Studies on Adolescene of Piaget and Erikson Essay

Adolescence is when people are at the stage of “Coming of Age.” “Adolescence are at the threshold of adulthood” and adulthood will be their enlightenment after period of darkness (Lesko, 148)

There have been a many number of theories on development and many of them will influence the way professionals work with children and young people. Psychologists have different views and theories about how children learn, some feel that a child’s ability is innate and others that it depends on the opportunities that are given. This is the ‘nature versus nature’ debate.

The adolescence stage in one’s life is often portrayed as a time of ‘storm and stress’ (Lipsitz, 1980). However, there are

Adolescence describes the transitional stage in a teenager’s life, from childhood to adulthood, where an individual evolves physically, psychologically, emotionally, cognitively and socially. It is a defined social category that is expressed through immaturity and unpredictability and allows an individual to learn and discover their sense of self and identity. The idea of adolescence came into perspective after children were expected to take on adult roles as soon as they were mature enough to, going straight from puberty to adulthood. As society changed and moulded, so did the ideas about life stages, which is evident in Erikson’s theory.

He suggested that children think differently to adults. He thought that the way children learn determines on what stage of development they are at cognitively. As he believes that learning is based on the experiences that children have as they get older. As they grow their experiences change and they change to their beliefs. For example, if they have never seen anything before then they don’t know that it exists. Piaget suggests that children needs to experience as much as they can whilst their young to help them in the future so they can learn more about the world and things in

The adolescent individuals begin to reach sexual maturity and established their identity as an adult. This period marks the transition in which individuals think and reason. They also start to encounter conflicts between their family and their peers.

At the centre of Piaget's theory is the principle that cognitive development occurs in a series of four distinct, universal stages, each characterized by increasingly sophisticated and

The transition from adolescent to adulthood, is one that has been discussed and debated upon since humans could understand the age differences between children, adolescences and adults. There are various theories which state the mental, physical and psychological changes within people as they age, one such theory is the “Theory of the Seasons of Life”, by Daniel Levinson. Within this, Levinson states that there are six stages of adulthood that everyone goes through. Each stage, corresponds with the individual’s dream and the importance of their life structure; the dream is what the individual believes to be the ideal life, this, is constantly modified and revisited as the entity’s perception of reality changes. The life structure, on the other

According to Erikson’s description of developmental eras in the human life cycle, during adolescence children

Piaget and Vygotsky both believed that young children actively learn from their hands-on, day-to-day experiences. Jean Piaget portrayed children as "little scientists" who go about actively constructing their understanding of the world. His theories hold the essence of developmentally appropriate curriculum since Piaget believed that children undergo cognitive development in a stage-based manner, such that a very young child would not think about things the same way that an adult might. He referred to the knowledge and the manner in which the knowledge is gained as a schema. In order to build on the cognitive stages that children experience, informal learning opportunities, formal instructional sessions, and the utilized curriculum must all dovetail with a child's current cognitive stage so that assimilation of the new knowledge may occur. Working with what the child knows and experiences, parents and teachers create bridges to the next cognitive stage that are characterized by the child's accommodation. Piaget argued that optimal learning took place in this manner and that adults should avoid thinking that they can accelerate a child's development through the age-based, maturity-referenced stages. This is because a child works toward establishing an equilibrium between the assimilation and application of new knowledge and changing their behavior to accommodate their newly adopted schemas.

Education is not the teacher but rather what the teacher does to encourage the transfer of knowledge. Students learn by an innate nature. It is this innate nature that drives humans to be curious and inquisitive enriching the learning process. Jean Piaget’s Developmental Stage Theory deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans come gradually to acquire, construct, and use it. According to

Throughout the semester we have studied many different Learning theorists and their different learning theories. The two theorists that stood out were Jean Piaget and William Kay Estes. Estes created a stimulus sampling theory which explained learning through stimulus-response, but also believed that learning is always happening and continuous as you keep making stimulus-response pairings. Piaget had a theory of cognitive development that explained how there is four different stages to children's cognitive development. These two theorists explain learning in two different ways that can explain the learning behavior of children and adults.

The chart above denotes the major theories of adolescence development; however in this study we limit ourselves to Erik Erikson’s identity development theory.

Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget are quite similar in their theories. Jean Piaget’s cognitive theory is only slightly different than Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory. Both theorists use the idea of developmental stages. Although the stages vary in what they entail, the carry the same idea of progressive development. Jean Piaget was born September 16, 1980, in Switzerland. His research found “that the growth of knowledge is a progressive construction of logically embedded structures superseding one another by a process of inclusion of lower less powerful logical means into higher and more powerful ones up to adulthood. Therefore, children 's logic and modes of thinking are initially entirely different from those of adults” (Smith, 2000). On the other hand, there’s the theory of Erikson, born in Germany in 1902. His theory saying, “Developmental progression — from trust to autonomy, initiative, industry, identity, intimacy, generativity, and integrity — was conceived as the sequential reorganization of ego and character structures. Each phase was the potential root of later health and pathology. By focusing on the social as well as the psychological, Erikson’s stages represented a quantum leap in Freudian thought, which had emphasized the psychosexual nature of development” (EI, 2013). Both theories are equally interesting. Although only slightly different, they both advocate for the nurture side of nature versus nurture debate.

Adolescence is the distinct transitional stage between childhood and adulthood in human development, extending primarily over the teenage years and terminating legally when the age of majority is reached (Rathus, 2014). However in some instances, this biological, cognitive, social and emotional maturity may not be reached until a later stage and may be dictated by gender. Adolescence is characterised by rapidly changing and unpredictable behaviour (Freud, as cited in Rathus 2014), heightened and unstable emotions (Hall, as cited in Rathus 2014), disturbances in identity, the gradual development of one’s moral reasoning (Kohlberg, as cited in Rathus, 2014) and the gradual establishment of one’s independence. Several of these changes may occur at differing phases in adolescent growth. This development is categorized into three separate stages; early adolescence, middle adolescence, and late adolescence. Early Adolescence, commencing from the ages of eleven or twelve until the age of fourteen, comprises of several features such as rapid biological development and maturity, heightened stress levels and limited coping capabilities. On the other hand, middle adolescence, from the approximate age of fourteen to sixteen, involves the gradual cease of biological change, an increase in coping strategies and declined stress levels. Furthermore, late adolescence, commencing from the age of sixteen until the age of eighteen or nineteen, encompasses physical maturity, whereby the