Life Span Development II School Age and Adolescence

Life Span Development II: School age and Adolescence 3 (2+1)

Lesson 1 : Late childhood

Developmental tasks during late childhood

The late childhood period is characterized by more purposeful, industrious behaviour when compared to earlier stages. New developmental tasks are highlighted as children become focused on friendship formation, concrete mental operations, skill learning, self evaluation and team play. Mostly these children are engaged in more complex forms of play and the desire to take new risks.

Children should accomplish certain tasks that society expects them to master, to achieve a place in society. Failure of these will result in immature pattern of behaviour, which might be against the acceptance in peer group. Social groups such as family members, peers, and school plays an important role in achieving these tasks as they lay foundation for children’s learning by providing learning experiences.

The developmental tasks of late childhood period are as follows: By Havighurst (1972)

1. Learning physical skills necessary for ordinary games
2. Building a wholesome attitude towards oneself.
3. Learning to get along with age mates: At this age, children need to begin to participate in team sports and gain a sense of team success as well as personal success. They should describe close friends as people, who like the same activities, share common interests, enjoy each other’s company, and can count on each other for help. They should develop three important characteristics of team membership such as interdependence, division of labour and competition.


4. Learning appropriate masculine or feminine social roles
5. Developing fundamental skills according to their culture for example skills in reading, writing and calculating: Skills are the basis of intellectual competence. They combine knowledge and practice directed toward identifying and solving significant and meaningful problems. Developing these concepts are necessary for everyday life.
6. Developing conscience-a sense of morality and a scale of values
7. Developing attitude towards social groups and institutions.