A personal reflection on the lecture (i.e. what you found interesting, including any personal and/or professional observations and experiences related to the content, etc.).
Part 1: brief short important to you, summary of the lecture content below.
Part 2: a personal reflection on the lecture (i.e. what you found interesting, including any personal and/or professional observations and experiences related to the content, etc.).
Reference:
The Will
Piaget considered the will as a permanent scale of values constructed by the individual to which he or she feels obliged to adhere. Complete construction of the will does not occur until middle concrete operations (around the age of ten). Children are taught values by parents, teachers, and other adult authorities in their lives to follow the rules, be considerate of other people, not to steal, tell the truth, etc. These become the external values that the child comes to understand and are instrumental in the process of constructing the will.
Once the will is fully constructed, learned values are assimilated into the will and are internalized and conserved (become an integral part of one’s mindset of values to be upheld). Once values are conserved, the individual will typically adhere to these values regardless of conflicting impulses that are external to the will. Individuals who have conserved positive values will be less likely to be affected by negative influences than someone who has not conserved positive values, or who has not conserved values at all. It is important to note that although peer pressure during adolescence can be significant and a teen may sometimes yield to negative peer pressure to be accepted by a group, if positive values are conserved, these individuals will eventually come back to them in adulthood. An example of this may be a teen who was raised with strong values and morals may rebel and do the opposite of what is expected of them. Yet when the rebellious period is over (usually when the adolescent realizes their actions do not fit who they feel they truly are), the young adult will return to the original positive values that were conserved throughout childhood. Of course, this is not always the case, and there are exceptions were individuals continue with negative values throughout their lives regardless of upbringing, but this is more the exception than the rule.
Given this, it is also important to note that conserved values may not always be positive. For instance, if young children are taught by parents to steal or lie to get what they want or other negative values, then these are the values that will be conserved. For example, a child who is taught to shoplift items by a parent will most likely continue to do so into adulthood unless taught otherwise or is arrested. Additional sources of negative values can be obtained through unregulated exposure to television, the Internet, violent video games, or other media. So, parents especially and teachers of young children as well have a responsibility to make a conscious effort to teach positive values so that these will be conserved in the will.
Autonomy
The concept of autonomy refers to the ability to govern oneself rather than being told what to do by others. Autonomy is the ability to make decisions based on one’s own reasoned judgments while evaluating the impact of those decisions on other people. In short, autonomy is the ability to self-regulate one’s own behavior. During pre-operations and up through middle concrete operations, children view and accept rules as being handed down from some higher authority (e.g. their parents or other significant adults). Thus, the younger child’s concept of morality is a morality of obedience. Piaget called this unilateral respect for rules handed down by adult authorities. What is right or wrong is predetermined by authority figures and is not subject to the child’s own evaluation. Further, there is little understanding of cooperation in the social sense. Rather, there is only obedience or unilateral respect.
Sometime around the age of nine or ten years (middle concrete operations), children become capable of making their own moral evaluations and begin to logically reason about the correctness or incorrectness of their actions and the effects those actions may have on others. Their evaluations may not always be correct, but they begin to shift from a morality of obedience to a morality of cooperation. Mutual respect (respect between equals) also appears during this period where children can increasingly take the perspectives of others. This development becomes evident when children begin to argue with adults about what is just and right and express increasing concerns about what is fair and not fair. In short, it is during the stage of concrete operations that children’s sense of a moral self begins to emerge and clear shifts also become evident in children’s concepts of rules, accidents and clumsiness, lying, and justice and punishment.
Understanding of Rules
Piaget was interested in finding out how children came to understand the relationship of rules by observing how children played games. Piaget chose games because they have a social structure of rules that vary in complexity depending on the age and cognitive development of the child.
Piaget discovered four broad stages in the development of children’s understanding of the rules of games. These stages correspond to the four stages of cognitive development and are called (1) the motor stage, (2) the egocentric stage, (3) the stage of cooperation, and (4) the stage of codification of the rules.
Stage 1: Motor Stage (sensorimotor): In this stage, the child is not aware of any rules. During the first few years of life and extending into the stage of pre-operations, games are played any way the child wants. The activity is nonsocial and the children usually play by themselves. At this stage, games are more like toys, and the child’s enjoyment comes more from physical manipulation of objects. For example, a young child playing with a board game may play with the game pieces but have no sense of order or structure on how the game is played. They may also have conversations with themselves as they play that may not make sense to an observing adult. There is no evidence of any awareness of playing the games as a social activity.
Stage 2: Egocentric Stage (pre-operations): During the stage of pre-operations, children show an interest in playing games with other, usually older children. However, children now simply try to imitate older children’s play, but they play in the group by themselves. Because of preoperational egocentrism, there is a lack of true social interaction or awareness of true cooperation in playing the game. However, this isolated play within the context of a group, from a social standpoint, is an advance over behavior of the previous stage. Now, the child wants to play with other children, but lacks any appreciation or knowledge of the game from a social point of view. Children imitate what they see but are still egocentric and can’t take the view of other players. Consequently, their play does not involve cooperation and the child still lacks a consistent understanding of rules.
Stage 3: Cooperation (concrete operations): Sometime around the age of seven or eight years of age, at the beginning of the stage of concrete operations, children can take the viewpoint of another person. As a result of this advance in social knowledge, children have a clearer understanding of the rules of the game and cooperate with other players in playing the game. However, at this stage, the rules are regarded as “set in stone,” and children will become quite upset if a suggestion is made to change the rules. A great place to observe this is on school playgrounds. Children at this age playing games can get so caught up in the proper following of rules, they often forget to play at all. Also, the object of the game now is to win. However, because children are not willing to change the rules, they must get around the rules in order to win. Therefore, children at this age will cheat in order to accomplish the goal of winning. This type of cheating is sneaky, and although children of the same age may not notice, it is quickly identifiable by adults.
Stage 4: Codification (late concrete operations/early formal operations): Around the age of eleven to twelve, most children come to understand that rules are, or can be, made by group consensus. They also realize that rules are necessary for fair play, and they understand that the group can change the rules. The goal is still to win, but now that goal is accomplished by getting others in the group to agree to change the rules to the advantage of individual players. Games become a cooperative social activity more common among adolescents and adults.
Concepts of Accidents and Clumsiness
Piaget believed that children cannot be directly taught to understand others’ intentions. Rather they construct the concept of intentionality out of their interactions with others via the construction of social knowledge (how we learn to get along with others). Not until children can take the viewpoint of others can they construct a concept of intentionality. For example, younger children are not able to consider the intentions of others in their judgments about accidents. If a four-year-old child (pre-operations stage) is accidentally bumped by another, he will view the bumping as intentional and will become upset, push back or otherwise expect the other child to be punished by an adult. Because of his egocentrism, he cannot see the situation from any viewpoint but his own, but the concept of intention changes as children grow older. By the middle of concrete operations, children gain the ability to consider others’ points of view or perspectives. Now, intentions are understood and considered when making judgments about whether acts are accidental or intentional. If the same scenario occurs where a child is accidently bumped by another, the child will understand the act was accidental, not intentional, and will accept a simple apology instead of expecting retribution.
Concepts of Lying
Much like the misunderstanding of intentions, younger children (in pre-operations) view lies literally without considering circumstance. For example, if a parent promises a child they will go to a water park on the weekend, but it rains (forcing a cancelation of the trip), the child will view the parent as having lied and often become upset. Later on, in the stage of concrete operations, children consider intentions in relation to lying and will define a lie as something that is intentionally untrue. Additionally, preoperational children view the consequence of lying as resulting in punishment, thus the threat of punishment becomes a primary factor in determining whether one should lie or not. If the child views no threat of punishment, then it may be okay to lie. By concrete operations, children will gain an understanding that lying is wrong even if it goes unpunished. By the stage of formal operations, intention becomes the major criterion for evaluating lying and adolescents and adults begin to understand that lying may be necessary at times for social cooperation (e.g. telling a “white lie” as not to hurt someone’s feelings).
Concepts of Justice and Punishment
Piaget talks about two kinds of punishment as understood by children: expiatory punishment and punishment by reciprocity. With cognitive development, and especially as social knowledge is constructed, children’s concepts of punishment change.
Expiatory punishment is strong punishment administered to children by parents or other adult authorities for breaking rules. Expiatory punishment is considered to be just by children because of the idea that painful punishment will deter further rule breaking. Expiatory punishment is arbitrary because it does not have to bear any relationship to the crime committed or to the rule broken. Piaget discovered that younger children, up through middle concrete operations, favor expiatory punishment. Younger children consider that the harshest punishment is the fairest.
Punishment by reciprocity is based on the assumption that there is no need for painful punishment to make someone obey the rules. Rather, the person who has violated the rules should be made aware that breaking rules destroys the social relationship and the basic social contract of cooperation. This awareness alone should be enough to make the person desire to restore the social relationship. If this does not work, however, and punishment must be applied, punishment by reciprocity says that the punishment must be related to the rule broken. In other words, now “the punishment must fit the crime”. Thus, the child who does not clean up her room may be deprived of playing with the toys that were left on the floor. Punishment is considered as the natural consequence of rule breaking. Emphasis is on persuasion and prevention rather than on punishment for its own sake. Punishment by reciprocity is characteristic of the moral understandings of children in late concrete operations and early formal operations. Therefore, it is guided by principles of cooperation, reciprocity, and fairness rather than by adult constraint. Older children and adolescents favor punishment by reciprocity.
Affective (Emotional) Development in Adolescence
The development of affect during the stage of formal operations also is related to changes in cognitive structures, or schema, during this stage. During adolescence, affective (emotional) development is characterized by three factors: cognitive egocentrism, idealism, and formation of personality.
Cognitive Egocentrism
Once adolescents can think about their own and other people’s thinking, they frequently think that other people are also thinking about them. Consequently, they become convinced that others are as concerned with them and their appearance as they are with themselves. In fact, the extreme self-consciousness that emerges in early adolescence is in part attributed to their newly constructed formal thinking abilities. Typical examples of this are over exaggerated perceptions that they are constantly being judged by peers on appearance and actions, distancing oneself from parents (e.g. being embarrassed to be seen with parents in public), and obsessions with having the latest and greatest item (technology, clothing, etc.) they think “everyone else has” except them.
Although this adolescent self-centeredness may be mildly irritating to parents, it sometimes has dire consequences. The egocentrism of the formal thinking adolescent may be partly responsible for adolescent depression, eating disorders, and even suicide. Prior to this stage, children don’t think about other people’s thinking and thus don’t see themselves as others may see them. However, in adolescence, the acute concern with what other people think and the possibility that the adolescent may not measure up in the eyes of others may cause depression and feelings of worthlessness. Unrealistic depictions of important physical attributes (ultra-thin for women and male degradation of women in music) in the media are good examples.
Idealism
Related to the egocentrism characteristic of the stage of formal operations, adolescents develop a form of idealism that results from “over belief” in their newly constructed logical thought processes. Because of their more complex thought processes, adolescents now can reason about abstract concepts like ethics, morals, values, etc., and they tend to believe that whatever they think should happen is what happens in reality. Thus, they fail to consider what is realistically rather than idealistically possible. For example, a young person may feel that world peace can be achieved easily if governments would just lay down their weapons and provide equal rights and acceptance to all human beings. However, the adolescent fails to realize how complex and difficult such an idealistic (utopian) goal is to achieve in reality, considering the complex nature of human society and wide diversity of cultural ideals and values that may seem contrary to our own, but are perfectly acceptable in other cultures.
Piaget theorized this idealistic stage subsides when the adolescent learns to use logic effectively in relation to the reality of life, eventually recognizing that all human and worldly events cannot be judged strictly against a criteria of what is purely logical, allowing for thinking to become more realistically oriented, rather than how they think it should be. As an adult, one can work actively for positive change within society but recognizes this process may be slow and may take multiple generations and perhaps hundreds if not thousands of years before an “idealized” human society is realized, if at all.
Formation of Personality
Piaget thought that it was not until adolescence that completion of formation of personality occurs. Piaget distinguished between what he called the personality and the self. The self begins its development in the first year of life and is oriented toward the individual. The self refers to self-interest and implies no obligation for others beyond the self. The personality, on the other hand, is not permanently constructed until after formal operations and the young person seeks to adapt to society and eventually to the “real” world of work. That is, now the desire is to take one’s place as a contributing member of society. Thus, the personality, unlike the self, is directed at society and toward becoming a member of society. Piaget considered that the development of fully formed personality may be viewed as the final aspect of social and affective development.
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