Psychology and Education Paper Assignment

SOSC 1120: Psychology and Education Paper Assignment

Name: Chan Chui Yee Tracy   Student ID: 20103468

Adolescence is a period ranging from approximately from age 12 to 20. This is the transition from childhood to adulthood, which includes both social and emotional changes.

The first major change is about the more important relationships with the peers and the school. According to the Psychosocial Theory by Erik Erikson, people will go through eight psychological stages. Teenagers will go through two stages. One is Stage 4 (6 to 12 years old) with the crisis of industry versus inferiority. At this stage, teenagers have the intimate relationship with the schools and the peers while relationship with teachers and parents and those who are older than them become more complicated. Peer and teacher influence are much more critical than parents. Peers exert the most influential effect on adolescence. Teenagers pay much attention and emphasis on their friends’ views, attitudes and behaviors. Sometimes, due to the limited life experiences and immature decision making skills, they may be vulnerable under negative peer pressure.

The second major change is about the personal identity. Based on the Psychosocial Theory, teenagers will go through Stage 5 (12 to 18 years old), which is identity versus role confusion.

That means the adolescents start to explore, discover and affirm their personal identification. They have some questions about the definition of one’s identity through investigating different sexual, occupational and academic roles in different perspectives. Teenagers start to establish reflectivity by evaluating and analyzing themselves with their views in developing their self-perception. As a result, teenagers may have unstable sense of perception of themselves, leading to labile temper.

For the methods to keep them motivated in classroom here are some suggestions.

The first one is about the expectancy theory. It is a model that demonstrates the how the effort exerted by people would change according to their beliefs of reward. The motivation intensity has positive relationship with 2 factors. One is the perceived probability of accomplishment of the task. Students are more willing to pay more effort on work if they perceive a task has a higher chance to complete successfully. However, the task cannot be set to be too low that is too easy and the motivation would also be decreased. Therefore, Cherry should know the details of abilities of her students. Then base on these standard to set the difficulty level of homework or examinations that matches with the students’ abilities would increase their motivation.