Chapter Outline, Learning Objectives, and Summary

Chapter Outline

• Heredity
• Parents and Other Adults
• Peers

• Perspective Taking: Understanding Others' Thoughts and Feelings
• Social Problem Solving
• Violence and Aggression in Schools
• Promoting Social Development: Instructional Principles

• Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development
• The Development of Identity
• The Development of Self-Concept
• Promoting Psychosocial, Identity, and Self-Concept Development: Instructional Principles
• Ethnic Pride: Promoting Positive Self-Esteem and Ethnic Identity

• Increased Interest in Moral Education and Development
• Piaget's Description of Moral Development
• Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development
• Emotional Factors in Moral Development
• Promoting Moral Development: Instructional Principles
• Learning Contexts: Promoting Personal, Social, and Moral Development in Urban Environments

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the factors influencing personal development, and explain how differences in parenting and peer interactions can influence this development.
   
2. Describe characteristics that indicate advancing social development, and explain how social development relates to school violence and aggression.
3. Use descriptions of psychosocial, identity, and self-concept development to explain learners' behaviors.
4. Use descriptions of moral reasoning to explain differences in people's responses to ethical issues.

Summary

1. Describe the factors influencing personal development, and explain how differences in parenting and peer interactions can influence this development.
   • Personal development is influenced by heredity, parents and other adults, and peers.
   • Parents can contribute to personal development by providing a structured environment that is both demanding and responsive to children's individual needs.
   • Peers affect personal development through the attitudes and values they communicate and by offering or not offering friendship.
   
   
2. Describe characteristics that indicate advancing social development, and explain how social development relates to school violence and aggression.
   • Perspective taking allows students to consider problems and issues from others' points of view.
   • Social problem solving includes the ability to read social cues, generate strategies, and implement and evaluate these strategies.
   • Social development influences children's ability to make and interact with friends and their ability to learn cooperatively in school.
   • Students who commit violent and aggressive acts typically have underdeveloped social skills.
   
   
3. Use descriptions of psychosocial, identity, and self-concept to explain learners' behaviors.
   • Erikson's psychosocial theory, an effort to integrate personal and social development, is based on the assumption that development of self is a response to needs. Development occurs in stages, each marked by a psychosocial challenge called a crisis. As people develop, the challenges change.
   • Positive resolution of the crisis in each stage results in an inclination to be trusting, autonomous, willing to take initiative, and industrious, from the period of birth through approximately the elementary school years. Continued resolution of crises leaves people with a firm identity, the ability to achieve intimacy, desire for generativity, and finally, a sense of integrity as life's end nears.
   • The development of identity usually occurs during high school and beyond. Identity moratorium and identity achievement are healthy states; identity diffusion and identity foreclosure are less healthy.
   • Self-concept, developed largely through personal experiences, describes people's cognitive assessments of their physical, social, and academic competence. Academic self-concept, particularly in specific content areas, is strongly correlated with achievement, but achievement, physical, and social self-concepts are essentially unrelated.
   • Attempts to improve students' self-concepts by direct intervention are largely unsuccessful. In contrast, attempts to improve self-concept as an outcome of increased success and achievement have been quite successful.
   
   
4. Use descriptions of moral reasoning to explain differences in people's responses to ethical issues.
   • Piaget suggested that individuals progress from the stage of external morality, where rules are enforced by authority figures, to the stage of autonomous morality, where individuals see morality as rational and reciprocal.
   • Kohlberg's theory of moral development is based upon people's responses to moral dilemmas. He developed a classification system for describing moral reasoning that had three levels.
   • At the preconventional level, people make egocentric moral decisions; at the conventional level, moral reasoning focuses on the consequences for others; and at the postconventional level, moral reasoning is based on principle.
   • The experience of the unpleasant emotions of shame and guilt and the development of empathy mark advances in the emotional component of moral development.
   • Teachers can promote moral development in their classrooms by emphasizing personal responsibility and the functional nature of rules that protect the rights of others. Students should be encouraged to think about topics such as honesty, respect for others, and basic principles of human conduct.