Child Development Interview

While interviewing several students at various stages of development, the scientific reasoning behind the theories of educational psychology come to life. One cannot merely digest the theories that educational psychology is founded on without examining the subjects of study in a more personal context. Reading and discussing can bring about understanding, but the level of understanding is given much more depth if educators examine students through the eye of an educational psychologist; that is studying the developmental levels by analyzing the personal responses of students to various open-ended questions. In this document four students ranging in age from six to 17 were given a sample of open-ended questions. The questions were formed to examine social, emotional, moral/spiritual, and cognitive development. Their exact responses were recorded and can be viewed in the attached appendix.
Interview 1
The first interviewee was a 6-year old girl. She provided excellent examples of her moral, social, and emotional development with her responses. When asked if it were ok to ever break a rule she very quickly said, “no” and reasoned that “it might make your parents mad”. Her response very clearly represents Piaget’s heteronomous morality and Stage 1 of Kohlberg’s preconventional morality- seeing rules as rigid , and having negative consequences (Slavin, 2012). She understood rules to be established by a higher authority, and to be followed to avoid punishment, an egocentric type of behavior. In question two, she was asked what makes her angry. She stated that when her parents or her friends tell her what to do that she becomes angry. She would then respond by crying or not playing with her friends. She seems to reason that when her parents tell her what to do they are bothering her. This type of behavior exemplifies autonomous development, a trait noted in Stage II of Erikson’s Psychosocial Development Theory (Slavin, 2012).
Although she exhibited some autonomous...