Developmental approaches

Psychosexual Approach

Psychodynamic approach is based on the natural development. This approach is formed basically by three theories. One of them is Bowlby’s attachment theory which states that humans have mechanisms that let them survive. Those mechanisms are not learned, we are born with them. One clear example of this theory is the secure attachment that takes places when looking for a bonding figure in order to feel safe and knowing that you have someone with whom trust.  Erikson also contributes stating that, as we have been already observing, society has an impact on the personality and its development with the psychosocial theory. Learning from the environment is really effective so they have models, but it can provoke contradictions as well with the self way of acting. If what the child is observing an action which is extremely different from how he would react to the same action, it can evolve into a crisis. When the kid overcomes the contradictions is when he constructs his identity. 

Nevertheless, the main representative of the psychodynamic approach is Freud and his psychosexual theory. One of the main elements of this theory, and the one which suggested me more curiosity when I was studying psychology are the stages from which every child goes through in order to develop the personality. Freud was really revolutionary at his time, creating controversy theories such as this one, and that may be the reason why I was so interested in his work.

This theory mainly describes the evolution and development of a child through five stages, each of them inside an age framework that is accomplished when the child has no special need or disability. When all the stages have been accomplished successfully, the child has the expected personality, but if one or more of those stages have not been completed can lead to a fixation which means that the child will be sort of obsessed of what was implied in the theory he could not fulfill. A clear example is when an individual who has a fixation on the first stage, the oral, in which the mouth is the element from which they learn and obtain pleasure, so in their adulthood they can make this up for by smoking, drinking or eating excessively. 

In this table we can observe the identity traits of each stage, and what are the consequences if one stage has not been properly accomplished. 

However, the psychosexual theory just not only focuses on the evolution of a kid during his childhood, but also remarks the fact that the behavior of any human being is controlled by impulses, which generates motivation, and those are unconscious which means that, at a first sight, we cannot identify its origin and are involuntary.

Behavioral Approach

Behavorist approach is based on the learning processes and the social environment. The characteristic theory of this approach is the traditional learning, developed by different intellectuals, which, like Freud’s psychosexual theory, is more concerned about the behavioral changes than the thinking processes. As general concepts, this theory states that people tend to be more motivated if the effectiveness of their actions can be seen by themselves and their good repercussions are quick and affect tem positively in their life.

These theories are based on a stimulus-response framework which allows them to confirm that learning comes from the environment, from which children take models. Social context and observation are key elements for this traditional learning theory. Bandura believes that children learn by copying.

Pavlov’s classical conditioning explains how human beings respond to different stimuli and situations. He was interested in the digestive process. He believed the salivation was a learned process, and to prove it he realized an experiment with dogs in which he first gave food to dogs to provoke salivation. Then, he created a neutral stimulus, concretely the sound of a bell, and that created no response for the dog. After that every time the dog was served food, the bell rang so the dog associated the sound of the bell with the food, and it created the unconditioned response -salivation-. Once the dog had it interiorized, the food was taken out and the only stimulus the dog received was the bell and, the dog associated the sound with the meal so salivation was produced. Therefore, the bell, which at the beginning was a neutral stimulus, became a conditioned stimulus that provoked a conditioned response, which is salivation.

Another author who contributed with a different conditioning is Skinner and this operant condition which is based on the principle that behavior is formed by our actions and their consequences. Skinner was influenced by Thorndike’s study of the known Law of Effect. Skinner’s experiment is similar to Thorndike’s, but he incorporated a reinforcement as any behavior which is reinforced is more likely to be repeated. This reinforcement is given after a desired response of the studied action. He worked with three kinds of reinforcements: 

• Neutral operants which are the responses from the environment that have no repercusion of a behavior being repeated.
• Reinforcers which responses, coming  from the environment, increase the probability of a behavior being repeated. Reinforcers can be either positive or negative.
• Punishers are response from the environment that, on the contrary,  decrease the likelihood of a behavior being repeated. 

Skinner's experiment to prove his theory consisted in placing a hungry rat in a box which he called "Skinner box".  The box was provided with a lever which knocked by the rat, it dropped food. The rat ended up learning what to do to get food. The box contained a lever in the side and as the rat moved about the box it would accidentally knock the lever.  This proved that a reinforcement provokes repetition. 

Now that we have seen how the rat responded to a positive reinforcement, Skinner tried to worked by a negative reinforcement with the same animal. In this case, the rat received an elecrtic current every time it moved around the box to get into the lever, so the rat quickly learned to go straight to the lever insetad of walking around. 

In this video, Skinner himself explains the experiment but with pigeons instead of rats. 

We can exemplify Skinner's reinforcements into a school context. For example, if a child smokes in the school and he as friends who encourage him doing it and they are glad for him for smoking, he would repeat this behavior. On the other and, if he is caught smoking by any professional of the school and he ends up being punished or suspended from the school, he would not repeat it again. 

Watson, who is more extreme than Skinner, performed a constroversial experiment called Little Albert along with a graduate student called Rosalie Raynor. In this experiment, he wanted to take Pavlov's work further showing that emotional reactions could be also applied to people and not just to animals.

The subject of the experiment was a nine months old child called Albert B who was exposed to stimuli such as a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks and a burning newspapers. Watson and Raynor observed the boy's reactions coming to the conclusion that, intially, he showed no fear to any of the stimuli.

They decided to include new stimuli to the ones already shown to the kid in order to provoke a greater response. This time, when Albert was shown the rat, Watson made a loud noise making the child cry. After repeating this action several times, Albert ended up crying when the rat was shown to him. No more noise was needed for him to cry when seeing a rat.

This is was Watson and Rayner wrote about the kid's reaction to the rat:
The instant the rat was shown, the baby began to cry. Almost instantly he turned sharply to the left, fell over on [his] left side, raised himself on all fours and began to crawl away so rapidly that he was caught with difficulty before reaching the edge of the table.

In this video we can see how the experiment was developed:

Cognivist Approach

Cognivist approach is based on the maturation of the learning structures. This approach is mainly represented by Piaget and his constructivist theory which is used to explain the way children's act and think at different levels of their development, according to their age. Specifically, it is about what children are interested in and capable at different ages. Children from similar ages share an understanding of the world and a coherent view of it. Piaget differentiates four different stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational.

This table explains the stages proposed by Piaget

Piaget's theory have implications in education. First of all, according to Piaget's point of view, teachig is indirect as kids do not only interiorize what the teacher is explaining to them but they also interpret and they compare it to their previous knowledge and experiences. Besides, for Piaget knowledge is not information is not something that the child has to memorize, kids learn from experiences and interaction with the world, people and things. 

Contextual Approach

Socio-historic-cultural approach is based on the context and cultural influences. The bio-ecological theory, developed by Bronfenbenner, considers the environment as the main element for the development of any child, and his interaction with it. According to this theory, we can make a distinction among the systems from which the children should have a close contact. We identify the micro-system -the closest context of the kid such the family, parents, school and neighborhood-; meso-system, which involves the interaction of two micro-systems. For example, a meso-system could be when parents have a meeting with their kid’s teacher in to improve his learning process. The exo-system is the environment with which the child does not have a direct contact with but what happens in those contexts affect him somehow. The working place of the parents or the parents’ friend can be good examples of exo-systems. Finally, the micro-system is formed by the cultural and political values, the economical models, social conditions, etc of the society in which the child is immerse; and the crono-system which is the impact that time has on the previous systems, such as the changes within a family in a period of 7 years. The parents could have been divorced, a child could have been born, a family member could have been died, the families could have moved to another house, the father could have changed his job, etc.

Although Bronfenbenner theory explains perfectly this approach, Vygotsky has a different theory, which I have already talked a little bit about in the previous content of the portofolio, which is more related to the interest ambit of this project, which is education. His sociocultural theory has the main premise that social interaction is the basic element of the human development.