Issue 1.1. Psychological Development: Conceptual and methodological framework

The first concept treated in this part of the first block, is the conceptual and methodological framework, and in this part of the subject we will talk about how are this concept understood in all the ways. First of all, we want to explain the main goals of the Primary Education based on the ORDEN ECI/2211/2007, from 12th of July, which establish the curriculum and regulate the primary education basic documents, which are to provide to all boys and girls and education that allows:

- Strengthening their personal development and well-being.

- Acquiring the basic cultural skills related to the oral expression and comprehension, to the reading, writing and calculating.

- Developing social skills, working and study habits, the artistic sense, creativity, and affectivity.

This three points cover up all the aspects that are important in a child to develop during this period, to citizenship skills, the knowledge and the values. The first point of this three, the personal development and well-being, is the one that has as goal to achieve a future generation sensitized with all the environmental problems, and to create future generations with the values of participation, equality, freedom and respect for everyone, as the key tool to achieve a better future and respect for everybody.

Secondly, we want to develop all the concepts that are relation with the knowledge well said, which means, to make out kids achieve good oral, reading and writing skills, and also good calculating knowledge. This four statements are the ones that every kid needs to have to achieve the basic skills, and by now it's mean that are the basic competences that every student needs to have in order to be able to understand the things they learn and to create a well base in order to achieve future knowledge correctly.

Finally, efficiently and the achievement refers to the values and the maturation that the child is supposed to achieve in this years. At the end of the period, the child should be more autonomous and independent, he or she is supposed to start building their own criteria and opinion, and they may have acquired more senses in areas that were not previously developed.

So as it can be seen the main concept of this first area of the block is development. The main definition of development is the process through which new psychological functions are reached, in interaction with the physical and socio-cultural context. Which becomes wider and more complex. It is needed to make the difference between the concept development, previously defined, and the concepts growth and maturation. Growth is an independent process, a physical one; Maturation means to develop physically and mentally some new functions; Finally development is the combination of growth, maturation and the context.

Through the primary education kids are supposed to achieve development in different ways, for example, from the reflect, and automatic behavior, regulated by internal biological processes to the conscious and self-regulated behavior, which implies planification and decision making; from the dependency towards the personal autonomy; from incipient skills to increasing skills; from emotions dependent towards the control and emotional self-regulation.

All those concrete phases of development are fixed in the physical development of the child, for example the behavior development want the child to start acting not through primary responses but from more complex ones, which may involve reflection, meditation and decision chosen; the dependency through the adult figure (parents or teacher) needs to decrease in order to achieve a better development also in the child; and the same with all the other aspects (emotions, skills, relation with objects). Most of this changes take the heritage, which is the genetic legacy from your ancestors, and by experience, which is the development you achieve during your life, and also by the context in which the child grows creates one or other different development.

Depending on the focus of development that the author believes, we have four theoretical approaches:

1. Psychodynamic approach: which focus the natural basis of the development depending on the affective-emotional nature.

2. Behaviorist approach: which focus the social basis of the development depending on the learning.

3. Cognitivist approach: which focus the natural basis of the development depending on the maturation of the structures that allow learning.

4. Contextual approach: which focus the social basis of the development depending on the context and culture influences.

The Psychodynamic approach, which uses an endogenous perspective (all the development comes from the inside), has inside three different theories: Firs of all the Psychosexual Theory by Freud, says that the behavior is controlled by powerful unconscious impulses, and that those impulses are the basis of the motivation. Secondly the Attachment Theory by Bowlby, says that human beings have innate adaptation mechanisms to survive and that from the quality of this adaptations depends the future socio-affective development. Thirdly the Psychosocial Theory by Erikson says that the society influences on the personality development, which evolves through different crisis stages, in each critical stage the individual has to solve some evolutive tasks, which are the basis of identity construction and personal growth.

The Behaviorist approach, which uses an exogenous perspective (all the development depend on the behavior), has inside the Traditional Learning Theory by Pavlov, Skinner and Watson, which says that the environment controls the behavior, and as a consequence controls the person's reaction. The main example is the process in which a person makes a dog do something, if every time that you have food for a dog you ring a bell, firs of all the dog will not understand the relation at all, and you may have to go and find him to make him eat, but if you show him directly that the bell ringing means food time, finally he will understand the relation and he may run he hears the bell, because of the action he knows is after that. 

Applying this to our society we can say that children learn in a social context, through observation and imitation of models, and as Bandura said "People are more motivated if they perceive that their actions can be effective; if they have the conviction of having the personal capacities that allow them to regulate their emotions". That means that basically we will need a model to follow during our first days, to be guided and to be secure that we are doing it right, nevertheless, after a while and if we see that our actions are being effective and well-received in our society, we might encourage ourselves to keep on and achieve the emotional regulation.

The Cognitivist approach, which uses an endogenous perspective (which means that all the development has some innate stages, no matter the relation with the environment) has inside two theories, the first one is called Constructivist Theory by Piaget, and says that there are some qualitative changes in the thought operations that occur from childhood to adolescence, which basically means that there are some qualitative changes in the operation of the thinking from childhood to adolescence, and that those stages are innate stages, so no matter the context, the society or anything you will go through those stages in order to achieve the intelligent thinking, which is also present in the Information Processing Theory by Gadner, which says that humans beings are symbols’ processers.

Finally, the Contextual approach uses an exogenous perspective again, by saying that the development comes from the interaction with others and the education. It also has two theories inside which are the Socio-cultural Theory by Vygostki, which says that social interactions are the basis of human development; and the Bio-ecological Theory by Brofenbrenner, which says that the development occurs through the interaction between a person and five surrounding and interconnected systems of contextual influence. Basically those two lasts theories were the first ones in taking into account the context of the student, and this people thought, effectively, that the environment in which we are born and the people with we grow up, together with other factors as our family structure and values, our school, our neighborhood, and a lot more of factors really influence the way in which we develop.

To sum up this first concept, we will answer the questions found through the presentation done in class:

- Is change produced by ambient or by heritage?

It basically depends on the approach that a person uses to describe the development itself, but basically nowadays it has been showed that the ambient in which a children develop has a strong influence in the way of developing that he or she will acquire, for example the development of a kid from a working class will not be the same that one from the high class, because of the type of school, the family context, the income and the money that the family can invest in the education of their children, the relation between peers, etc.

- Are the change and the development stages lineal, universal?

As we have said there are a lot of contextual factors that can influence in the development of a person, nevertheless it's true that there are a certain stages of the development that in normal conditions every child will go trough during their live. For example, all the kids, despairing the social context or the family in which their grow, will achieve some autonomy, will learn emotional regulation, will learn self-regulated behavior, etc.

- What is the role of the education in the development?

The education and the development are closely related as we saw in the reading and the practice of this first class by answering the questions:

- Is the development a prerequisite for education?

- Is the development a result of education?

By that reading we learned that the education and the development are related in a bidirectional way, which means that they influence themselves mutually. That means that development is acquired by educational processes and all the elements that this process include, but also the development is required for a child in order to achieve the new knowledge properly, so the education and the development are really close, and they need the other to become effective and useful.