Student Development

Introduction

▪ Development
▪ Learning

Why Development Matters

Physical Development During the School Years

▪ Trends in height and weight

▪ Puberty and its effects on students
▪ Development of motor skills
▪ Health and illness
Cognitive Development: The Theory of
Jean Piaget

▪ The sensorimotor stage: birth to age 2

– Object permanence

▪ The preoperational stage: age 2 to 7

– Dramatic play
– Metacognition

▪ The concrete operational stage: age 7 to 11

– Reversibility
– Decenter
– Conservation

▪ The formal operational stage: age 11 and beyond

– Hypothetical reasoning
Social Development: Relationships,
Personal Motives, and Morality

▪ 3 areas relevant to the classroom

1. Changes in self-concept and in relationships among students and teachers
2. Changes in basic needs or personal motives
3. Changes in sense of rights and responsibilities

▪ Erik Erikson
▪ Abraham Maslow
▪ Lawrence Kohlberg and critic, Carol Gilligan
Erik Erikson: 8 Psychosocial Crises of Development

▪ Crisis of infants and preschoolers: trust, autonomy, and initiative

– Trust and mistrust
– Autonomy and shame
– Initiative and guilt

▪ The crisis of childhood: industry and inferiority

▪ The crisis of adolescence: identity and role confusion
▪ The crises of adulthood: intimacy, generativity, and integrity
– Intimacy and isolation
– Generativity and stagnation
– Integrity and despair
Abraham Maslow: a hierarchy of motives and needs

▪ 2 types of needs
– Deficit needs (a.k.a. deficiency needs)
– Being needs (a.k.a. growth needs)

▪ Deficit needs: getting the basic necessities of life

– Physiological needs
– Safety and security needs
– Love and belonging needs
– Esteem needs

▪ Being needs: becoming the best that you can be

– Cognitive needs
– Aesthetic needs
– Self-actualization needs
Moral Development: Forming a Sense of
Rights and Responsibilities

▪ Morality
▪ Moral development
▪ Morality of justice
▪ Morality of care
Kohlberg’s Morality of Justice

▪ Preconventional justice: obedience and mutual advantage

– Stage 1: Obedience and punishment
– Stage 2: Market exchange

▪ Conventional justice: conformity to peers and society

– Stage 3: Peer opinion
– Stage 4: Law and order

▪ Postconventional justice: social contract and universal principles

– Stage 5: Social contract
– Stage 6: Universal principles
Gilligan’s Morality of Care

▪ Position 1: caring as survival—survival orientation

▪ Position 2: conventional caring—caring for others
▪ Position 3: integrated caring—takes into account including yourself
not everyone except yourself
▪ Character Development: integrating ethical understanding,
care, and action
– Character education
▪ Schoolwide programs of character education
▪ Classroom programs of character education
▪ Understanding “The Typical Student” Versus Understanding
Students
Resources
Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton, Educational Psychology. Lumen Learning.
2009
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/educationalpsychology/