CED 515

Understanding Persons Along

the Life Course
Greeting
 The Lord be with you
And also with you
Lift up your hearts
We lift them to the Lord
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God
It is right to give God thanks and praise
Introductions
 Name, ministry setting
 Age level interests
 Developmental psychology background
Goals of Class
 Introduction to new issues in life span
development
 Neuroscience contribution
 Theological Perspective
 Charting Developmental Milestones
 Implications for Ministry
 All in conversation with each age level
Readings
Course Outline
 Unit 1: Defining  Unit 3: Theological
Development: Considerations
Traditional (Strong reading)
Understandings (and  Unit 4: Profiles Along
theorists) the Life Course
 Unit 2: Neurobiology (“small group”
and Changes in presentations)
Developmental  Unit 5: Research
Thought and Summary
Open with Movie
  READ (text
intensive in a
Comments? couple of
weeks)
 M-15 week,
video reading
(about an hour
of selected
videos)
 Review sources
on the brain to
find helpful
graphics
Class Project: SDMI Milestones
All in the Family
Ages and Stages
 Development Question
“Drives”
Nature? Capacity to
influence Learn in the
how we middle of
develop challenges
Social
Individual
Society/
Personal
History
Experiences
that we are
we go
born into
through Nurture?
“How” do we develop?
 Bio-deteriorating?
 Examples?
 Teleological?
 Examples?
 Constructive?
 Examples?
 Functional?
 Examples?
Answering the “how”
 Major Theorists provide dynamic “maps” of
human growth & development
 Piaget: Learning capacities change
 Erikson: Emotional resources change
 Levinson: Adult perspective changes (mid-life)
 Kohlburg: Moral Decision Making
 Gilligan: Women’s perspective
 Fowler: Making sense of faith
 Collectively provide windows into Persons along
the life course
Architect of Cognition
Jean Piaget
Piaget and Child Development
 Piaget’s interest in
child cognitive
development began
with his interest in his
own children
 Not what we know but
how we think
(charting mental
processes)
Piaget’s Theory: more than
Stages
 The creation of
mental schemes for
classification
(conservation)
 A ever expanding
funnel of assimilation
and accommodation
 Process and Content
interconnected
Four Basic Stages
 Sensorimotor: 0-2  Concrete operational:
thinking & experience 7-11 literal but
the same personal thinking but
(manipulatives) hands on, moving
objects literally
 Preoperational: 2-7  Formal Operations:
intuitive in nature, 11+ abstract & global
preliminary symbolic/ thinking, moving
language but still “objects & ideals” in
egocentric focus our minds
Childhood/Youth
Is that all there is???
 Levinson’s “Seasons of a Man’s Life”
 Dynamic Transitions between life tasks
and self perceptions
 Plateaus of “relative” stability
 Similar to Piaget but more complex
(experience important as well as schema)
 “Mid-Life Crisis” Questions
Kohlburg’s Moral Development
 Built on Piaget
 Pre-conventional
 Avoid Punishment
 Get Rewards
 Conventional
 Good Boy/Girl
 Law & Order
 Post-conventional
 Social Contract
 Universal Principles
Assumptions
 Three primary
“orientations” to
morality stages
 Personal Experience/
Orientation
 Social Convention

 Owned Convictions

 Constructivist (may
stop at a stage)
 Universal an “ideal”
Carol Gilligan: A Different Voice
 Studied and worked with Lawrence
Kohlberg at Harvard
 Developmental Assumption: People move
through predictable stages of development
with either relative success (health) or
relative failure (pathology)
Carol Gilligan: A Different Voice
 Gilligan’s central assumption: the way
people talk about their lives reveals their
worldview (language shapes/reveals our
philosophy)
 Problem: Women’s reports were being
ignored or considered inferior when
inconsistent with researcher’s
developmental assumptions
Carol Gilligan: A Different Voice
 Most models based upon studies of men
only.
 Models tended to validate male
experience while invalidating female
experience
 Key: not good or better, but focus on
difference as complementary
Gilligan: Gender Contrasts
 Men  Women
 Separation  Attachment
 Competing rights  Conflicting
Responsibilities
 Fixed/Abstract Ideas  Contextual/Narrative
Ideas
 Focus rules  Focus on
Relationships
 Justice
 Care
Greeting
 The Lord be with you
And also with you
Lift up your hearts
We lift them to the Lord
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God
It is right to give God thanks and praise
Erickson: Key Concepts
 Unlike Freud, sexuality
not our basic drive but
“growth”
 Epigenesis: “Growing
outward or upward”
 Idea of a miniature tree
in every acorn
 Interaction w/society
influences growth
Getting There from Here
 Each “age” is a stage of
growth (includes all other
ages)
 Ability to negotiate
“crises” influences our
preparedness to “go on”
to the next stage
 Each crises has polar
(positive-negative) traits
to negotiate
Key Consideration: “Spiral
Staircase”
 Stages more like a
spiral staircase
 Each crises a
“landing”
 Level of negotiation
makes a big
difference
Key Consideration: “Spiral
Staircase”
 Every “age” or
“stage” influences
quality of life
 “Trust” then involved
at every level
James Fowler’s Stages of Faith
 “Make sense” of Faith
(still theological)
 Six Stages (or seven)
 (Undifferentiated)
 Intuitive Projective
 Mythic Literal
 Synthetic- Conventional
 Individuative-Reflective
 Conjunctive or
Paradoxical
 Universal
 Faith Development more
Holistic
 Influence of Erikson as well as Piaget
 “Making Sense” of our Faith (Cognitive)
 Relationships: Human & Heavenly
(Affective/Relational)
 Putting Feet to Faith and Living in
Community (Behavioral)
 Conversion “recapitulates” every stage
(similar to Erikson)
 Fowler’s Sources for Faith
 Master Stories
(narratives that give
meaning)
 Images of Power
(authority)
 Central Values (key
concepts that guide
us)
 Always in
Conversation
Theology and Reciprocation
 Faith Stages invite Theological
Perspective
 Balswick’s key concern?
 Theological Model?
 Strengths or limits?
 Practicing/Liturgical Self?