Dr. Patty Bedker
Associate Professor Biological Sciences
-provided framework for observing
how individuals organize their worlds
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Erikson (1950; 1960)
Hunt (1975)
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Kohlberg (1969)
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Loevinger (1970; 1976; 1998)
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Piaget (1960; 1972)
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◦ Conceptual processes
◦ Moral reasoning processes
◦ Ego maturity processes
◦ Cognitive process or thought patterns
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Erikson’s stages of development
◦ A model for the stages of thinking and learning
for children and adults
◦ In each stage there are opportunities for an
individual throughout life for
 positive ego development
 Identify deficits in one’s character
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Erikson
◦ believed that the course of development is
determined by the interaction of the following
influences
 Body (genetic biological programming)
 Mind (psychological)
 Cultural (ethos)
◦ Organized life into 8 stages
 Birth – death
 Based on
 World gets bigger as we go along
 Failure is cumulative
Think of his stages as a spiraling cycle
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Stage 1 – infancy
Stage 5 – adolescence ages 12-18
Stage 6 – young adulthood ages 18-35
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Ego development outcome
Intimacy & solidarity vs. isolation
Basic strengths: affiliation & love
Significant relationships are with marital partners
and friends
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Stage 7 – middle adulthood ages 35-55 or 65
◦ Ego development outcome
 Generativity vs. self absorption or stagnation
◦ Basic strengths: production & care
 Work is most crucial
 Issues surrounding our family
 We expect to be in charge, “the role we have envied”
◦ Significant task
 Perpetuate culture and transmit values of the culture
through the family (taming children)
 Working to establish a stable environment
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Stage 7 (cont’d)
 Significant change
◦ Children leave home, or out relationships or goals
change
◦ Possible mid-life crisis & struggle with finding new
meaning & purpose
◦ If we do not get through this stage successfully, we
can become self-absorbed and stagnant
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Significant relationships
◦ Within workplace, the community & family
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Stage 8 – late adulthood ages 55 or 65 – death
◦ Ego development outcome
 Integrity vs. despair
◦ Basic strengths: wisdom
◦ Erikson felt that much of life is preparing for the middle
adulthood stage and the last stage is recovering from it
◦ Integrity
 Looking back on our lives with happiness, contentment,
and feeling fulfilled with a deep sense that life has meaning
and we have made a positive contribution in life
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Stage 8 (cont’d)
 Despair
◦ Some reach this stage and find despair at their
experiences and perceived failures
◦ They may fear death, as they try to find a purpose
to their lives
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Transition to
Leovinger
10
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Defines the essence of ego as
◦ “The striving to master, to integrate, to
make sense of experience”.
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Ego is an ‘inner logic’ which
◦ maintains its stability, identity, and
structure by
 Selective inattention to factors inconsistent
with its current level of development.
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EGO DEVELOPMENT
◦ Refers to a sequence, cutting across
chronological time, of interrelated patterns of
cognitive, interpersonal, and ethical
development that form unified, successive, and
hierarchical world views.
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Each stage or world view is a qualitatively
different way of responding to life
experience
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A knowledge of ego development provides
◦ A ‘map for growth’, which we can use in finding the
best ways to reach our students and people we
work with
◦ An understanding of our own stage of ego
development as a frame of reference by which we
learn and teach
◦ An heightened awareness of the biases underlying
our andragogy
 the art and science of teaching adults
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1. Stages imply distinct or qualitative differences in ways
of thinking about or solving the same problem
2. No stage can be skipped
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While cultural factors may speed up, slow down, or stop
development, they do not change its sequence
3. Each stage forms a structured whole. It represents an
underlying frame of reference
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i.e. a window through which one interprets his/her
experience and determines one’s basic approach to the
world.
4. Developmental stages are hierarchical
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Each is more adequate than the last on a continuum of
increasing differentiation and integration.
Subsequent stages incorporate and transform previous
stages
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Varied experiences and roles
Meaningful achievement
Relative freedom from anxiety and pressure
Establishing balance represents the fundamental
motivating factor in human development
◦ The ego stage at which people stabilize is a function of
the interaction of individual psychological & social
differences
 that influences the degree of exposure to, the perception of,
and the response to disequilibrating life experiences
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Concerned with control and advantages in
relationships
Follow rules opportunistically
Reason logically
Think in stereotypes
Externalize blame to other people
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Concerned with
◦ Appearances
◦ Conforming to external rules
◦ Social acceptability
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Think in stereotypes
Thinking is simplistic
Behaves with superficial niceness
Group differences would be perceived in
terms of obvious external characteristics
◦ Age, race, marital status, and/or nationality
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Develops & increases self-awareness
Ability to think in terms of alternatives
Students are
◦ Painfully aware of separateness in relation to
groups
◦ Concerned primarily with taking advantage of
opportunities, solving problems, and finding
reasons to explain the way life works
◦ Capable of adjusting to situations and roles
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Goals and Ideals
Sense of Responsibility
Rules are Internalized
Guilt is From Hurting Another, not Breaking Rules
Having Self Apart from Group
Standards are Self-Chosen
Traits are Part of Rich Interior World
Standards Distinguished from Manners
Motives and not Just Actions
Sees Self from Other Point of View
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Distancing from Role Identities
Subjective Experience as Opposed to Objective
Reality
Greater Tolerance of Self & Others
Relationships Cause Dependency
Awareness of Inner Conflict
Inner Reality Vs. Outward Appearance
Psychological Causality and Development
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World view is post-conventional
One can analyze one’s own social
group and other social groups
Makes choices and commitments
despite an awareness of the complexity
and social forces at work
Respects other’s autonomy
Realistic
As a cognitive style characterized by
complexity and a high tolerance for
ambiguity
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Highest stage
Intensifies the characteristics of the
autonomous stage
Reconciliation of inner conflicts
Identity as a conscious preoccupation
Interpersonal relations reflect a cherishing of
individuality within the broadest possible
context of human life
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Transition
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My main problem is . . .
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Being with other people . . .
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The thing I like about myself is . . .
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Self-Protective
◦ Education to get “X”
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Conformist
◦ Education to be “X”
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Conscientious
◦ Education to do “X”
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Autonomous
◦ Education to become “X”
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Self-Protective
◦ Instrumental
◦ To satisfy immediate needs
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Conformist
◦ To impress significant others
◦ To gain social acceptance and entry into social roles
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Conscientious
◦ To achieve competence relative to standards of excellence
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Autonomous
◦ To deepen understanding of self, world, and life cycles
◦ Develop increasing capacity to manage own destiny
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Self-Protective
◦ To enforce learning by providing examples, showing
how things should be done
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Conformist
◦ Provide prepackaged general information
◦ To certify level of information internalization
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Conscientious
◦ To provide structured programs that develop concrete
skills and opportunities for rational analysis and
practice
 Which can be evaluated and certified
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Autonomous
◦ To provide new experiences, to ask key questions,
and to pose dilemmas
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Transition
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Learning involves change
It is concerned with the acquisition of
habits, knowledge, and attitudes
It enables the individual to make both
personal and social adjustments
Since the concept of change is inherent in
the concept of learning
◦ Any change in behavior implies that learning is
taking place or has taken place
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Learning that occurs during the process of
change can be referred to as
◦ the Learning Process
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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Motor skills
Developed through practice
Verbal information
The major requirement for learning being its
presentation within an organized, meaningful context
Intellectual Skills
The learning of information and skills that requires
prior learning of prerequisite skills
Cognitive strategies
The learning of which requires repeated occasions
whereby challenges to thinking are presented
Attitudes
Learned most effectively through the use of human
models and social interaction and ‘vicarious
reinforcement’
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◦ Self-Protective
 Demonstration
 showing ‘how to’
◦ Conformist
 Revelation
 of truth by expert authority
 f conflict between ideas is perceived, one element is
dismissed and incorrect
◦ Conscientious
 Discovery
 of correct answer through scientific method and logical
analysis
 multiple views acknowledged but congruence and
simplicity sought
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◦ Autonomous
 Emerging levels of insight
 learning entails reorganizing past insight into new
personally generated paradigms through new
experiences
Learning follows dialectical process
in which contradiction and multiplicity of views
is itself of interest
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◦ Self-Protective
 Student acts as imitator of activity
◦ Conformist
 Student as subordinate in frequently impersonal relation
with teacher
 Student internalizes and parrots information
◦ Conscientious
 Student as subordinate in frequent personal interaction
with teacher
 Student analyzes, critiques information, and practices
competence
◦ Autonomous
 Student defines purposes in collegial relationship with
teacher as equal participant
 Emphasis is on personal experience, creating own
interpretations and meanings
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◦ Self-Protective
 Enforcer
 teacher as an agent who focuses attention and shows ‘how to’
◦ Conformist
 Instructor
 teacher as presenter of information (often impersonal group
mode –lecture)
◦ Conscientious
 Role model and evaluator
 teacher skills include posing questions, outlines forms of
discourse, evaluates analytic abilities and skill competencies
 Focus: apprenticeship, internship
◦ Autonomous
 Facilitator:
 teacher organizes experience and reflective observation by
students
 Is a resource for planning and evaluation
 Focus: facilitating
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Conformist Stage & Lower
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Lectures
Show & tell – demonstration
Field trips
Hands-on exercises
Exercises which will reward correct answers
Assignments
◦ Exams
◦ Quizzes
◦ Lab reports
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Middle Stage & Higher
◦ Discussion
◦ Forms of active participation
◦ Exercises that require individuals to make
decisions around goals
◦ Activities and standards or methods of
evaluation
◦ Looking at theories
◦ Student is open to constructive CRITISM
◦ Assignments
 Journals
 presentations
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Transition
Intervention Studies
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SAMPLE
INTERVENTION
PRE-TEST
LEVEL
POST-TEST CHANGE
90 male
prison
inmates
Transcendental Conformist, Significant change,
Meditation
self aware one full stage change
71 Trainee
teachers
Empathy
Training
Not
Specified
Significant, 36% of
one treatment group
developed one stage
27 male
prison
inmates
Counseling
for moral
dilemmas
Selfprotective,
conformist
Significant change,
36% of one
treatment group
developed one stage
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SAMPLE
INTERVENTION
PRE-TEST
LEVEL
POST-TEST CHANGE
86 males
& females
Est. training
(seminar to
acquire a sense
of personal
transformation &
enhance power)
Stages
¾ (41%)
4 (35%)
4/5 (14%)
Significant change @
post-test & follow-up
Not
specified
Significant change
194
Women’s studies
female
course
undergrad
women
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SAMPLE
INTERVENTION
PRE-TEST
LEVEL
POST-TEST CHANGE
24 women
College re-entry Not
seminar
specified
No Significant change
141
college
students
Concepts of ego Not
stages
specified
Significant change
per low pre-test ego
levels
23 female
college
students
Experimental
3,3/4, 4
curriculum to
promote trust &
self awareness
Significant change,
Only for stage 3
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SAMPLE
85
teachers
INTERVENTION
PRE-TEST
LEVEL
POST-TEST
CHANGE
Deliberate
Psychological
education program
Not
specified
Significant
change
36 Trainee Autogenic Training
Counselors (German relaxation
Technique)
Not
specified
No Significant
change
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Ego transition requires exposure
◦ “to experiences that are not only
structurally disequilibrating, but also
personally, prominent, emotionally
engaging, and of a personal nature.”
- J. Leovinger
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“We learn as much or more
from the way that we are taught
as from the content itself”
“The medium is the message”
- Marshall McLuhan
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