Writing an Essay on Human Growth and Development
Ideas for Writing an Essay on Human Growth and Development
The concept of human development most probably denotes the endless improvement of an individual throughout his or her entire life. This development process may touch upon different areas and sectors of life. It starts from the very moment a person is born and continues right up to the person’s death. This development process is active even though we may think that nothing is happening at the moment. Still, it entails numerous spheres of a person’s well-being: mental, physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual.
If you have been assigned to write an essay on human growth and development, but you are not sure what subject to focus on or what topic to choose, look at the following recommendations that may guide you through the process:
- Cognitive development.Topics in this area may be related to the process of a person developing from his/her early childhood. Specifically, you may focus on the development of the brain, skills, language, and critical thinking.
- Psychosocial development. When choosing a topic in this realm, you may investigate personality types, attitudes of a person and how they change, as well as social skills one acquires. If you want to delve deeper into this topic, explore some facts about the developmental stages Erikson suggested.
- Moral development. According to Lawrence Kohlberg, there are six stages of acquiring moral behavior. You may choose to focus on some of them as your essay topic. Specifically, you may deal with interpersonal concordance, social contract orientation, punishment and obedience orientation, or universal ethics orientation, whatsoever.
- Psychosexual development. To develop an essay in this area, you will have to get familiar with the works of Sigmund Freud. Since his theories are regarded to be rather controversial, you may want to discuss and analyze them to bring on some heated debate in the field of research.
- Faith development.You will need to rely on James Fowler’s theories, which depict how a person develops spiritually from childhood to adulthood.
On the whole, human development is too complex to be explained by a single theory or concept. If you want to make your essay both interesting and informative, you may even want to focus on a few theories and analyze their contribution to how development is perceived in modern-day life. Moreover, you may analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the developmental stages you have chosen.
When it comes to assigning academic essays, professors in different institutional affiliations like to provide their students with a plethora of ideas from which they have to choose the best. To ease this task a bit for you, we have assembled a list of potential topics that can be utilized for essays on human development.
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25 Appealing Topics for Writing an Essay on Human Growth and Development
- Myanmar’s Index on Human Development.
- Procrastination as a phenomenon in the human development process.
- Stages of children’s development put forward by Vygotsky.
- The role genetics plays within the cognitive development of humans.
- Addiction to drugs, alcohol, and other substances and its impact on human growth.
- Transition from childhood to adulthood.
- Human development theory proposed by Sigmund Freud.
- Human development in terms of health.
- Different life stages within the process of human development.
- Social environment and its impact on the foundations of human development.
- Social development and personal development: what is the relationship between them?
- Existing theories on human development and patterns of behavior.
- Theories on human development stages.
- Compare and contrast Erikson’s and Freud’s approaches to human development stages.
- Existing theories on human growth and development.
- Human development on a global scale.
- Significance of human development within anthropology.
- Immaturity as a phenomenon in human development.
- Bronfenbrenner’s theory dealing with the ecological impact on human development.
- Human Development Index and its influence on income rates.
- Human development process within social work.
- Adolescent development within the realm of human growth.
- Piagetian perspective within the process of understanding human development.
- Ways of developing human potential.
- Stuttering and children’s development.
Hopefully, the aforementioned topics will pave the way for elaborating your essay ideas on human growth and development. Once you start exploring these and adjacent topics, you will find lots of other beneficial information that can be used for in-depth research in this field. It may be equally good to focus on some topics that were already covered or choose one that is brand-new to the area of research. In the latter case, you will make a significant contribution and enhance the versatility of the research process.
Read Our Human Growth and Development Essay Sample
The issue of human growth and development has attracted various explanations. There are different theories focusing on various aspects of growth and development. For instance, the theories developed by Freud, Erickson, and Piaget differ in the manner in which they explain the concept of growth. Despite their differences, the theories are fundamental models that explain the dynamic stages of human growth and development.
The main underlying idea of Freud’s theory is that parents play a fundamental role in children’s development. Freud believed that the management of sexual and aggressive drives of children during the first few years of life facilitates their proper development. The psychologist introduced the psychosexual development theory, popularly known as Freud’s theory. It states that the human personality has three parts that are interconnected in their functioning. These parts are the id, ego and superego. The id is responsible for biological needs, while the ego is in charge of behavioral and conscious reasoning. Finally, the superego develops as the child interacts with others and conforms to the norms of life in society. According to Freud, these three parts unify as the child goes through the five stages of psychosexual development, namely oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital ones.
According to Erickson’s theory of psychosocial development, there are eight stages of development. In each of these stages, an individual can experience a psychosocial crisis that can positively or negatively impact his or her personality development. Erickson stated that the ego grows as a person continues to solve conflicts of a social nature. The conflicts involve trusting others, conforming to the norms of society, and self-identity.
Piaget’s theory, on the other hand, focuses on cognitive development. According to the psychologist, intelligence is not inherited but rather develops based on continual biological maturation and interaction with the surrounding environment. Piaget believed that children are born with a mental framework. New things that they learn as they grow up are based upon this framework. He defined four stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Hence, the theory is crucial for explaining human development.
All these theories are similar in attempting to explain the process of human development starting from childhood. Freud, Erickson, and Piaget based their arguments on intellectual evidence of a child’s ability to reason, think, and interact with a new environment. The other similarity is that all these theories are based on practical pieces of evidence. The scholars developed their theories based on the experience of interaction with children. However, Piaget’s theory is a little unique and different compared to Freud’s and Erickson’s theories. Thus, Piaget focused on cognitive development, while the other two based their theories on personality development. Although both Freud and Erickson focused on personality development, Freud’s theory laid more emphasis on the aspect of sexual development and its impact on personality. Erickson, on the other hand, focused more on the interaction of a child with the environment. Hence, he analyzed the social aspect of personality growth and development.
Freud developed his theory while working with emotionally troubled adults. This raises concerns about how he was able to generate data and behavioral mechanisms that relate to children from dealing with adults. The other concern is that he only worked with the Viennese people. Erickson interacted with clients of all ages; therefore, his work would have been more credible if he had focused on child psychology. Moreover, at that time the majority of people he interacted with were whites. This theory, therefore, has credibility concerns about its application to other races. Piaget, on the other hand, worked at an institute, where he developed French intelligence questions for the institute. His data were mostly based on people who applied for institutes and were mostly French. Therefore, there are concerns about whether this theory can apply to other races and people who did not go to institutes.
Evidently, these theories are significant in explaining human growth and development. However, they differ according to the dynamics that they consider.Freud put much effort into explaining the parental role. On the other hand, Erickson considered eight stages of development based on the impact of society. Piaget worked on the area of intelligence as a core aspect of development.
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