1950). The higher-level thinking allows them to

think about the future, evaluate alternatives, and set personal goals (Keating, 1990).” In

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this sense, Alexander lacks the philosophical development in which he is able to analyze most situations

logically, especially in terms of cause and effect, and also lacks the development to entertain hypothetical

situations. Alexander has the mentality of “everything bad happens to me”. Yes, he has had a very

difficult life with his parents’ divorce and all the harm that it has caused, but he does not have the

philosophical development to understand cause and effect or think about future positives and negatives.
Social Development

According to the American Psychological Association, “The social development of adolescents is

best considered in the contexts in which it occurs; that is, relating to peers, family, school, work, and

community.” I’ve chosen to focus on two main points in regard to Alexander’s social development;

peer relationships and family relationships. Let's begin with Alexander's peer relationships, the APA

informs, "In order to establish greater independence from their parents, adolescents must orient

themselves toward their peers to a greater extent than they did in earlier stages of development."

Alexander does not have a large group of friends/peers that he spends time with. When he is at school,

yes he socializes with his fellow peers, but he rarely, if ever, gets together outside of school with other

teenagers his age. He spends most of the time at home with his mother and beginning very recently, his

father as well. This begins the transition of discussing Alexander's family relationships. More information

from the APA includes, "For more than half of families in the United States, divorce is a fact of life.

Whether divorce will have negative effects on adolescents appears to depend on a number of factors, not

simply the fact of the divorce itself. The factors that appear to have the greatest impact on coping include

whether parents can harmoniously parent after the divorce (Hetherington, 2000) and whether the

economic problems that often occur after a divorce and lead to other stresses, such as

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having to move, can be kept to a minimum (Emery, 1999).” At the beginning of Alexander’s parents’

divorce, it was very messy and caused many stresses for all of the family. It was clear to see Alexander’s

struggles in developing relationships, succeeding in school, and even further developing

relationships with his parents and siblings. However, in the past two months, Alexander's dad has become

much more involved in his life and his parents agreed to a very wonderful co-parenting method so they

could both be apart of Alexander's life. In the short span of time that this change has occurred, the

changes that occurred within Alexander are very apparent. For example, his grades have become

significantly higher, he has started attending more after-school activities and hanging out with friends on
the weekend, and he gets into fewer arguments with his mother and is even working on controlling his

temper better.

Intellectual Development

"When middle schools fail to provide students with an intellectually challenging yet emotionally safe

classroom environment, one negative consequence is an effect on motivation.", as stated in Chapter 3:

Age-Level Characteristics in Psychology Applied to Teaching. An example of this that I have seen

frequently in Alexander is how most middle school teachers are inclined to post papers and exams that

received the highest scores, to grade on a curve, accord privileges to the high achievers, and to remind

their students of the importance of getting high grades. An environment like this tells students that getting

good grades is more important than content mastery. When Alexander is working on homework, his main

concern is getting all the answers right, so instead of going back to look through his notes, he will look up

the answers online because he doesn't want his grades to drop. Also according to Psychology Applied to

Teaching, "Students perceive their relationships with their teachers

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as being less friendly, supportive, and caring than those in earlier grades (Anderman & Mueller, 2010.)”

Alexander struggles with this quite frequently, and because he believes his teachers do not care about his

education, he thinks “why should I?”.

Recommendations

-Physical Development: Alexander is right on track with his Physical Development. He is very active,

eats healthy and a good amount for a boy his age, and is right on track with puberty. My

recommendations would be to stay active and involved with the sports he likes.
-Emotional Development: Alexander’s Emotional Development is definitely delayed in some ways. I

think it would highly benefit him to start opening up more to people he trusts. Whether that be a therapist,

his older sisters, his friends, his parents, or anyone else that he is comfortable with, letting people in and

discussing how he is feeling about the things going on in his life would benefit him greatly.

-Philosophical Development: Alexander is far behind in regard to where he could/should be with his

Philosophical Development. I think it would benefit him to speak to a therapist so he can share why he is

feeling like bad things always happen to him and hopefully get past it.

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-Social Development: Alexander is slowly but surely opening up and becoming more social thanks to his

situation at home progressing and giving him more comfort, happiness, and confidence. Again, I suggest

that Alexander stay involved with the sports and after-school activities he enjoys!

-Intellectual Development: Alexander is successful in school, and is very intelligent. My only suggestion

would be to work on understanding that school and a good education will benefit him in the future.
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References

American Psychological Association. (2002). A Reference for Professionals Developing

Adolescents. http://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/develop.pdf

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (2016) Physical Development: Age 12-19.

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/psychology/development-psychology/physical-

cognitive-development-age-12/physical-development-age-1219

Kaneshiro, Neil. K. (2017, February 16). Adolescent development.

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002003.htm

Pickhardt, Carl. E. (2010, July 19). Adolescence and emotion.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/surviving-your-childs-adolescence/201007/adolescence-

and-emotion

Snowman, J., & McCown, R. (2015). Psychology Applied to Teaching. Cengage

Learning.
http://ng.cengage.com/static/nb/ui/index.html?nbId=739085&nbNodeId=279010724&deploymen

tId=48735623289285350239629057&eISBN=9781305390676#!&parentId=279010755