Explain how frameworks to support development can be used to influence current practice.
Freud was an early writer about child development and went against the thinking of his time, in differentiating between the way that children and adults think, as many thought that children were empty vessels waiting to be filled up.
Freud describes child development as a series of psychosexual stages whereby the pleasure seeking ID becomes focused on certain erogenous zones and this psychosexual energy or libido is the sole force behind human behaviour. He examines how if at any stage this desire is not satisfied or resolved problems may occur such as an individual who is fixated at the oral stage may be very dependant and clingy to others and may continue to seek oral stimulation through eating, drinking or smoking.
Although Freud does not at any time tackle the subject of learning directly his theories had a substantial influence on education at the time placing emphasis on the role of the family and home as part of the way that a child develops. He believes that the child is defined by its relationships even in the womb and contemporaries even went so far as to blame autism on mothers who did not bond with their children.
Freud saw a battle going on between the child’s unconscious desires and the need to fit into and succeed in society. He proposes that everything we do is to either help us survive or to prevent our own destruction. Therefore going to school would be linked to our unconscious desires to learn life skills in order to acquire wealth to be able to build a home, attract a wife etc to ensure our survival.
“Freud assigns to education the task of seeking to manage, within a state of equilibrium acceptable to everyone, the sacrifices and rewards that reality imposes upon the immediacy
References: Maslow, Abraham H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370-396. [The first published description of the "hierarchy of needs."] Watson, John B Skinner, B. F. (1950). Are theories of learning necessary? Psychological Review, 57, 193-216. Watson, John B. & MacDougall,[1] William. (1929). The battle of behaviorism: An exposition and an exposure. [A debate between the leading behaviorist and the leading instinct theorist of the early 20th century. Essentials of Psychology: Concepts and Applications by Jeffery S Nevid Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Bernard Jolibert as originally published ion Prospects: the quarterly review of comparative education.