Significance of Developmental Theories to stimulation.
Two important educational questions
Education
Personality development includes boosting
one’s confidence, improving communication and
language speaking abilities, widening one’s scope of
knowledge, developing certain hobbies or skills,
learning fine etiquettes and manners, adding style and
grace to the way one looks, talks and walks.
The significance of developmental theories
to education is they build upon the children’s
combined funds of knowledge to foster each child’s
learning and understanding. Educators design
activities that follow the predictable sequences in
which children acquire specific concepts, skills, and
abilities and by building on prior experiences and
understandings.
The knowledge of human growth and
development helps teacher to provide appropriate
help for students with developmental problems. By
understanding the different stages that a student’s life
goes through, educators can more efficiently develop
each learner to achieve their full potential.
The teacher or educator must understand the
importance of developmental theories. When teachers
understand how children develop, they’ll know to
separate the child from the behavior to prevent
children from internalizing harmful messages.
Looking at how children grow and what they need at
different stages of development will also help
teachers see a bigger picture of education.
Why are developmental theories
significant to classroom and school practice?
It focuses on the process of children’s thinking, not
just its products. Recognition of the crucial role of
children’s self-initiated, active involvement in
learning activities.
Developmental psychology attempts to understand
the nature and sources of growth in children's
cognitive, language, and social skills. Within that
context, there are four central themes that are unique
to a developmental perspective and that bear on
issues in childhood education. The first is the role
of nature versus nurture in shaping development.
Specifically, developmentalists want to know the
contribution of genetic or maturational influences on
development as well as the role played by
environmental experiences. One important
educational issue related to this topic is the question
of whether a child's en-trance age, or maturational
level, is important for school success. For this and
other important educational questions, nature and
nurture interact in complex ways to shape a child's
academic growth.
The second question focuses on whether children's
growth proceeds in a continuous or more stage-like
fashion. Stage theories, such as those proposed by
Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and Sigmund Freud,
contend that development progresses through
maturationally determined stages. While this
perspective underscores the contributions of both
biology and the environment, a greater emphasis is
placed on a maturationally predetermined progression
through a fixed developmental sequence. Many
researchers and theorists dispute such a rigid, step-
like theory of development, emphasizing instead a
more continuous, gradual process influenced equally
by both brain maturation and environmental
relevant to this issue are the extent to which children
can be taught particular concepts or skills prior to
entering a given developmental stage, and whether
concepts learned in one domain are automatically
transferred to other similar domains as a child reaches
a new developmental stage.
A distinct but related theme centers on the existence
of critical or sensitive periods in human development.
A critical or sensitive period is defined as a time of
growth during which an organism is maximally
responsive to certain environmental or biological
events. Critical periods emphasize the interaction of
both nature and nurture, with environmental
experiences (nurture) activating biologically
programmed (nature) developmental changes, or,
conversely, biologically determined changes enabling
an organism to assimilate certain environmental
experiences. In terms of language development,
educators often wonder whether there is a critical or
sensitive period during which children should learn a
second language. While certain components of
language, such as phonological processing, are
believed to be constrained by sensitive periods in
development, other elements of language, such as
vocabulary, clearly evolve over the lifespan.
The final theme concerns the importance of early
experience in shaping later growth and development.
Developmental scientists such as Mary Ainsworth,
Alan Sroufe, and Freud emphasize the significance of
early attachment and emotional conflict in predicting
later psychological adjustment. It is argued that early
risk factors have a more permanent influence on the
course of development than later experiences. Early
negative circumstances such as family conflict and
social disadvantage have been linked to later
delinquent behavior and school failure. Nevertheless,
many children display resilience in the face of such
early adverse social and environmental conditions.
Thus, it is the cumulative impact of both early and
later experiences that determines a child's
developmental outcome. Children's literacy
development, for example, is a product of both early
experiences, such as parent–child book reading, as
well as later experiences, such as reading instruction
in school.
Modern developmental theory centers on these four
central issues. An in-depth examination of these
topics within a historical context will provide a more
comprehensive understanding of developmental
theory and its relevance for educational policies and
practices.
Nature Versus Nurture
Philosophers and psychologists have debated the
relative roles of nature and nurture in human
development for centuries. The seventeenth-century
English philosopher John Locke described a young
child's mind as a tabula rasa (blank slate) upon
which the child's experiences are written. Jean-
Jacques Rosseau, an eighteenth-century French
philosopher, also argued that human development
was primarily a function of experience. He believed
in the existence of a natural, unspoiled state of
humankind that is altered and corrupted by modern
civilization. In contrast, nineteenth-century scientists
such as Gregor Mendel, Charles Darwin, and Sir
Francis Galton highlighted the importance of heredity
in shaping development. While all of these scientists
provided meaningful insights into the role of heredity
and the environment, modern researchers have sought
to further explore the dynamic interactions between
nature and nurture that shape human development.
The twentieth century saw the evolution of various
theories of development that differentially
emphasized the role of biological versus
environmental factors. These theories can be
classified according to four major developmental
frameworks: (1) environmental learning
(empiricism), (2) biological maturation (nativism),
(3) cultural context, and (4) constructivist.
The environmental-learning framework, best
exemplified by the behaviorist theories of John B.
Watson and B. F. Skinner, underscores the paramount
importance of empirical learning in development.
According to behaviorist theories, learning is
characterized as the process by which an organism's
behavior is shaped by experience. While
environmental-learning theorists do not completely
discount the role of innate factors, they argue that it is
the external environment that has the greatest
influence on development.
Biological-maturationist theories represent the
opposing swing of the theoretical pendulum. This
framework posits that biologically and genetically
predetermined patterns of change have a greater
impact on development than environmental
influences. During the early twentieth century,
theorists such as Freud and Arnold Gessell proposed
that experiential influences were secondary to innate
maturational mechanisms. This perspective regained
popularity in the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries as a result of major advances in genetic
research, as well as the introduction of twin studies
and behavioral genetics. Researchers such as Robert
Plomin, Noam Chomsky, and Steven Pinker assert
that human characteristics such as personality,
intelligence, and language acquisition are, to a great
extent, genetically grounded and maturationally
controlled.
The cultural-context perspective of psychologists
such as Lev Vygotsky and Barbara Rogoff contends
that while both biological and experiential factors
exert important influences on development, such
factors are filtered through an individual's social and
cultural context. Lev Vygotsky believed that the
activities, symbols, and customs of particular social
groups are formed by the collective social, cultural,
and historical experiences of their ancestors. Through
influences on social customs and practices, parenting,
and the environment, culture shapes children's
cognitive, language, and social development. For
example, children's academic performance has been
found to vary cross-culturally, as demonstrated by
studies showing that Asian immigrant children
outperform their white peers in the United States, as
well as the black-white test score gap.
Finally, the constructivist, or interactionist, approach
stresses the balanced interaction of nature and nurture
in forming the foundation for developmental change.
In such a framework, both genetics and environment
play an important role, and it is the dynamic relations
among such internal and external influences that
ultimately shape development. Piaget's theory of
cognitive development asserts that
children construct their knowledge based on the
combination of input received from both maturational
and environmental sources. Theorists such as Richard
Lerner, Gilbert Gottlieb, Esther Thelen, and Linda
Smith have taken this conceptualization one step
further with the introduction of dynamic systems
theories, which emphasize that the source of
developmental change is in the process of
bidirectional interaction among complex
environmental and biological systems.
Frederick Morrison and colleagues have explored one
facet of the nature-nurture question relevant to
education by examining the importance of entrance
age, or maturation level, on school readiness and
academic growth. They found that younger first
graders benefited as much from instruction in reading
and math as older first graders, and that the younger
students made significantly more progress than older
kindergarteners of essentially the same age. Thus,
entrance age–or maturation level–is not an important
indicator of learning or academic risk.
The dispute over the relative importance of nature
and nurture in children's development has endured for
several centuries, and will no doubt continue to
divide theorists for a long time to come. Increasingly,
however, developmental scientists are concluding
that, for most human characteristics, nature and
nurture are inextricably linked and interact in
complex ways to shape human growth.
Stages in Development
According to Piaget's stage theory, children progress
through a sequence of qualitative transformations,
advancing from simple to more complex levels of
thought. Piaget believed these transformations to be
universal, innately programmed shifts in a child's
perception and understanding of the world. He
proposed four main stages of cognitive development:
sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational,
and formal operational.
The transition from preoperational to concrete
operational thought, at about five to seven years of
age, corresponds with entry into formal schooling.
While children in the preoperational stage are able to
internally represent reality through the use of
symbols such as language and mental images,
concrete-operational children move beyond this
simple mental representation of objects and actions
and are able to logically integrate, order, and
transform these objects and actions. For instance,
because preoperational children cannot integrate
information about height and width simultaneously,
they are unable to recognize that water poured from a
short, wide container into a tall, narrow container
represents the same volume of water. Yet once they
reach the age of reason, their maturational level
converges with their accumulated experiences to
facilitate a qualitative shift toward concrete
operational thinking.
In addition to Piaget's stage theory of cognitive
development, several others have proposed stage
theories of psychosexual/personality development
(Freud), psychosocial/identity development
(Erikson), moral reasoning (Lawrence Kohlberg), and
social development (Theory of Mind). These theories
claim that children proceed through universal, age-
specific stages of growth. Yet not all psychologists
agree with such a rigid, step-like representation of
development. Recently, neo-Piagetian theorists such
as Kurt Fischer, Robbie Case, Annette Karmiloff-
Smith, and others have attempted to reconcile the
variability and domain-specificity observed in
children's cognitive growth with Piaget's static stage
theory.
In general, the neo-Piagetian perspective expands
upon Piagetian theory by asserting that, while some
general constraints or core capacities are hard-wired
at birth, learning and experience lead to variation and
domain-specificity in the acquisition of knowledge
and skills. Cross-cultural studies have shown that
varying cultural experiences result in the acquisition
of different, contextually relevant skills. For example,
children from a Mexican village known for its
pottery-making learn conservation of solids (e.g., the
fact that a ball of clay has the same mass even when
it is molded into a long, thin roll) before conservation
of number, which is generally mastered first in
formally schooled children. Thus, most neo-
Piagetians believe that while learning is constrained
by innate mechanisms or information processing
capacities, it proceeds in an individualized, domain-
specific manner.
The question of whether certain knowledge or skills
can be acquired before a child has reached a specified
stage of development has also been addressed by neo-
Piagetians. Renee Baillargeon conducted experiments
with young infants and found that they recognize
properties of object permanence prior to reaching that
designated Piagetian stage of development. In
addition, researchers have demonstrated that children
can be taught concrete-operational concepts even
before they have formally reached that stage of
cognitive understanding–though these children are
unable to transfer such knowledge outside the context
of the testing situation.
Other theorists construe development as a
constructive web (Kurt Fischer) or as a series of
overlapping waves (Robert Siegler), rather than a
sequence of qualitatively distinct steps. They
recognize that cognitive development is the result of
gradually acquired skills and abilities that build upon
each other. Siegler, in particular, emphasizes the
overlapping use of progressively more advanced
strategies in the acquisition of skills such as addition.
He found that children learning addition use various
strategies in "overlapping waves," such as finger
counting, verbal counting in their head, the Min
strategy (taking the larger of two numbers as a base
and adding the smaller number to it) and, eventually,
retrieval from memory. They gradually move from
using easier, less efficient strategies to more difficult,
but more efficient, strategies.
The neo-Piagetian view resembles the information-
processing perspective in that both contend that
cognitive development is limited by general
constraints that are hard-wired at birth. Information-
processing researchers such as Robert Kail,
Wolfgang Schneider, and David Bjorklund argue that
children's learning is restricted by the broad
processing capacities of the brain, which improve
with age. This perspective regards development as a
more gradual, continuous process that evolves as
children's processing speed or capacity for holding
information increases. Thus, the step-like progression
of development is rejected for a more linear
representation.
Critical Periods
A critical, or sensitive period is defined as a period of
time in development when a particular environmental
experience or biological event has its greatest
influence. Evidence demonstrates that some
physiological and psychological processes are
constrained by critical periods.
The existence of sensitive periods in children's
psychological development has been noted in aspects
of language acquisition. Children deprived of verbal
stimulation during the first few years of life are
severely impaired in their capacity to learn language
and have great difficulty acquiring normal language
later on. In addition, while young infants are able to
distinguish among the variety of phonemes present in
all human languages, after about six months of age
the infant's knowledge becomes more focused, and
they are only able to discriminate between the various
phonemes in their own native language.
Consequently, infants can learn any language that
they are exposed to, yet it is more difficult for an
older child or adult to completely master a non-native
or secondary language.
Taken together, such information lends support to the
argument that the first few years of life represent a
sensitive period for certain aspects of language
development. However, the fact that children
continue to benefit from exposure to new vocabulary,
semantics, and grammatical rules well into
elementary school and beyond leads researchers to
question whether all language learning is restricted
by a sensitive period. During the first few years of
life, children's brains grow and become more
organized, specialized, and efficient. Yet brain
growth and development does not end at three years
of age, but rather continues throughout childhood,
benefiting from the effects of schooling and other
environmental stimulation. Thus, the question of
when educators should teach children a second
language depends on the components of language
being considered (e.g., phonology, semantics,
vocabulary, grammar) and the level of proficiency
desired.
Another area of development believed to be
constrained by a sensitive period is attachment.
Psychologists such as John Bowlby, Ainsworth,
Sroufe, Erikson, and Freud contend that children's
early attachment to their primary caregiver (e.g.,
mother, father) during the first few years of life sets
the foundation for their later socioemotional
development. Research conducted by Harry Harlow
on infant monkeys found that those deprived of
maternal attachment prior to six months of age had a
more difficult time recovering socially than those
deprived of maternal contact after six months of age,
thus lending support to the existence of a critical
period for social development in monkeys. Yet many
"natural experiments" looking at orphan children who
have been deprived of adequate affection and
sensitivity from a primary caregiver have found that,
if removed from such a socioemotionally
impoverished environment and placed in a loving
adoptive home, most children are able to recover
socially, emotionally, and cognitively. Thus, while
early experiences can and do have an impact on later
development, children often demonstrate resilience in
response to adverse early experiences.
Early Experience
Early experience is the consummate critical period.
During the broad social reform of the late 1800s,
scientists in the newly evolving field of
developmental psychology brought attention to the
harmful effects of child industrial labor and validated
the importance of a healthy and nurturing
environment for promotion of normal development.
Throughout the twentieth century, psychologists such
as Bowlby, Freud, Erikson, and Sroufe have stressed
the profound importance of early socioemotional
experiences on later psychological outcomes. In
addition, scientists and policymakers have recognized
the importance of early intervention programs, such
as Head Start, that seek to enrich the cognitive
development of socially disadvantaged children.
During the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries, public interest and government policy has
advocated even earlier interventions, focusing
on zero to three as the most important age range on
which to concentrate resources. Yet, as theorists such
as John Bruer argue, the importance of the first three
years of life has reached "mythical" proportions.
According to Bruer, it is important to recognize the
cumulative nature of development, emphasizing both
early and later experiences in shaping children's
growth.
Evidence from researchers such as Baillargeon and
Susan Rose has demonstrated that cognitive skills
begin to develop very early in life, and that these
skills follow rather stable trajectories over time. Such
findings suggest that children's developmental course
begins to solidify before they enter formal schooling,
and even before they utter their first words.
A problem of particular interest is the poor state of
literacy in America, and the impact of early
experiences on literacy development. The amount of
cognitive enrichment, verbal stimulation, and book
reading, for example, that children are exposed to at
an early age is predictive of later literacy skills.
Research conducted by Betty Hart and Todd Risley
(1995) found a wide range of variability in young
children's vocabulary skills as early as two years of
age, and this variability was highly correlated with
the number of words spoken by their parents.
Socioeconomically disadvantaged toddlers were
exposed to a substantially lower number of words per
day as compared to toddlers from professional
families. It is clear from such research that children's
early experiences can lead to striking differences
among children from enriching versus impoverished
environments. Furthermore, studies have shown that
the achievement gap between low- and high-
performing children widens once children enter
school.
With respect to socioemotional development,
psychologists such as Freud, Sroufe, Bowlby,
Erikson, and Mary Main have claimed that children's
early attachment relationships with their primary
caregivers lay the foundation for later social
functioning. Researchers have found that securely
attached children are more cooperative with their
mothers, achieve higher cognitive and academic
scores, are more curious, and maintain better
relationships with teachers and peers, as compared to
insecurely attached children. Taken together, such
research affirms the impact of early attachment and
socioemotional experiences on later psychosocial and
cognitive development.
While early risk factors such as poor attachment and
socioeconomic disadvantage can have long-term
effects on children's cognitive, academic, social, and
emotional development, children do demonstrate
varying levels of vulnerability and resilience toward
such early conditions. Differences in temperament
and coping abilities, for example, can moderate the
degree to which a child's early experiences forecast
their later developmental outcomes. Furthermore,
while there is ample evidence that early experiences
have a substantial effect on later cognitive and social
outcomes, the real question is whether early
experiences are any more important than later
experiences. Growing evidence suggests that it is the
cumulative effects of both early and later experiences
that define an individual's trajectories later in life.
In summary, developmental theory pursues four
central themes: (1) the importance of nature versus
nurture, (2) stages in development, (3) the existence
of critical or sensitive periods, and (4) the impact of
early experience. Significant progress has been made
over the last thirty years on each of these topics,
resulting in a more complex view of human
psychological growth and the forces that shape it.
With regard to educational practice, modern
developmental theory stresses that rigid notions of
genetic determinism, stages, critical periods, or the
lasting impact of early experience are being replaced
by more flexible views that emphasize the
malleability of human nature and its potential for
change.
Individual Differences: Types, Causes and Role
Definitions of Individual Differences:
1. Drever James:
“Variations or deviations from the average of the
group, with respect to the mental or physical
characters, occurring in the individual member of
the group are individual differences.”
. Good, C.V.:
“The variation or deviations among individual is
regard to a single characteristic or a number of
characteristics, those differences which in their
totality distinguish one individual from another.”
3. Skinner, C.E.:
“Today we think of individual differences as
including any measurable aspect of the total
personality.”
4. Woodworth, R.S. and Marquis, D.G.:
“Individual differences are found in all
psychological characteristics physical mental
abilities, knowledge, habit, personality and
character traits.”
“The psychology of individual differences is largely
the study of group differences. This study classifies
individuals by age, traits, sex, race, social class and
so on, and observes the differences within and
between those groups. Physical, mental, social and
cultural differences etc. are being studied, under
individual differences.” – John P.De Ceeceo
Perhaps the first task of every teacher in a class
should be to know and study individual differences
among his pupils. Individual differences in bodily
appearance and physique, habits and skills, interests

and temperaments, abilities and attainments have
already been recognised.
According to Skinner, “Today we think of individual
differences as including any measurable aspect of the
total personality.” It is clear from this definition of
individual differences that it comprehends every
aspect of human personality which is in some manner
measurable.
Types of Individual Differences:
1. Physical differences:
Shortness or tallness of stature, darkness or fairness
of complexion, fatness, thinness, or weakness are
various physical individual differences.
2. Differences in intelligence: There are differences
in intelligence level among different individuals. We
can classify the individuals from super-normal (above
120 I.Q.) to idiots (from 0 to 50 I.Q.) on the basis of
their intelligence level.
3. Differences in attitudes: Individuals differ in their
attitudes towards different people, objects,
institutions and authority.
4. Differences in achievement: It has been found
through achievement tests that individuals differ in
their achievement abilities. These differences are
very much visible in reading, writing and in learning
mathematics.
These differences in achievement are even visible
among the children who are at the same level of
intelligence. These differences are on account of the
differences in the various factors of intelligence and
the differences in the various experiences, interests
and educational background.
5. Differences in motor ability: There are differences
in motor ability. These differences are visible at
different ages. Some people can perform mechanical
tasks easily, while others, even though they are at the
same level, feel much difficulty in performing these
tasks.
6. Differences on account of sex: McNemar and
Terman discovered the following differences between
men and women, on the basis of some studies:
(i) Women have greater skill in memory while men
have greater motor ability.
(ii) Handwriting of women is superior while men
excel in mathematics and logic.
(iii) Women show greater skill in making sensory
distinctions of taste, touch and smell etc., while men
show greater reaction and conscious of size- weight
illusion.
(iv) Women are superior to men in languages, while
men are superior in physics and chemistry.
(v) Women are better than men in mirror drawing.
Faults of speech etc. in men were found to be three
times of such faults in women.
(vi) Women are more susceptible to suggestion while
there are three times as many colour blind men as
there are women.
(vii) Young girls take interest in stories of love, fairy
tales, stories of the school and home and day-
dreaming and show various levels in their play. On
the other hand boys take interest in stories of bravery,
science, war, scouting, stories of games and sports,
stories and games of occupation and skill.
7. Racial differences:
There are different kinds of racial differences.
Differences of environment is a normal factor in
causing these differences. Karl Brigham has
composed a list on the basis of differences in levels
of intelligence among people who have migrated to
United States from other countries.
On the basis of these average differences between the
races, the mental age of a particular individual cannot
be calculated since this difference is based on
environment.
8. Differences due to nationality:
Individuals of different nations differ in respect of
physical and mental differences, interests and
personality etc. ‘Russians are tall and stout’;
‘Ceylonese are short and slim’; ‘Germans have no
sense of humour’; ‘Yellow races are cruel and
revengeful’; ‘Americans are hearty and frank’;
Indians are timid and peace-loving’ and the like
observations enter into our common talk.
9. Differences due to economic status:
Differences in children’s interests, tendencies and
character are caused by economic differences.
10. Differences in interests:
Factors such as sex, family background level of
development, differences of race and nationality etc.,
cause differences in interests.
11. Emotional differences:
Individuals differ in their emotional reactions to a
particular situation. Some are irritable and aggressive
and they get angry very soon. There are others who
are of peaceful nature and do not get angry easily. At
a particular thing an individual may be so much
enraged that he may be prepared for the worst crime
like murder, while another person may only laugh at
it.
12. Personality differences: There are differences in
respect of personality. On the basis of differences in
personality, individuals have been classified into
many groups.
Spranger, for example, has classified personalities
into six types:
(a) Theoretical,
(b) Economic
(c) Aesthetic,
(d) Social,
(e) Political, and
(f) Religious.
Jung classified people into three groups:
(a) Introverts,
(b) Extroverts, and
(c) Ambiverts.
Trottor divided individuals into:
(a) Stable minded, and
(b) Unstable minded.
Jordon thinks of personalities into:
(a) Active, and
(b) Reflective type.
Thorndike has classified people into four
categories on the basis of thinking:
(a) Abstract thinkers,
(b) Ideational thinkers,
(c) Object thinkers, and
(d) Thinkers in whom sensory experience is
predominant.
Terman has classified people into nine classes
according to their level of intelligence:
(a) Genius,
(b) Near genius
(c) Very superior,
(d) Superior,
(e) Average,
(f) Backward,
(g) Feebleminded,
(h) Dull, and
(i) Idiot.
It is an admitted fact that some people are honest,
others are dishonest, some are aggressive, others are
humble, some are social, others like to be alone, some
are critical and others are sympathetic. Thus we see
that the differences in personality are dependent on
personality traits. Teacher should keep in mind these
differences while imparting education to the pupils.
Causes of Individual Differences:
Some of the main causes of individual differences are
as under:
1. Heredity:
One of the most significant and chief causes of
individual differences is heredity. Individuals inherit
various physical traits like face with its features,
colour of eyes and hair, type of skin, shape of skull
and size of hands, colour blindness, baldness, stub-
finger and tendency to certain diseases like cancer
and tuberculosis, mental traits like intelligence,
abstract thinking, aptitudes and prejudices. Now it is
an admitted fact that heredity differences result in the
quantity and rate of physical as well as mental
development being different and different
individuals.
2. Environment:
Environment significantly influences individual
differences. Changes in child’s environment are
reflected in the changes in his personality.
Psychologically speaking, a person’s environment
consists of sum total of stimulation which he receives
from conception until his death.
Environment consists of physical, intellectual, social,
moral, political, economic and cultural forces. All
these forces cause individual differences. Modern
psychologists believe that individual differences are
caused by both heredity and environment. Personality
is the outcome of mutual interaction between heredity
and environment.
3. Influence of caste, race and nation:
Individuals of different castes and races exhibit very
marked differences. It is generally seen that son of a
Kshatriya has a more of courage in him while the son
of a trader has the traits of business.
Similarly individuals of different nations show
differences in respect of their personality, character
and mental abilities. These are the outcome of their
geographical, social and cultural environment. Many
studies have shown the existence of differences
between Americans and Negroes, Chineese and
Japaneese, English and Indian individuals.
4. Sex differences:
Development of boys and girls exhibits differences
due to difference in sex. The physical development of
the girl takes place a year or two earlier than the
boys. Between the age of 11 and 14, girls are taller
and heavier than the boys. After 15, boys start
winning the race.
Girls are kind, affectionate, sympathetic and tender
while the boys are brave, hard, choleric, efficient and
competent.
5. Age and intelligence:
Physical, intellectual and emotional development is
caused by the growth in age. Many individuals differ
because of the differences in intelligence. Individuals
who are below the average in intelligence and mental
age find much difficulty in learning and the average
intelligent persons can learn quickly.
6. Temperament and emotional stability:
Some people are by temperament active and quick,
while others are passive and slow, some humorous
and others short tempered. Emotional stability of the
individual is differently affected by physical, mental
and environmental factors. Differences in emotional
stability cause individual differences.
7. Other Causes:
Interests, aptitudes, achievements, sentiments,
character, educational and home background lead to
individual differences.
8. Economic condition and education: Individual
differences are caused by economic condition of the
parents and the education of the children. It is not
possible for the children of two economic classes to
have a similarity and equality.
Role of Individual Differences in Education:
One of the important objectives of modern education
is the complete development of the individual.
Individuals have different goals, different interests,
different emotional problems and different abilities.
We cannot afford to ignore these individual
differences in imparting education to children. Since
school work is planned on group basis it presents a
formidable challenge to all teachers.
Hence some practical procedures for adapting
school work to individual differences are
suggested:
1. Limited size of the class:
Generally there are 50 or more than 50 students in a
class. In such a large class, it is not possible for the
teacher to pay individual attention to the students.
The size of the class should be small. It should be
divided into various units so that after class-room
work their various difficulties may be found out.
2. Proper division of the class:
Now there are separate classes for the students, who
have different intelligence. While bringing about this
classification, the teacher should keep in mind the
difference in age, interests, emotional and social
qualities.
3. Home task:
The teacher should assign home task to the students
while keeping in view the individual differences.
4. Factor of sex:
Boys and girls are to play different roles in society.
Hence the factor of sex should be kept in mind.
5. Curriculum:
The curriculum should be modified to suit the needs
of all types of children. A large number of subjects
should be included in the curriculum so that
education can be provided to each child according to
his interests, needs and abilities. Curriculum should
not be rigid but it should be flexible.
If we lay down the same curriculum for all the
students, the brilliant students will not be able to have
full mental diet, and the backward students and the
students of lower I.Q. will lag far behind in the class,
and they may start playing truancy from the school.
6. Methods of Teaching:
Methods of teaching should be chosen on the basis of
individual differences. It is not advisable to use the
same method of education in the case of all children-
gifted or backward.
7. Educational Guidance:
Teacher should impart educational guidance to the
students while keeping in view their individual
differences. He can assist them in the selection of
educational career, selection of subjects, selection of
books, selection of hobbies and co-curricular
activities and in many other areas connected with
education.
8. Vocational Guidance:
While keeping in view the individual differences the
teacher can guide the students in the vocation that
they should adopt.
9. Individual Training:
Many plans and techniques for individualizing
instructions have been advocated.
Some of these plans are as under:
(i) Dalton Plan:
(ii) Morrison Plan:
(iii) Winnetka Plan:
(iv) Contract Plan:
(v) Project method:
Reporter:
ASLAINIE D. CASAR
MAED 2 – FOUNDATION OF
EDUCATION