Categories
Preschool Learning Resources

The Invention of Adolescence

[ad_1]

A little more than a century ago, adolescence was unrecognized, undiscovered, unknown and unorganized. Most young people between the ages of twelve and eighteen worked on family arms, engaged in wage labor, and grew up in the company of adults. A handful of relatively high born young people went on to college. Graduation from high school was a privilege of relatively prosperous town dwellers (Tim and Frank, 2001). Strictly speaking, there were no adolescents one hundred years ago. Adolescence is a historically grounded social invention, the product of concerted attempts of socially and morally anxious nineteenth and twentieth-century developmental psychologists, moral reformer, sociologists, medical specialists, and other emerging professionals to control the socialization of increasing number of detached youth. The new invention marked the recognition of youth as a life stage; a period of time between irresponsible childhood and married adulthood. In order to better socialize the youth, some constrains and regulations were imposed on youth, such as which regulated the lives of the young and reside authority over their development in carefully organized institutions of formal education. The education was mainly affected by the belief that adolescence was a particular stage of life with precise age parameters, developmental possibilities and social requirements. Although it may sounds scary to learn education institution carry the role of social control, it is undeniable that education system plays a major role in shaping our adolescent world view and the development of self.

Nowadays, students spend almost half of their waking time in schools; schools not only serve as a place for knowledge accumulation, but also a place of self development and self growth.

Development of Adolescence (Psychological Aspect)

Erikson is one of the prominent psychologists to look into the development of adolescence. Adolescence is the fifth stage in Erikson’s chart of the life cycle, is regarded as highly significant in the person’s psychological development. No longer a child but not yet an adult (roughly from the ages of 12 to 13 to about 19 to 20 in developed society. The new psychosocial dimension hat appears during adolescence has ego identity at h positive end and role confusion at the negative end. The task confronting adolescents is to consolidate all the knowledge they have gained about themselves and integrate these various self-images into a personal identity that shows awareness of both a past and a future that follows logically from it (Larry and Daniel, 1992). Identity as the major personality achievement of adolescence and as a crucial step toward becoming a productive, happy adult. Constructing an identity involves defining who you are, what you value and the direction you choose to pursue in life. Erikson further explains during adolescence, cognitive changes transform the young person’s vision of the self into a more complex, well-organized and consistent picture. Change in self-concept set the stage for development of a unified personal identity (Laura, 2004).

By the end of middle childhood, children describe themselves in terms of personality traits (Laura, 2004). In early adolescence, they unify separate traits, such as ‘smart’ and ‘talented’ into more abstract descriptors, such as ‘intelligent’, but these generalizations about the self are not interconnected and often they are contradictory. As adolescents’ social world expands, contradictory self-descriptions increase. Over time, teenagers become increasingly aware of these inconsistencies and frequently agonize over ‘which is the real me’.

During late adolescence, teenagers combine their traits into an organized system. And they can use qualifiers, such as quite, fairly, thoroughly to reveal their awareness that psychological qualities often change from one situation to the next. Adolescents can revise their views of themselves to include enduring beliefs and plans, they move toward the kind of unity of self that is central to identity development.

Definitional Consideration and Theoretical Consideration of Self-Concept

There are some problems of definition related to self-concept research. These difficulties can be related to five major factors: lack of a universally accepted definition, assumed synonymity of self terms, ambiguous distinction between the terms self-concept and self-efficacy and between self-concept and self-esteem.

Although there are some problems of universally agreed notion of self-concept, but many theorists agreed self-concept reflects descriptive and evaluative aspects of self-perception, for example, academic self-concept reflects self-descriptive (e.g. I like most school subjects) as well as self-evaluative or comparative (e.g. I do well in most school subjects) aspects. Self-concept judgments, compared with those of self-efficacy, are more global and less context dependent. For example, in responding to self-concept measures that elicit evaluation of capabilities in relation to a particular school subject, students typically make such judgments by comparing their own performance with that of their classmates (an external comparison), as well as their own performance in other subject areas (an internal comparison) (Barbara, 1996).

In general, theoretical models of self-concept can be polarized into two board perspectives: those supporting the unidimensionality of the construct versus those supporting multidimensionality.

With unidimensional perspectives, the nomothetic model implies generality and universality. It dictates that items on a measuring instrument tap different content areas and that each be given equal weight; item scores are then summed to yield one overall self-concept score. Nomothetic model thus makes the assumption that the single score derived from the additive combination represents an accurate unidimensional reflection of an individual’s sense of self as it related to the various facets of his or her life.

Under multidimensional perspectives, there are four models. Independent-factor model assumes self-concept is composed of multiple facets, each of which is independent of all other dimensions; at worst they should be only weakly correlated. In direct contrast to the independent-factor model, the correlated-factor model allows the multiple, domain-specific self-concept related both among themselves and with a separate facet of global self-concept. Within this framework of the correlated-factor model, then, self-concept is conceptualized along a continuum of very specific to very global perception of one’s competency and these approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Compensatory model assumes domain-specific facets of self-concept can be negatively rather than positively correlated. For example, the correlations of social and physical self-concepts with academic self-concept are negative, whereas all other correlations are positive. It explains why people strive to excel in certain areas in an effort to compensate deficit in other areas. Lastly, hierarchical model is that general self-concept is a higher order factor that comprises multiple, domain-specific self-concept, which, although correlated, can be interpreted as separate constructs. As such, general self-concept and each of its related domain-specific facets are tapped by items constituting each of their separate subscales, evaluation are based on behavior in specific situations under sub areas of self-concept (under academic and nonacademic self-concept).

Study of Self and Adolescent Self-Concept

The most important and basic assumption behinds all studies of self is the ability human can distinguish us from others. The development of self will be occur before infancy, infant is not aware of himself or herself as a separate being, as an ‘I’; therefore he or she makes no distinction between what is ‘me’ and what is ‘not me’ (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). However, after infancy, a child gradually begins to distinguish her or himself from the rest of the world. It is this process of differentiating the phenomenal field into that which is recognized and felt as a distinct object of which one is aware that accounts for the emergence of the person’s self-concept.

The study of self-concept has a long history in the field of social science research. It is valued as a desirable outcome in many psychological and educational situations and is frequently posited as a mediating variable that facilitates the attainment of other desired outcomes, such as academic performance (Barbara, 1997).

Despite the long history of the study of self-concept, it is problematic to have a clear, concise and universally accepted definition of the construct. Adding further to definitional confusion is the tendency by self-concept researchers to interchange, at random, the various self-terms (Barbara, 1997). Problems of definition at the conceptual level lead ultimately to methodological difficulties at the measurement level.

Although reaching a universally acceptable definition of self-concept is no easy task, it is generally agreed that self-concept can be multi-dimensional. General self-concept is shown to be a summative representation of academic, social, physical, and emotional self-concepts. The nomothetic model thus makes the assumption that single score derived from the combination represents an accurate unidimensional reflection of an individual’s sense of self as it relates to various facets of his or her life. To be concluding, self-concept includes the following characteristics:

(1) Self-concept is dynamic; the formation of self-concept is an active process.

(2) It is subjective, involves cognitive and affective elements.

(3) Self-concept provides a sense of meaning to self and the world and successful living involves choice (conscious process).

Self-concept generally refers to ‘the composite of ideas, feelings, and attitudes people have about themselves’. We could consider self-concept to be our attempt to ourselves, to build a schema that organizes our impressions, feelings and attitudes about ourselves (Tim and Frank, 2001). The schema is not permanent, unified or unchanging.

School and Development of Adolescent Self-Concept

Adolescent achievement results from a long history of cumulative effects. Positive educational environment, both family and school can lead to personal traits that support achievement, such as intelligence, confidence in one’s abilities, the desire to succeed and high educational aspirations. Yet improving an unfavorable environment can foster resilience among poorly performing young people (Laura, 2004). Continuous failure in school can lead to negative development of self-concept.

Policymakers mandate test to gather information about student and school attainment and then use the information to hold students, educators, schools and school system accountable. Adolescents often bear the blunt of the high stakes associated with many of these testing programs (Tim and Frank, 2001). In Hong Kong, in a high stakes context and when teachers do not have enough time to teach everything in the frameworks, the test effectively becomes the and instruction becomes test preparation, it is sad to see, but it is happening here now. Students study to prepare for high stakes test may easily frustrated by the continuous failure in the tests, it is especially true for those who are not competent in memorization or test strategy.

[ad_2]

Source by Chin Pang Wong

The Invention of Adolescenceunrateddestiny2016-10-24 20:43:44 [ad_1]
A little more than a century ago, adolescence was unrecognized, undiscovered, unknown and unorganized. Most young people between the ages of…
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.