Issues in Secondary Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 2

Issues in Secondary Education - Essay Example This stage, which is preceded by the Concrete Operational stage, begins more or less at age 11, which is beginning of puberty and continues well into adulthood. (Abbeduto, 2006, 131)This stage is characterized by acquisition of the ability to think abstractly and draw conclusions from the information available. This stage is also important to our topic, because the students are entering puberty around this time, which leads them to many questions about themselves and their bodies; further leading to questions about just who they think they are. According to Erik Erikson, there are eight stages of human development. Along with the stages themselves, Erikson also states that a psychosocial crisis occurs during each of the stages; for this stage, the psychosocial crisis is titled Identity versus role confusion. As stated by Erikson, this stage is when the adolescent student becomes concerned with how they appear to others. Many adolescents ask themselves "Who am I? Where am I going in life?", and confusion occurs because of the cognitive and bodily changes happening to the learner. Peer groups also play a role in this stage, because they affect who a student thinks they are too. (Blair, 2006, 53) The confusion of trying to decide what peer group you fit into exacerbates the possible identity crisis. At last is Abraham Maslow, with his Hierarchy of requirements. At the same time, when above-mentioned theorists talked about various stages of development, Maslow's theory is a little bit different; his theory explains that regardless of the age of a person, everyone is willing to have their requirements fulfilled. (Cooper, P. & Mcintyre, 2008, 383) The requirements that relate the most to this topic are the Belonging and the Esteem Requirements.  Ã‚