Arthur Jones has just come back home from kindergarten, eagerly telling his older sister Alice about the enormous sand castle that he built with his best friend Jonathan. Arthur, a fictional child, has just recently turned five years old. He is loving kindergarten and has made many new friends in class. He’s a very clever child who loves to read. When he’s not at school, he likes to watch cartoons and make puzzles. Occasionally, he will play some video games. Arthur is developing parallel to Erik Erikson’s early stages of development. In his first year, as an infant, Arthur found the perfect balance of trust and mistrust that Erikson deemed the “task” (Kalat, 2014, p.167). Arthur developed complete trust in his parents, who took time off work
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Currently in the pre-conventional morality stage, Arthur does not yet have his own moral code. His morality is largely defined by the adults around him and the consequences of his actions. Arthur simply does not want to be punished. He understands why certain things are wrong, but not at a very deep moral level. We see this in his behavior at school. He would always run to lunch, and when the teacher asked him to walk, he walked, but only because he was told to, not because he realized it could be dangerous. He has not reached the stage of conventional morality, where he will internalize a moral code (McLeod, 2011). As an infant, Arthur’s parents were always with him. Consequently, he showed very strong signs of what Mary Ainsworth described as secure attachment. For example, at the “mommy and me” classes his mother and he used to go to when he was younger, he would be very explorative and play with those around him when his mother was with him, but anxious and avoidant when she was gone, very similar to the infants who showed secure attachment in Ainsworth’s experiments (Kalat, 2014, p. 167). Currently, Arthur is much more independent, but still depends on his mother for …show more content…
I will test Arthur’s concept of conservation using two balls of clay. I first rolled both balls of clay into the same size sphere and ask him if one them had more clay or if they both had the same amount. Arthur answered that they had the same amount. I then flatten out one of them in front of him, and then asked him if one has more clay now or they still have the same. He stated that the ball of clay had more clay than the flattened out version of the same ball. This is typical behavior of a child who does not yet understand the idea of conservation. To them, mass and volume relate directly to the physical and apparent size of the respective objects. In terms of Vygotsky, who puts greater emphasis on cultural effects on cognitive development (Kalat, 2014, p. 162), Arthur is in the zone of proximal development for successfully understanding volume. He knew two balls that looked the same had the same volume. We could scaffold, or guide him towards, full understanding of conservation by measuring the weight of both balls on a scale. Arthur would see they have the exact same weight and thus have the same amount of clay, since it is still the same object. This experiment could be further expanded by using similar examples to strengthen the understanding, such as a liquid in different
Currently in the pre-conventional morality stage, Arthur does not yet have his own moral code. His morality is largely defined by the adults around him and the consequences of his actions. Arthur simply does not want to be punished. He understands why certain things are wrong, but not at a very deep moral level. We see this in his behavior at school. He would always run to lunch, and when the teacher asked him to walk, he walked, but only because he was told to, not because he realized it could be dangerous. He has not reached the stage of conventional morality, where he will internalize a moral code (McLeod, 2011). As an infant, Arthur’s parents were always with him. Consequently, he showed very strong signs of what Mary Ainsworth described as secure attachment. For example, at the “mommy and me” classes his mother and he used to go to when he was younger, he would be very explorative and play with those around him when his mother was with him, but anxious and avoidant when she was gone, very similar to the infants who showed secure attachment in Ainsworth’s experiments (Kalat, 2014, p. 167). Currently, Arthur is much more independent, but still depends on his mother for …show more content…
I will test Arthur’s concept of conservation using two balls of clay. I first rolled both balls of clay into the same size sphere and ask him if one them had more clay or if they both had the same amount. Arthur answered that they had the same amount. I then flatten out one of them in front of him, and then asked him if one has more clay now or they still have the same. He stated that the ball of clay had more clay than the flattened out version of the same ball. This is typical behavior of a child who does not yet understand the idea of conservation. To them, mass and volume relate directly to the physical and apparent size of the respective objects. In terms of Vygotsky, who puts greater emphasis on cultural effects on cognitive development (Kalat, 2014, p. 162), Arthur is in the zone of proximal development for successfully understanding volume. He knew two balls that looked the same had the same volume. We could scaffold, or guide him towards, full understanding of conservation by measuring the weight of both balls on a scale. Arthur would see they have the exact same weight and thus have the same amount of clay, since it is still the same object. This experiment could be further expanded by using similar examples to strengthen the understanding, such as a liquid in different