Humanistic Psychology: The Different Theories Of Child Development

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Recommended: Key features of Piaget's theory of intellectual development

There are a number of different theories about development:

Cognitive/Constructivists: Piaget believed that children think and learn according to their age and stage of development. Children adapt to what they believe as their experiences change. They need to extend their experiences in order to extend their learning, so eventually they can think about experiences that they have not yet developed.

Psychoanalytic: Freud stated that our personalities are made up of 3 parts:
1 the id: the instinctive part of our personality, it is based on biological needs.
2 the ego: when the child realises it can make choices the ego starts to develop
3 the superego: is based on the development of the conscience and is responsible for feelings of guilt …show more content…

Humanist: Maslow felt that a knowledge of our self and our needs was very important. Humanistic psychology is based on our own free will.
Children will be unable to reach their potential unless their needs are being met:
Physiological (health, food, sleep) Safety  Belonging  Esteem  Self-actualisation

Social pedagogy: is a framework to support development, the child is central through their involvement and interaction with the wider world. The framework is socially constructed and may vary between cultures, context and time.

All these theories and ideas influence the way we work with children: we need to extend children’s experiences, we need to keep in mind that their ego and conscience is still developing; they are still learning about right and wrong. Positive reinforcement is always a good idea as it makes people feel good to be praised. Through repetition and training most children learn what is expected of them, singing time tables are a good example of repetition and conditioning. We all know that children copy spontaneously, so showing them good behaviour and setting good examples should pay off, and reminding children NOT to copy bad behaviour is also necessary. It is also very important that children’s needs are being met; a hungry child might not be focussed on their lessons, we have many different policies in place to try our best to meet the needs of the children we are

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