1. Name of Theory Arnold Gesell’s Theory

2. Main Focus/Perspective

Physical and Mental Development

3. Characteristics 10 major areas of development (gradients of growth) :

1) Motor characteristics. These include bodily activity, eyes, and hands.

2) Personal hygiene. These include eating, sleeping, elimination, bathing and dressing, health and somatic complaints, and tensional outlets.

3) Emotional expression. These include affective attitudes, crying, assertion, and anger.

4) Fears and dreams.5) Self and sex.6) Interpersonal relations. These include mother-child,

child-child, and groupings in play.7) Play and pastimes. These include general interests,

reading, music, radio, and cinema.8) School life. These include adjustment to school,

classroom demeanor, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

9) Ethical sense. These include blaming and alibiing; response to direction, punishment, praise; response to reason; sense of good and bad; and truth and property.

10)Philosophic outlook. These include time, space, language and thought, war, death, and deity.

4. Nature/Nurture

5. No. of stages 12 stages:1) 18 months

Period of disequilibrium. This refers to emotional instability - not physical imbalance. Child may have tantrums, laugh one minute, cry the next, get angry and frustrated easily.

Seems to walk down one-way street the wrong way from the adult point of view. Give him a second sock to put on and he will probably remove the one already on his foot.

Can walk, run, sometimes climb, but balance is very unsteady.

2) 2 years Added maturity and calm. Willingness to do

what he can and not try too hard to do the things he cannot.

Surer of himself motor wise. Less likely to fall. Runs and climbs more surely.

3) 2 ½ years Watch out – peak age of disequilibrium. Often seems to resist just as matter of

principle. Rigid and inflexible – cannot adapt.

4) 3 years Equilibrium Greater maturity has led to feel much more

secure within himself and in his relations to others.

People are important. Increased motor abilities allow activities to be

done with minimal difficulty.5) 3 ½ years

Motor incoordination may express itself in stumbling, falling, fear of heights.

Tensional outlets are often exaggerated – blinking of eyes, biting nails, picking nose, exhibiting facial

6) 4 years Disequilibrium. Imagination seems to have no "reasonable"

limits. Needs to be allowed to test himself out –

allowed to go up and down the sidewalk with expanding limits – run ahead on a walk and wait at the next corner.

7) 4 ½ years Desire for realism sometimes too stark for

adults – seems almost too frank, as they demand the details about death, for example, or God.

Improving their control and perfecting skills in many ways.

Better able to accept frustrations. Fine motor control as expressed in drawing

markedly improved.8) 5 years

Tends to be reliable, stable, and well – adjusted.

Secure within himself, he is calm, friendly, and not too demanding in relations with others.

9) 6 years Extremely negative in his response to others. This leads him to wanting all of everything.

Difficult for him to choose between any two alternatives because he wants both.

If all goes well, he can be warm, enthusiastic, eager, and ready for anything. But, if things go badly, tears and tantrums follow.

10) 7 years If all goes well, he can be warm, enthusiastic,

eager, and ready for anything. But, if things go badly, tears and tantrums follow.

Facial expression of some may express dissatisfaction with life. Lips may curl downward in a permanent pout.

11) 8 years The new and difficult are exciting challenges

which he tends to meet with great zest. Ready for, and wants, a good two – way

relationship with people.12) 9 years

Much more interested in friends than in family.

Can be age of perfecting skills and of real, solid accomplishment.

13) 10 years Parent’s word is law. Matter of fact, straight forward, and flexible.

6. Focus of primary school age (7-12 years stage & characteristics)

7. How the teacher can help in the development of

physical8. Critics 1) He did not readily acknowledge that there are

individual and cultural differences in child development, and his focus on developmental norms implied that what is typical for each age is also what is desirable.

9. Q/A