Psychological development of adolescents

Psychological development of adolescents

To start with, I should mention that teachers’ opinions on the teaching of adolescents vary enormously. Some teachers really love it and claim they would never choose to teach any other age group. Probably, almost as many, however, find it rather difficult. Yet, I think that the first important point to make is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to generalize about adolescents. It can easily be noticed that there is a great variation in the course of the adolescent period from one individual to another. Thus, some individuals seem to remain ‘children’ longer, whilst others appear to grow up very quickly. In addition, some adolescents find the movement from being ‘a child’ to being ‘an adult’ a really troublesome one, while others do not experience any dramatic problems at this stage.
Nevertheless, there is one thing which can be said of all teenagers going through the period of transition from childhood to adulthood, namely that during this very specific time an individual’s sense of who he/she is may undergo many significant transformations. A number of amazing physical changes take place in the body. These dramatic changes are related to rapid physical, cognitive, and social development.
In just a few short years, children are gradually turning into adults capable of reproduction. They grow taller, their faces change in proportion, muscles and sex characteristics develop, and fat shifts to different locations. In addition, all these physical changes are accompanied by psychological ones. In fact, radical changes in tastes, interests, habits and relations with their peers and other people are just a few examples of changes in behaviour, attitudes and feelings typical of the stage of maturation.
Given that the period of adolescence differs from one individual to another, it is, in my opinion, rather difficult to generalize about the phenomenon of maturation and offer useful advice about how to best handle the teaching of teenagers. There are, however, some characteristic points concerning dealing with teenagers which experienced teachers and psychologists share and which seem to be valuable to teachers.
Some general characteristics of psychological changes which occur during maturation are described by Hadfield (1967: 180-188). As the first characteristics he mentions adolescents’ strong desire to be‘venturesome’. This means that a young man who is undergoing the process of maturation wants at any costs to function as an independent individual. As a consequence, he ...