Erik Piaget's Theory Of Psychosocial Development

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Erik Erikson wrote eight categories in his theory of Psychosocial development. He starts the levels of his theory at 1 years old and goes all the way to sixty-five plus years old. In a classroom setting his theory can be specifically applied to interaction. His theory can be broken down by age, crisis, virtue, and outcome. He explains at age 1 children are either going to develop trust or mistrust for people, namely their parents or whoever is raising them primarily at that particular time. Next, 2 years old, children will develop autonomy or in some cases doubtfulness. They are just beginning to gain a little independence at this age. Next, initiative vs. guilt, occurs in children ages 3 to 5. Children at this age are often into everything …show more content…

Jean Piaget was a Swiss phycologist who became especially interested in the development of children. His research lead to many great discoveries about children’s thought process, how they learn, when they learn, what things they learn quickly, how they adapt to different environments, and how they are self-accommodating in the way that they constantly revise their own knowledge. Piaget breaks down the ages in a slightly different way than Erikson. Piaget’s theory is broken down into 4 stages as opposed to Erikson’s eight stages of development. Piaget’s goes like this: First, the Sensorimotor Period (birth to 2 years), Second, Preoperational Thought (2 to 7 years), third, Concrete Operations (6 to 12 years), and last, Formal Operations (11 years to adult). During the Sensorimotor Period children learn that their actions make things happen, and that even things that cannot be seen still exist. During the Preoperational Thought stage children are learning how to interpret words and make something out of the pictures they look at. However, in her article, A Summary of Piaget’s Stages, Kendra Cherry states that “while they are getting better with language and thinking, they still tend to think about things in very concrete terms.” (Cherry, 2016). This means that they may still need to be told the same thing multiple times or be reassured when they are doing the right thing. Next, the Concrete Operational stage, the time in which children’s characteristics drastically change and they begin to use logic and reason. The last stage which continues all the way to adulthood, starts as adolescents who are beginning to have abstract thought process, they become concerned with philosophical, ethical, moral, and political issues which is carried with them to adulthood. Like Erikson’s theory of developmental stages, Piaget’s also can be equated with classroom behavior. Like Erikson’s theory of developmental stages,

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