Vygotsky maintained that one of the basic features of adolescence is “the discovery of one’s own ‘I’” (Rieber & Robinson, 2004, p. 477). Students’ needs to express their new-found-identity sometimes bring them into conflict with school authorities. Students in this study sometimes mentioned these conflicts as part of the reason for leaving school earlier than intended. To the students what they wore and how they looked were expressions of their own individualities, symbolic of emerging identities and precious to preserve at all costs. Compliance with rules, including uniform codes, was seen as important for the school in its socialisation role. Infringements were sometimes taken as challenges to authority.
In the foreword to Dressed to Impress (Keenan, 2001, p. xv) David Martin, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, explained the cultural significance of what we wear: “Dress mediates how we see ourselves and how others see us, and if we want to pass muster we had better make the right choice.” The conflict for adolescents is that what they want to wear, how they wish to behave, and what is acceptable to peers, differs from the requirements of parents and the school. Changing physical appearance due to puberty exacerbates these identity problems for those students out of sequence with developmental norms33
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Early and late maturers differ from on-time maturers because of their status as being socially deviant compared to their peer group and, as a result, they have been found to experience personality disorders in some cases.
and Hendry explained:
The essential dilemma for the individual adolescent in wishing to be fully integrated and accepted in society is between “playing appropriate roles” and “selfhood”: On one hand, it is important to be able to play appropriate roles in a variety of social settings and to follow the prescribed rules for these situations. On the other hand, it is equally important to maintain elements of individuality or selfhood. (Coleman & Hendry, 1990, p. 45)
Thus, to gain a deeper understanding of drop out behaviour requires a combination of both socio-structural theories (mentioned in the previous section) and psychological theories (discussed here). These were regarded previously as competing conceptualisations: “A full understanding requires an integrated causal perspective in which social influences operate through self-processes that produce the actions” (Bandura, 1997, p. 6). In this chapter we progress towards this view through consideration of the four main adolescent development perspectives identified by Santrock (2001): psychoanalytic, cognitive, behavioural and social learning, and ecological.
Psychoanalytic Perspective on Adolescent Development
Problems leading to drop out are the result of experiences early in life according to the psychoanalytic perspective, which “takes as its starting point the upsurge of instincts which is said to occur as a result of puberty” (Coleman & Hendry, 1990, p. 3). This approach to personality development, introduced by Freud (1856-1939), focused on theories of personality development through psychopathological studies. Development is subconscious primarily, beyond awareness, deeply “coloured by emotion,” so to understand drop out in the context of a student’s development this conceptualisation requires analysis of the “symbolic meanings of behaviour and the deep inner workings of the mind” (Santrock, 2001, p. 38). In this view, ‘normal’ children move through five stages of psychosexual development in which they adjust to conflicts between various biological drives and social expectations.
Freud’s conception of personality has three structures: the id (instincts, the reservoir of psychic energy in the unconscious), the ego (which deals with the demands
of reality, the rational decision-making aspect of personality), and the superego (the “moral branch of personality”, the conscience, which takes into account whether something is right or wrong) (Santrock, 2001, pp. 38-39). As Santrock explained, “ the ego resolves conflict between its demands for reality, the wishes of the id, and constraints of the superego by using defence mechanisms” (emphasis in original, p. 39). Freud argued that the onset of puberty–the awakening of sexual feelings for others outside the family–led to a greater vulnerability of the personality during adolescence. As a result some individuals may adopt psychological defences, such as repression, to protect the adolescent ego and reduce anxiety: Repression pushes “unacceptable id impulses out of awareness and back into the unconscious mind” (ibid.). Whilst they are not necessarily unhealthy as short-term strategies, Freud’s daughter, Anna, suggested that these unconscious defence mechanisms are “key to understanding adolescent adjustment” (ibid.). Some adolescents may require assistance in facing reality and dealing with repressed childhood experiences which are too stressful to deal with consciously.
In one such case encountered in this study the student describes physical symptoms which suggest she is anorexic. Berk (2001, p. 360) suggested that anorexic eating disorders are associated with adolescent autonomy: “Often these parents have high expectations for achievement and social acceptance and are overprotective and controlling.” Applying Berk’s view to this student’s case would suggest that, whilst the daughter tries to meet these demands, “inside she is angry at not being recognised as an individual in her own right. Instead of rebelling openly, the anorexic girl indirectly tells her parents, ‘I am a separate person from you, and I can do what I want with my own body!’” (ibid.).
In another example a young girl in this study had difficulties coming to terms with her mother’s boyfriend, and the psychoanalytic approach was able to provide a useful insight into links with her absent father and her dropping out. Abecassis maintained that certain people but more particularly girls, have a greater “susceptibility to enmity” (2003, p. 14). This psychoanalytical perspective suggested that “one way to manage conflictual feelings,” which arise in the development of self, is by projecting them onto someone else (ibid.). The differentiation of self begins in the attachment relationships with parents. The importance of parent-child relationships, particularly the
sense of attachment security (the result of consistent and warm parenting), is known to be linked to peer relations and susceptibility to enmity, possibly providing an explanation for this student’s actions.
However psychosexual theory, which emphasised that parents’ management of children’s sexual and aggressive drives during the first few years is critical for healthy personality development, has received considerable critique from feminists. Horney (1967, cited in Santrock, 2001, p. 41), for example, argued that it reflects a male dominant society and culture. Chodorow (1978, 1979, also cited in Santrock, ibid.) went further, claiming that women tend to define themselves in terms of their relationships and connections with others more than men do. Thus contemporary psychoanalytic theory places more emphasis on cultural experiences than sexual instincts as determinants of an individual’s development.
Whilst Freud considered that development stopped at adolescence, Erickson proposed a theory of development that encompassed the entire life cycle: “All stages grow out of previous stages” (Muuss, 1996, p. 42). Erikson’s (1902-1994) psychosocial theory of identity development combined knowledge gained through psychoanalytic training with the recognition of the influence of social effects. It emphasised that the demands of society at each Freudian stage not only promote the development of a unique personality but also ensure individuals acquire the requisite attitudes and skills necessary for full participation in a social setting. Early in their development children begin to assert their independence and develop active purposeful behaviour as a result of the challenges posed by exposure to a widening social world. Mastering knowledge and intellectual skills is a focus of school years. Erikson believed that teachers have a special responsibility for children’s development of industry, that is diligence or habitual effort in pursuit of some goal.
Whilst there were some differences in approach, Freud and Erikson had in common a belief that problems in adolescence were the result of experiences earlier in life. The correlation of high school drop out with academic failure and grade retention, which came through consistently in previous dropout studies, may be rooted in the low self-esteem developed from primary school experiences. Erikson’s fifth stage, Identity versus identity confusion, is the developmental stage characteristic of adolescence and it serves as a crucial step in an effective transition to adulthood:
Constructing an identity involves defining who you are, what you value, and the directions you choose to pursue in life….This search for what is true and real about the self is the driving force between many new commitments—to sexual orientation; to a vocation; to interpersonal relationships and community involvement; to ethnic group membership; and to moral, political, religious, and cultural ideals. (Berk, 2001, p. 390)
From my observations as a principal and parent the confusion teenagers experience can, in most cases, be better described as an exploration of values and priorities rather than a crisis. The differing perceptions about the level of difficulties experienced in adolescent transitioning can be attributed partially to the clinical foundations of Erikson’s work and partially also to the historical context in which he developed his theories of teenage identity formation. Stressors on teenagers during adolescence have increased34 as life has become more complex and as longevity increased. However, increased complexity is a trend associated more with Western industrial societies than with other cultures35
Cognitive Perspective on Adolescent Development
.
The psychoanalytic theories detailed here have stressed the importance of adolescents’ unconscious thoughts in human development, whereas cognitive theories, such as those promoted by Piaget and Vygotsky and outlined in the next section, emphasise conscious thoughts.
Adolescence is the period in which self-consciousness and personality become fully developed. According to Muuss (1996, p. xv), the search for identity in
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Santrock (2001, p. 11) noted that “many adults measure their current perceptions of adolescents by memories of their own adolescence.” In the “roaring twenties” adolescents began to behave more permissively, with adolescent drinking increasing. In the 1960s and 1970s increased use of drugs, more permissive sexuality and civil disobedience by teenagers protesting against the Vietnam war led to the development of adolescent stereotypes “based on information about a limited, often highly visible group of adolescents” (ibid., p. 10, emphasis in original). However, Santrock maintained that much of the radical protest of youth has quietened down over the last 30 years and that “today’s adolescents are achievement-oriented, more likely to be working at a job, experiencing adult roles earlier, showing more interest in equality of the sexes, and heavily influenced by the media” (ibid., p. 11).
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Cultural relativism arguments, based on the ideas of Boas and his student, Mead, who conducted extensive field work in Samoa, support the notion that “ adolescence is not a biological but a cultural phenomenon” (Muuss, 1996, pp. 111-112). These views were later disputed by Freeman (1983), also based on Samoan evidence, (ibid., p. 111). In the United States “considerable evidence has accumulated that adolescence can be a happy and harmonious period of life, at least not for an insignificant portion of youth. Thus, the physiological changes of puberty and sexual maturation alone are not categorically responsible for adolescent difficulties. Anxieties, insecurities, social pressures, social expectations, and cultural, educational, and family factors all may contribute to adolescent stress” (ibid.).
adolescence “is a progressive exploration of potential roles” within which there is a huge “range of individual variability in these pathways” (ibid., p. xvi). This variability is attributable in part to the opportunities available within the environment but also to the skills and abilities that the young person is able to bring to bear in accessing these opportunities.
That individuals are active learners, engaging with and making sense of their environments, was the basis of Piaget’s (1896-1980) cognitive-developmental perspective, offering part of the answer to the question of variability. Piaget contributed to the understanding of the role that cognitive development plays in adolescence although, in common with many so-called stage theories, there has been some debate about whether the discrete stages of cognitive development exist as Piaget outlined, and also whether his theories have universal applicability or are culturally relative (Muuss, 1996, p. 169). It has been argued that the formal operations36
In Piaget’s social-constructivist explanation of knowledge, individuals actively pieces information together, bit by bit, based on their previous experiences and the
stage, characterised by abstract thinking, may never be attained by a significant proportion of adolescents (Kuhn, 1979, cited in Muuss, 1996, p. 170). Piaget acknowledged that an atypical group of privileged adolescents from some of the best schools in Geneva formed the basis of his study but he maintained that differences between his findings and those of others highlighted “differences in speed of development without any modification in the order of succession of the stages” (Muuss, 1996, p. 170, drawing on work by Piaget, 1980). In this argument, lack of opportunity to solve hypothetical problems impedes the full development of abstract thought. Because of this, not all high school students will be capable of making the kind of reasoned decisions about staying on, or dropping out, which economic rationality suggested (Boudon, 1982, cited in Nash, 1997a, p. 151). Rational choice theories are based on the assumption that “all action is fundamentally ‘rational’ in character and that people calculate the likely costs and benefits of any action before deciding what to do” (Scott, 2000, p. 1).
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Piaget identified four stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor stage (birth to two years) during which infants construct an understanding of the world by co-ordinating sensory experiences with “physical, motoric actions” (Santrock, 2001, p. 44); the preoperational stage (two- seven years) in which children begin to present the world with symbols; the concrete operations stage (seven to 11 years) in which “logical reasoning replaces intuitive thought as long as reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples” (ibid.); the formal operations stage (appears between the ages of 11 and 15) evidences more abstract thought and children can begin to entertain possibilities for the future.
perspectives of others. According to this view, success in constructing knowledge is dependant on the level of intellectual maturity and the underlying structure of the individual’s mind. The other component, which Piaget discounted, was the role that more knowledgeable adults, such as parents and teachers, play in development. Vygotsky (1896-1934) saw development as a socially mediated process in which children’s language and communication skills quickly lead them down different developmental paths. In this way, the tremendous difference in the development and structure of self-consciousness and personality is seen to depend on the social environment to which the adolescent belongs (Rieber & Robinson, 2004, p. 478). This is not a new concept. Bronfenbrenner (1979, p. 16) acknowledged that “to assert that human development is a product of interaction between the growing human organism and its environment is to state what is almost a commonplace in behavioural science.” Interaction between the two received little attention in the past, prompting Bronfenbrenner to remark that there had been a huge scholarly interest in developmental psychology, in particular on personality typologies, developmental stages and dispositional constructs, but little apart from “class-theoretical” interpretations of environmental effects, at that time (ibid., p. 17).
Behavioural and Social Learning Theories
Many researchers suggested that the school setting had an effect on student learning and, consequentially, on drop out for underachievers, as we saw earlier in this section. Behavioural and social cognitive theories facilitate exploration of the interconnection between development, environmental experiences and dropout behaviour. Skinner (1904-1990), and other behaviouralists believed that development was learned as a result of environmental experiences (Santrock, 2001, p. 47). In this worldview learning occurred as a result of rewards and punishments in the environment and person factors were unimportant. In contrast, Bandura (1925–present) believed that “a full understanding requires an integrated causal perspective in which social influences operate through self-processes that produce the actions,” (1997, p. 6). Therefore, in social learning theory both the environment and cognition processes are important determinants of behaviour. Within social learning theory there appeared to be a diversity of thinking, merging the “clinically rich psychoanalytic concepts with the
scientifically rigorous behaviourist constructs” (Muuss, 1996, p. 281), although the role of imitation, modelling and observational learning, “especially the idea of bidirectional influences (from parents to child, but also from child to parent),” is the significant common ground.
Students have influence over what they do in this view although, as with most human behaviour, many interacting factors determine dropping out of school. Self- efficacy is the person factor which Bandura believed is especially important in children’s development: “People make causal contributions to their own psychosocial functioning through mechanisms of personal agency” (1997, p. 2). Beliefs in personal efficacy constitute the key factor of human agency where “Perceived self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organise and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (ibid., p. 3, emphasis in original). Students’ beliefs in their efficacy influence how much effort they put into learning, how long they persevere in the face of failure, the course of action they wish to take to overcome obstacles, the level of stress they experience in coping with taxing environmental demands, and the level of accomplishments they realise. Bandura (1997, pp. 5-6) explained that “human agency operates within an interdependent causal structure involving triadic reciprocal causation (Bandura, 1986a).” In this structure the external and social environment, the person (his or her internal characteristics, biological make-up, cognition, and other internal qualities such as intelligence, motivation, self control, self-perception and beliefs that influence perception and action) and the person’s behaviour (influenced by prior learning) influence bi-directionally. In the transactional view of self and society each individual exists in a complex web of relationships which are always changing and being changed by internal, external and social influences. In this view people and their environments are reciprocal determinants of each other (Bandura, 1977, cited in Muuss, 1996, p. 286).
An underpinning belief, which forms part of the critique of this theory, is that environmental, situational and social, rather than biological, maturational factors are primarily responsible for learning and development. In social learning theories, environmental stimuli are recognised but there is also acknowledgement of the influence which a person’s environmental perception may bring to bear: Stimuli can be internal operations or events, such as symbols, language, concepts and thoughts that
allow individuals to control their own behaviours and make decisions (Schiamberg, 1988, cited in Muuss, 1996, p. 308). The power of social learning theory appeared to lie in understanding, rather than in predicting, behaviours because there are so many situational and contextual factors in any set of social relationships. As Muuss pointed out, “the theory does not predict…why some adolescents so quickly and easily yield to peer pressure, whilst others do not” (1996, p. 309).
That humans can and do learn from each other through the entire life span is a significant feature of social cognitive theory. The contributions of social interactions in learning are secondary, or absent, from most other developmental theories. Whilst Muuss argued that social learning theorists have not yet adequately explained the cognitive processes (i.e., memory, thinking, evaluating, which are essential to learning), the significant role which others (parents, teachers, high status peers) play through modelling, explaining, reward and punishment has been established as a basis for sound educational practice (Muuss, 1996, pp. 310-319).
Although more advanced cognitive and psychological processes, which are dependant on the age or the development of the child, are an acknowledged part of social learning theories, Muuss claimed that supporters have yet to explain how