Understand the concept of a research perspective.
Highlight developments in the Psychoanalytic tradition to adolescent psychology.
Understand the role that the Learning tradition played in the development of psychology.
Become aware of Piaget’s contributions to adolescent development theory.
Delineate between Biological perspectives and other paradigms.
Define central features of Humanistic Psychology relevant to adolescent development.
Apply the Ecological and Systemic approaches to adolescent life functioning.
WHAT ARE PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES?
There are many statements that people make about adolescence. Some are based on opinions or personal experiences. While this is not necessarily wrong, analyzing adolescence from personal experience presents problems. Everyone’s experience is different. There is no way to determine what is true.
If your teenage years were positive, then you are more apt to view the period positively. Similarly, suppose your experiences were primarily negative. In that case, you might be more likely to see adolescence as a sad and challenging time. Thus, personal experience may be a good starting point for gaining ideas to begin an inquiry. Still, it is rarely helpful to use our own experiences alone to draw conclusions that apply to diverse people.
The process of scientific research allows our findings to be more objective. In school, we take classes in science, yet the term can be confusing and intimidating. But in reality, science is just a specific way of conducting an inquiry and looking at the evidence. Scientists are always looking for alternative and logical explanations. Science supports explanations with the most evidence. Then scientists revise their theories if necessary and get better pictures of what is likely to be true, based on the existing evidence.
Some people criticize scientists for frequently changing their minds. However, scientists change their beliefs when they think they have been wrong. They constantly look at the evidence, including new evidence. They try to revise their ideas if new evidence supports new conclusions. They should always be skeptical, even of their own previous research. Therefore, to think like a good scientist is to have both curiosity and lots of skepticism. This is why scientists may seem to change their minds so frequently, especially to people who do not have training in science.
Psychology, the science of behavior and thinking, tries to categorize different ways of looking at psychological data into research perspectives. Perspectives, also called paradigms or theoretical orientations, among other terms, are ways that researchers approach topics. They indicate similar assumptions about research. Researchers that share perspectives often share presumptions about the world and about their subject matter. They may use the same set of theories and research techniques. Research techniques are discussed further in Unit 3.
There are several different theoretical perspectives in