This is some of what I have done, not been marked yet though... but have a look it may give you an idea of where to start hope it helps...
Although there are many good approaches to promote positive behaviour, some of them do have flaws. Bandura’s social learning theory provides evidence that if good role models are in place then children will display positive behaviour, and vice versa for negative role models. However, there were two issues with the work he carried out. Firstly, Bandura thought this rule would also be true for children watching television programmes. For example, if children watched wrestling then they would become violent and aggressive individuals. Freud argued this saying that by watching it on TV would help banish the urge to display it themselves.
“Freuds view might have been that by watching this programme children’s aggressive impulses would be dissipated harmlessly.”
(Mitchell 1997 page 134)
It needs to be taken into consideration that children may realise the difference between TV and what actually happens in reality.
The other issue with Bandura’s findings was that in his study he used dolls. So it is not clear as to whether children would behave this aggressively to real life people. Also I feel that if children share characteristics through the social learning theory, it doesn’t explain why some children within the same family develop such different personalities or why children gradually develop moral codes.
However, Freud did also link in with Bandura’s theory that a child imitates adults closest to them. He believed that children around three years of age tried to be like their parents and copied their behaviour. He felt that boys were secretly jealous and afraid of their fathers so unconsciously copied the father’s behaviour to try and make a friend of him. Freud called this the ‘Oedipus complex’. I find this theory hard to believe, as many young children grow up without a father figure in their lives and still manage to develop a masculine sex role.
Some would argue that skinner’s theory of rewards and punishments is not successful if always used. They would say that by always rewarding a child for something the child will just get used to it, get bored and lose incentive. However, Skinner was not the only theorist to believe rewards and punishment was a successful tool, he built on Thorndike’s operant conditioning theory. This would also support Bruner’s theory of ‘iconic thinking’ that is where children are reminded by something to prior experiences. Therefore rewards will remind of the positive behaviour.
Arguing both sides of all strategies is the nature-nurture debate. The nature side of the debate would argue that all of the above strategies are irrelevant because children’s behaviour, personality and temperament are inherited through genetics; it is already in them when they are born. Studies show that babies of very young age already show very distinct traits of behaviour. E.g. 40% were easy going, 10% were difficult, etc. The main theorist supporting this argument is Chomsky, who believed development is to complex to be just learnt from scratch, and that there must be some innate skills, pre-determined.
However, the nurture debate would be encouraging the strategies as it believes children develop their behaviour as a result of environmental factors; their upbringing and experiences. Pavlov and Locke are main theorists to support this side of the debate, suggesting a baby is born with a mind like a ‘tabula Rosa’ meaning ‘clean slate’. Which would mean everything is learnt from scratch.
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