IDEAS ABOUT CHILDHOOD

Ideas about Childhood

Ideas about Childhood

Introduction

Over the years, there have been dozens of psychologists who have proposed hundreds of different theories regarding human development. These theories are read by educational professionals, who incorporate the parts of the theories that they believe in, into their own personal philosophy regarding childhood development, what should and should not be done.

School counselors by the nature of their training are developmental specialists, and in practice, professional judgments about a person's problems are often based on developmental concerns. For instance, school consultation often focuses on whether problems manifested by a child are "normal" developmental concerns or whether there are other explanations for the behavior. It is a good strategy therefore to review the developmental theories to help understand a counselor's possible view regarding the needs of individuals during counseling and at different points in their lives. The goal of this paper is to highlight some classical ideas from the developmental literature and present contemporary ideas relating to concerns of individuals in the 21st century. The major developmentalists reviewed are Arnold Gesell, Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg and Erik Erikson.

Learning Theory

Dunn and Dunn and Price (1989) defined learning Theory as the manner in which different elements from five basic stimuli affect an individual's ability to perceive, interact with and respond to the learning environment (Dunn et al., 1989, p.15-19). The `learning Theory' Dunn et al., present is a good example of a construct which more properly describes a learning repertoire rather than a Theory, and it is a repertoire chiefly made up of learning preferences. The learning Theory elements identified in this construct are: environmental stimulus (light, sound, temperature, design); emotional stimulus (structure, persistence, motivation, responsibility); sociological stimulus (pairs, peers, adults, self, group, varied); physical stimulus (perceptual strengths, including auditory, visual, tactile, kinesthetic, mobility, intake, time of day--morning versus afternoon); and psychological stimulus (global/analytic, impulsive/reflective and cerebral dominance).

Each preference factor represents an independent continuum and is not necessarily related to other factors. Examples of factors for the environmental variable include: response to noise level, to light and temperature; for the sociological variable, preference for group learning, response to authority and typical response to adults; for the emotional factor, motivation, responsibility and persistence; for the physical factor, modality preferences, which include auditory, visual, tactile and kinesthetic, as well as food/fluids intake and time of day. Individual and group profiles are produced from the assessment data and the authors provide guidance for planning Theory-led instructional method.

Theory of Learning Interaction

The `Theory' of learning described by Riechmann and Grasha is very similar to the approach adopted by Dunn et al. (1989) in that it focuses upon an individual's learning preference. Riechmann and Grasha presented a social and affective perspective on patterns of preferred behaviour and attitude which underpin learning in an academic context. They identified three bipolar dimensions in a construct which described an individual's typical approach to the learning situation. These dimensions are: avoidant-participant, competitive-collaborative and dependent/independent, which, as Jonassen and Grabowski (1993) explained, are related to ...