Erick Erickson on Education Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Erick Erickson on Education - Research Paper Example The formation of early childhood education was in the mid 1800s when there was the development of the private kindergarten in homes. A comprehensive study into the cognitive development of the child started in the early 1900s when various scholars such as Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget defined the stages of development (Coles, 2000). This research paper examines the contributions of Erick Erickson towards the development of early childhood education. Erickson’s contributions are in the three first stages in psychosocial development. The philosophy of Erickson to early childhood development is that the world seems to grow larger as the children grow and that the failure has affected their lives greatly (Roazen, 1993). According to Erickson, development is because of their biological self-combined with their self-psychology as well as the influence of culture (Friedman, 1998). The first stage focuses on trust and mistrust of the child. The child establishes this character between the times of birth to one year of age. At this time, the infant struggles to develop trust in the world. The children learn how to trust when parents and teachers nurture and make them become reliable and responsible (Friedman, 1998). The second stage is between 18 months to three years. The children learn how to master skills for themselves. They do not only learn how to talk, feed and, walk but they also undergo toilet training. The desire of the child to discover new things in life increases (Schickendanz, 2001). The children build self-esteem and autonomy as well as gaining more control over their bodies and acquire new skills and they are able to differentiate wrong from right. However, this is a very vulnerable stage. For example, if the child fails to understand the independent and dependent needs then the child will experience feelings of doubt and shame (Coles, 2000). At stage three, that is between three to six years old,