Understanding Adolescent Cognitive Development: Thinking, Values, and Education

1. Children 15 Cognitive Development in Adolescence John W. Santrock

2. Cognitive Development in Adolescence • How Do Adolescents Think and Process Information? • What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? • What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? • How Do Adolescents Experience Career Development and Work?

3. How Do Adolescents Think and Process Information? Piaget’s Theory • Stage of formal operations • Abstract thinking • Idealism • Hypothetical-deductive reasoning • Develop and test hypotheses; deduce best ways to solve problems • Evaluating Piaget’s theory

4. How Do Adolescents Think and Process Information? Adolescent Egocentrism • Heightened self-consciousness • Two types of social thinking • Imaginary audience • Believe others are as interested in them as they are in themselves • Personal fable • Sense of personal uniqueness and invulnerability

5. How Do Adolescents Think and Process Information? Information Processing • Ability improves in adolescence • Areas of improvement • Memory • Decision making • Critical thinking

6. How Do Adolescents Think and Process Information? Information Processing • Memory • Short-Term • Improvements in problem solving • Working • Improves through early 20s • Related to reading comprehension • Long-Term • Continues to improve in adolescence

7. How Do Adolescents Think and Process Information? Information Processing • Executive functioning • Increased decision making • Older adolescents better than younger adolescents at decision making • Adolescent decision making linked to some personality traits • Need opportunities to practice and discuss realistic decision making

8. How Do Adolescents Think and Process Information? Decision Making • Critical thinking • Adolescence is important • Increased speed, automaticity, and capacity of information processing • Greater breadth of content knowledge • Increased ability to construct new combinations of knowledge • Greater range and more spontaneous use of strategies

9. What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? Values • Beliefs and attitudes about the way things should be • Changing values: more concern for own well-being than service to others • Self-fulfillment • Self-expression

10. What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? Values • Changing values of adolescents • Increased concern for personal well-being • Some signs today’s college students shifting to stronger interest in welfare of society influenced by • Family values, like compassion • Group affiliation and goals or philosophies

11. What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? Values • Service learning • Education promoting social responsibility • Goals • Adolescents become less self-centered • Most effective when choice and opportunities to reflect are given • Volunteer characteristics: extraversion, high degree of self-understanding, commitment to others

12. What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? Values • Positive effects • Better grades, more motivation and goals • Deeper appreciation of ‘right’ behaviors • Self-esteem improves • Improved sense of making a difference • Become less alienated • More reflection on aspects of society

13. What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? Moral Education • Hidden curriculum • From schools, create moral atmosphere • Teachers as role models • Attitudes of peers and others • Rules/regulations and materials provided • Character education • Direct education approach; teaching moral literacy to prevent harm, immorality

14. What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? Moral Education • Values clarification • Encouraged to define own values, understand values of others • Different from character education: does not tell student what values should be • Cognitive moral education • Democracy and justice valued as moral reasoning develops

15. What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? Moral Education • Integrative approach encompasses • Reflective moral thinking • Commitment to justice • Child Development Project • Many opportunities in perspective taking • Self-reflection on fairness, social responsibility • Adults coach ethical decision making • Caring community extended beyond classroom

16. What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? Religion • Issues important to adolescents • Belief in God and prayer • Learn religious faith • Positive role in adolescent lives • Becomes part of life, means of coping • Better grades and school performance • Impacts on health and behaviors

17. What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? Religion • Erikson’s Theory • Adolescents grapple with religious questions as part of search for identity • Piaget: Stages of Religious Thought • Preoperative intuitive: up to 7–8 years • Concrete operational: 7–8 to 13–14 • Formal operational: 14 onward

18. What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? Religion • Religious Beliefs and Parenting • Religion: created to socialize children • Most adults adopt the religion raised in • Affected by quality of parent-adolescent relationship; securely attached more likely to adopt parents’ choice • Religious changes and reawakenings most likely during adolescence

19. What Characterizes Adolescents’ Values, Moral Education, and Religion? Religion • Religion and Adolescent Sexuality • Aspects of religiousness related to • Selecting friends with restrictive attitudes • Fewer sexual partners, relationships • Perception of unprotected sex as high risk • Responsible contraceptive use

20. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? The American Middle School • Transition • Can be stressful • Occurs during time of many changes • Puberty • Cognitive development • Changing relationship with parents • Top-dog phenomenon

21. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? The American Middle School • Effective Middle Schools • Develop smaller schools • Lower student-to-counselor ratios • Involve parents and community leaders • Develop effective curricula in literacy, sciences, health, ethics, and citizenship • Team-teaching in integrated curriculum • More health and fitness programs

22. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? The American Middle School • Extracurricular activities • Involvement associated with • Better academic adjustment • Superior psychological competencies • Positive peer relations • Countering negative expenses

23. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? The American High School • Many graduates poorly prepared for college and modern workplace • Recommended changes • More emphasis on knowledge and skills • Higher expectations for students • Part-time work opportunities in high-quality work experiences, shorter work hours

24. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? High School Dropouts • Serious educational, societal problem • Adults with educational deficiencies • Affects economic and social well-being • Overall rates declined in 21st century • Native Americans may have highest rate; Latino rate also remains high • Males more likely to drop out than females

25. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? High School Dropouts • Causes • School-related • Don’t like school; suspended, expelled • Economic and family-related • Low SES more to help support families • Peer-related • Personal reasons • Pregnancy or marriage

26. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? High School Dropouts • Reducing the Dropout Rate • Provide effective programs in • Early reading and tutoring • Counseling and mentoring • Create caring environment • Offer community service opportunities

27. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? Career Development • Ginzberg’s stages of development career choice theory • Fantasy: lasts to about age 11 • Tentative: from ages 11 to 17 • Realistic: from ages 17 to 18 • Criticisms of theory • Ignores individual differences

28. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? Career Development • Super’s Career Self-Concept Theory • Self-concepts play central roles in choices; constructed during adolescence • Occurs in five phases

29. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? Career Development

30. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? Career Development • Holland’s Personality-Type theory • Make effort to match individual to career • Matching personality to career promotes: • Happiness in job • Longevity in workplace • Six main personality types

31. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? Career Development

32. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? Career Development • Exploration, Decision Making, Planning • Important roles in adolescents’ choices • Approached with ambiguity, uncertainty, and stress • Many adolescents • Receive little direction from school guidance counselors • Do not know what information to seek and how to seek it

33. What Are Schools for Adolescents Like? Career Development • Sociocultural Influences • Genetic limitations • Parents and peers • School • Socioeconomic status • Ethnicity • Gender

34. How Do Adolescents Experience Career Development and Work? Work • Sociocultural context of work • Three-fourths of high school seniors have had work experience • Most work 16 to 20 hours per week • Most work in service jobs • Males work longer hours and are paid more per hour than females

35. How Do Adolescents Experience Career Development and Work? Advantages and Disadvantages of Part-Time Work • Cons • Little on-job training; distanced to adult coworkers • Give up sports • Miss sleep, social affairs with friends • More stress to life • Lower grades Pros • Understand how business world works • Learn how to get and keep a job • Manage money • Budget time • Take pride in their accomplishments • Evaluate goals

36. How Do Adolescents Experience Career Development and Work? Work Profiles of Adolescents Around the World • Many developing countries • Adolescents do not attend school • Boys earn more income than girls • Girls do more unpaid labor than boys • Unschooled populations: labor exceeds 8 hours per day • European and East Asian adolescents work much less than U.S. adolescents

37. Children 15 The End