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Identity and Lifespan Development Research Paper

Lifespan development is the cognitive and physical change that occur throughout a person’s life. There are said to be six stages of life; Infancy, Childhood, Adolescence, Early Adulthood, Middle Age, Older Age. These developmental stages promote cognitive, psychological and physical growth in a person. As per Erikson, In the social wilderness of human presence, there is no sentiment being alive without a feeling of Identity. These lifespan development form birth to death form the human identity. These developments are mainly due to the experiences a human being go throughout life; the ups and downs, the happiness, the sorrows, the win, the losses. The life expectancy advancement hypothesis perceives the way toward adjusting to always showing signs of change impacts in our lives by development, support or versatility, and the control of misfortune (Broderick and Blewitt,2010 Life occasions that impact improvement can be put into three noteworthy classes of age-reviewed, history-evaluated, and non-regulating (Broderick and Blewitt, 2010).

Paper describes the events a human being go through life are different from others that’s why every person has a different identity. In this paper, I will show developmental stages of my life that influenced me and shaped my identity theoretically and visually. What you’ll read in this paper might not be relatable as every person’s life experiences are different, but you’ll get an idea of how the development influence and affects human identity. In the end, I’ll describe how this theory is relevant to the practices of school counseling and how achievements in life are related to the theoretical structure of this theory over the person’s lifespan.

Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson was the first professional to describe and use the concept of ego identity in his book on what is the healthy responsibility development for individuals in their life span. By Erikson’s view, as well as many other identity writers, it can be safely said that identity enables one to move with the right purpose and in the right direction with a sense of inner sameness and continuity over time and place.

Erikson considered identity to be psychosocial, formed by the intersection of individual biological and psychological capacities in combination with the opportunities and supports offered by one’s social context. Identity regularly turns into a focal issue of worry amid pre-adulthood, when choices about future professional, ideological, and social issues should be tended to; be that as it may, these key personality concerns frequently request facilitate reflection and amendment amid various periods of grown-up life too. Character, along these lines, isn’t something that one purposes for the last time toward the finish of puberty, but instead, personality may proceed to develop and change through the span of grown-up life as well. Following Erikson’s initial writings, subsequent theorists have laid different emphases on the role of the individual and the role of society in the identity formation process. One exceptionally mainstream elaboration of Erikson’s works on a personality that holds a psychosocial center is the character status model of James Marcia. While Erikson had depicted one’s character determination as lying someplace on a continuum between personality accomplishment and part perplexity (and ideally found closer the accomplishment end of the range), Marcia characterized four altogether different means by which one may approach character characterizing choices: character accomplishment (duty following investigation), ban (investigation in process), abandonment (responsibility without investigation), and dispersion (no dedication with almost no investigation). These four methodologies (or personality statuses) have, over numerous decades, been the focal point of more than 1,000 hypothetical and research contemplates that have analyzed personality status precursors, behavioral results, related identity qualities, examples of relational relations, and formative types of development after some time. A further field of study has concentrated on the suggestions for mediation that every personality status holds.

Current research seeks both to refine the identity statuses and explore their dimensions further through narrative analysis.

 Analysis of Timeline Events on Identity Development

The character can be characterized as the characterization of what it intends to a person to be interesting, including his objectives, convictions, and points of view (Broderick and Blewitt, 2010).  A person’s sense of identity is formed with experiences he or she goes through life. These experiences may be positive or negative, and it either depends on the experiences themselves or the way you take it. Some experiences and happenings are short-lived, but others are long term, deep, influencing one’s life more than one can even anticipate. They say a man is what and how he experiences events in life and that’s what shapes identity. I’ll share my experiences in life stage wise and how they influenced and shaped what I am today.

Life Event I: 1991 Born to a working father and mother

This occasion was an age-reviewed occasion of essentialness to my improvement of character in light of the way it influenced my connection style.  My mother was a teacher, and my father was working for an Intelligence agency as well as for a bank. So, my infancy and early childhood were spent in the care of a daycare center and babysitters. I never got the full attention of my parents in my childhood. This led to me having an indecisive nature in the later stages of life. I wasn’t fearful of strangers, but I lacked empathy for my own. I born to be of a sensitive nature as well. I can safely say that I grew up on my own and this helped me in a way that I have good problem solving and communication skills. Though I struggled in my early stages soon, I became brilliant in mind. Solving my problems myself and never asking anyone for help became my habit.

My parents had a predominantly authoritative parenting style in my childhood although this change to permissive when I entered adolescence. But as they were busy in their life I was completely dependent on the parenting style of my caretaker. Due to her poor parenting style, I wasn’t taught to be self-regulated and disciplined. I always struggled with handling emotions and emotional self-regulation. I want a crybaby, but in later stages of my life, I became less sharing and emotionally unstable. Overthinking things became my routine.

My caretaker’s  parenting style molded my personality since I battled through the Initiative versus Guilt arrange in Erikson’s Psychosocial Developmental Theory (Kraus, 2008).

All through youth and immaturity, I kept on having free limits which affected my associations with others since I crossed limits consistently. This likewise made a feeling of uncertainty and perplexity inside me since I was uninformed that I was crossing these limits and despite the fact that it appears to be fine with me, it was aggravating for others.

Life Event II: 1996 Birth of Younger Brother with Downs Syndrome

My brother’s birth was a non-normative event that strongly impacted my identity because it provided me with the opportunity for taking care of my special brother and gave me the role of ‘Big Brother.’  My parents came from a background where respecting elders and loving younger was a strong norm.  My older brother raised me pretty well. His personality became attractive to me, and I started to act on his footsteps.As indicated by Erikson, I was in the Industry versus Inferiority phase of advancement, in which the real undertaking is to increase self-assurance through acing aptitudes and social communications with others (Kraus, 2008). I believe the birth of my younger brother gave me sense self-confidence and capabilities. Due to my love unusual love for him, I became attached to him. Took care of him, ranging from changing his diapers to feeding him and playing with him.  This psychological development made me a reliable person as I was unknowingly growing up to become a responsible person. It additionally affected my advancement socially because I was all the more eager to cooperate with outsiders to flaunt my new sibling, which made me more OK with outsiders and collaborating in social circumstances.

This event had an overall positive impact on my identity as I became a more caring, reliable and concerned person as compared to my peers specifically in my High school and University setting. I place a high value on being reliable to my friends and family in early years as they showed a sense of concern for others. This has positively affected my associations with peers and even with outsiders as they probably are aware they can depend on me in circumstances to complete things speedily.

Life Event III: The era of parties and drugs

This non-regulating occasion in my life is important because it assumed a noteworthy part in forming my character through Erikson’s phase of Identity versus Role Confusion (Kraus, 2008).  In my adolescence, as I had been through an unhealthy parenting style in my childhood I was susceptible to new ideas whether good or bad. The idea of hash, weed, and psychedelics was attractive to me, and I started taking them for recreational purposes and sometimes as a mean to escape. They had positive as well as negative impacts on my development. It played an effective role in isolating me from my friends and family. Amid the phase of Identity versus Role Confusion, youths need to conquer the formative emergency of what characterizes them as an individual; people who don’t beat this emergency are helpless against more prominent damage.. The sense of having control on myself kept me away from greater harm and I became the master of my own body.

But before this control, I experienced an absence of character all through my youth and even grown-up years.  This affected my psychological state of mind in a way that I felt insecure about myself, anxious about something good to happen. A person doesn’t feel when the experiences are affecting his or her development. My state of mind did put a negative impact on my growth, but you learn from your experiences. Self-acceptance was the biggest challenge for me because when you enter your adult stage self-acceptability plays a vital role. I lacked that in my adolescence, but I always had this innate feeling that this ought to change. This cant is a part of my identity, so I struggled for it to change.

Life Event IV: 2004 Began a Relationship with God

Starting a relationship with God was a non-standardizing occasion that happened amid my pre-adult years at 18 years old.  I became inquisitive of the religion. The questions like why we exist? Who is God and why did he made us when we all have to die ultimately? Whats our purpose? And for this, I started reading books. My religion is Islam, so I read Quran and tried to find the purpose in there. I also did some comparative religion studies. I sat in “aitekaaf” for consecutive five years, gained a lot of knowledge. My love for God grew strong, and He never let me down onwards.

As indicated by Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory, an individual is affected by their condition, both quick and far off (Broderick and Blewitt, 2010).  By becoming a part of ‘Tableghi’ jamaat(Like a church community), I met many people with different ethnic groups, different ideas, and different identities. It influenced me on a level I had never experienced before. The diversity increased acceptability and patience in me, which is helping me right now as well.

Additionally, now in my life, I started to create dynamic reasoning, as indicated by Piaget’s Developmental Theory and in this way could appreciate more unique ideas, for example, religion (Kuhn, 2008).  I found out not that there are many religions but also different schools of thought in a single religion. Each is having different ideology, different belief. In my religion, there is the concept of one GOD who can’t be seen physically. Believing in something you can’t see is an experience that affects identity development pretty much. You devote your whole life submitting to commands of someone you cant see and put your faith in someone unknown is an experience unexplainable. You can find him in nature, in everything you do. In the making of skies and earth and feel His strength, and via feeling His strength, you feel strong.

Life Event V: 2011 Meeting with future better-half

I met Zarah in my junior year at University. This was an age-graded event that shaped my identity due to the relationship I built with her. This provided me with a sense of security and value. This also strengthened me within.

Bowlby (1988) estimates that if a people’s involvement with another individual is remarkably not quite the same as past cooperations. This experience makes you feel different in many respects. This made me feel confident and provided me with a sense of importance. This took a shift in my attachment style. My experiences of social interactions changed dramatically.

When you are in a relationship, you vulnerability also increases and this vulnerability makes you socially interactive.

Life Event VI: 2012 Beginning of Graduate School

I began Graduate School in Spring 2012 at the age of 22 shortly after finishing my undergraduate degree. I was enrolled in a psychology program the dealt with the mental health care. This impacted me both psychologically and cognitively. I gained a lot of experiences and knowledge related to how my mind works and how I can change my thinking and way to act as well. The amount of growth I experienced allowed me to change many of the perceptions I had in the past. It gave me new perceptions about life and how it works

Encountering this self-awareness and cementing my personality likewise enabled me to develop my theoretical reasoning. Before Graduate School, I had achieved Piaget’s Formal Operational stage which is the fourth and last stage. During my time there, I developed the ability to think about the abstract concept. I was by then equipped with the skills such as logical thought, deductive reasoning, and systematic planning also emerge during this stage.

Intersection of Developmental Theory and School Counseling

When we talk about development theories, we need to understand that ‘mastery’ occurs at a different speed for different learners in a classroom. There is no starting point for learning nor an end to learning. It just goes on as the person grew up.

If we take Piaget’s theories, we see that they can be applied in different educational eras. And as I said earlier there is no end to which everyone has learned. Rather this development takes place organically, and teachers have to understand that this growth must be implied in the curriculum and instructions of teaching.

The idea of knowledge is dynamic, not static and it being a process, not product tells us a lot about the way counseling should be exercised. In the modern setting, the idea of standardized assessment and educational reforms haunts the mind of educators. But these theories somewhat provide the basis for the way that should be taken up by the educators in counseling of different age-grouped students.

The main key to remember is all child develop at a different pace, and they have the different cognitive capacity. It is necessary to instruct them at their cognitive level.

Application of Developmental Theory to Students

Developmental theories play a pivotal role in the setting curriculum, mode of instruction and Teacher-Student interactions in class. In application to a secondary level class following step will be taken;

Task-analysis: Analysing the type of task is important. The task assigned should be as per student cognitive level. It should increase the student’s cognitive thinking not diminish it.

Diagnosis of children’s prior knowledge and the matching problem: Next step would be known from which background student belongs to.

Learning strategies: Beforehand formation of learning strategies are important as well. I mean to alter students’ study habits and the way they learn the material. The first method of incorporating the learning strategies into the classroom instruction is to alter the teacher’s behavior by having the teacher design their lessons according to generative principles.

Representational Imagery: A standout amongst the most widely recognized and valuable strategies for recollecting data is to utilize mental symbolism. It can be utilized for recollecting realities (e.g., During winter, the snowshoe rabbit hands white over winter) and with expanded exposition, (for example, a depiction of a mechanical gadget, a land area, or a scene in a novel). Formatively, while more established understudies appear to profit by symbolism, it has been demonstrated that understudies as youthful as eight (review three) can profit by creating their symbolism. Be that as it may, giving the delineation to more youthful youngsters (K-2) will help memory, as will the utilization of engine action (play). At present, I am examining the likelihood of showing youthful essential understudies to produce their pictures to improve memory for sentences.

Elaborate cross-examination. Elaborative cross-examination is a basic methodology to upgrade memory for certainties. The technique includes perusing a reality to-be-asked, Why might that be valid? And after that endeavoring to create an answer. Its essential utilize by all accounts improving memory for imperative actualities that should be recalled, for example, certainties about creatures, nations, regions, and sexual orientation contrasts. For instance, the understudy may read a reality, for example, During winter, the snowshoe bunny hands white over shading. To utilize elaborate cross-examination to recall this reality, the understudy would then ask himself or herself For what reason would the snowshoe rabbit hand white over shading? And after that attempt to answer the inquiry.

To date, the clarification of the adequacy of the procedure has been earlier learning enactment. To utilize this technique, understudies must produce an elaboration which clears up the connection between the subject of the sentence (snowshoe rabbit) and the predicate (hands white over winter). That illuminating relationship is drawn from memory and is utilized to reinforce the connection between the subject and predicate. Be that as it may, it isn’t clear what earlier learning is required. A few scientists propose that learning about the subject, (for example, the creature or nation the truth of the matter is about) is required. Others appear to recommend that particular substance information is less essential yet that dynamic learning as tenets or standards is critical. For instance, consider the demonstration The general population of Moringa originate from various social and ethic foundations. The primary gathering of scientists proposes that information about Moringa is required for elaborative cross-examination to be compelling. The second gathering recommends that more broad information is required, for example, learning that liberal migration strategies prompt expanded movement or that solid monetary flourishing prompt high migration.

Assessment and criterion-referencing: Criterion-referenced tests and assessments are designed to measure student performance against a fixed set of predetermined criteria or learning standards, i.e., concise, written descriptions of what students are expected to know and be able to do at a specific stage of their education.

Theoretical constructs related to Lifespan Milestones

The development theories are pivotal in a person’s lifespan. The depicts all the development stage of life from birth to death. In my lifespan, I went through a lot of developmental stages, and I still am going through. The theories provide you help with the knowledge with which you can choose how you want yourself to be developed.

Conclusion

The character is a person’s accumulation of individual convictions, mentalities, and wants (Broderick and Blewitt, 2010). Personality arrangement starts in youth and ought to be hardened in immaturity, as per Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development (Kraus, 2008). Numerous components impact this improvement including science, child rearing, connections, and encounters. Any of these variables can impact character improvement emphatically or adversely. My character advancement had both positive and negative impacts that molded the grown-up I have progressed toward becoming today, in spite of the fact that I struggled through the procedure of personality development. The significant impacts that formed my personality incorporate my association with my folks, my mental perspective all through my life expectancy, and encounters with others. With everything taken into account, human headway is to a great degree charming to get some answers concerning. Headway depicts the improvement of individuals all through the future, from start to death.

Improvement does not simply include the organic and physical parts of development, yet also, the psychological and social perspectives related to advancement all through life. By better seeing how and why individuals change and develop, we would then be able to apply this information to help individuals satisfy their maximum capacity.

References

Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. New York: Basic Books.

Broderick, P. & Blewitt, P. (2010). The life span: human development for helping            professionals. Boston: Pearson.

Brown, K., & Cullen, C. (2006). Maslow’s hierarchy of needs used to measure motivation for religious behavior. Mental Health, Religion & Culture9(1), 99-108.

Guilama-Ramos, V., Jaccard, J., Dittus, P

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