Education, Identity and iClass: From Education to Psychosocial Development

Abstract

At first consideration, the worlds of the classroom, the psychotherapy office and the experimental psychology laboratory may seem disparate settings with no obvious connection among them. In this article, the author would like to draw such a connection and to suggest the relevance of psychosocial developmental theory and research to self-regulated personalized learning in general and to iClass in particular. The foundation for this connection lies in Erik Erikson's theory of ego development. Psychosocial development will occur for all persons within a school setting, whether or not that setting takes such development into consideration or furnishes optimal conditions for it. It is better to consciously structure the school environment to provide optimal conditions than to ignore the inevitability of such development and, by default, provide a non-optimal or even inhibitory environment. The author first describes Erikson's theory, then discusses its relevance to the school setting, and moves on to a focus on identity development in late adolescence. In particular, the author emphasizes a kind of truncated identity formation known as ‘foreclosure’. The article concludes with a discussion of the relevance of iClass to identity development in particular and psychosocial development in general.