Focus Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Focus Paper - Essay Example It is also define as (biology) the process of an individual organism growing organically; a purely biological unfolding of events involved in an organism changing gradually from a simple to a complex level (Gilligan, 1982). Development on the other hand, refers to the progressive series of changes of an orderly and logical type leading to the individual's maturation; this definition implies that for development to be progressive there is a direction in the manner in which changes occur, development is also coherent essentially because the sequence of changes that occur are related to each other and do not haphazardly or abruptly (Gilligan, 1982). It also vital to study the Importance of studying stages of development, factors in growth and development, for us to have a clear picture of how one's morality grows and develop, since morality matures along with individual'sgrowth and development. Importance of Studying Stages of Development. In many instances people meet children of varying ages and wonder why each of them displays different characteristics (Erikson, 1959).The focus of study of development precisely points to these observations. A teacher, who expects to meet the needs of his/her learners, must be aware of the variety of developmental differences among his/her learners.The knowledge of the pattern of human development will certainly help a teacher to know what to expect of children and at what approximate ages certain patterns of behavior may appear or are expected to appear. Planning for instruction should also be based on certain development principles, which to a great extent determine what type of learning and amount of learning are appropriate for different age groups.In other cases knowledge of developmental patterns will allow teachers to identify learners with developmental lags or delays so as to provide guidance and intervention as early as possible.Thus teachers must learn to recognize the significance of this knowledge to their teaching success as well as to the learning process (Boeree, 2003). Factors in Growth and Development. Two general factors influence human development namely: 1. Maturation or natural growth resulting from heredity; 2. Environmental Influences in and through which the growing takes place. These two are factors are so thoroughly interrelated that it is impossible to isolate their specific influences. Every individual is born with definite potentialities of development passed on to him by his parents through hereditary potentialities for many kinds of behavior patterns continue to develop for months or even years, this process by which heredity exerts its influence long after birth is called maturation (Erikson, 1959). Modes of behavior at a given time in the life of an individual are not determine by heredity or environment working alone, instead they are the product of the interaction between his inherited tendencies and potentialities and those environmental influences by which he is stimulated an that is the starts when one's morality grows and develops Beginnings of Morality. Babies have no scale of values and no conscience, they are therefore moral nor immoral but non-moral in the sense that their behavior is not guided by moral standards eventually they will learn moral codes from their parents, and later from their teachers and playmates as well as the necessity for