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In classrooms, integrated caring is most likely to surface whenever teachers give students wide, sustained
freedom to make choices. If students have little flexibility about their actions, there is little room for considering
anyone’s needs or values, whether their own or others’. If the teacher says simply: “Do the homework on page 50
and turn it in tomorrow morning”, then the main issue becomes compliance, not moral choice. But suppose instead
that she says something like this: “Over the next two months, figure out an inquiry project about the use of water
resources in our town. Organize it any way you want—talk to people, read widely about it, and share it with the class
in a way that all of us, including yourself, will find meaningful.” An assignment like this poses moral challenges that
are not only educational, but also moral, since it requires students to make value judgments. Why? For one thing,
students must decide what aspect of the topic really matters to them. Such a decision is partly a matter of personal
values. For another thing, students have to consider how to make the topic meaningful or important to others in the
class. Third, because the time line for completion is relatively far in the future, students may have to weigh personal
priorities (like spending time with friends or family) against educational priorities (working on the assignment a bit
more on the weekend). As you might suspect, some students might have trouble making good choices when given
this sort of freedom—and their teachers might therefore be cautious about giving such an assignment. But the
difficulties in making choices are part of Gilligan’s point: integrated caring is indeed more demanding than the
caring based only on survival or on consideration of others. Not all students may be ready for it.
Understanding “the typical student” versus understanding students...........................................................
In this chapter, in keeping with the general nature of developmental theory, we have often spoken of students in
a generalized way, referring to “the” child, student, or youngster, as if a single typical or average individual exists
and develops through single, predictable pathways. As every teacher knows, however, development is not that
simple. A class of 25 or 30 students will contain 25 or 30 individuals each learning and developing along distinct
pathways. Why then study developmental patterns at all? Because underlying their obvious diversity, students
indeed show important similarities. This chapter has indicated some of the similarities and how they relate to the
job of teaching. Our references to “the” student should not be understood, therefore, as supporting simple-minded
stereotypes; they refer instead to common tendencies of real, live children and youth. Pointing to developmental
changes is like pointing to a flock of birds in flight: the flock has a general location, but individual birds also have
their own locations and take individual flight paths. Development and diversity therefore have to be understood
jointly, not separately. There are indeed similarities woven among the differences in students, but also differences
woven among students’ commonalities. We recommend therefore that you read this chapter on development
together with the next one, which looks explicitly at student diversity.
Chapter summary
Understanding development, or the long-term changes in growth, behavior, and knowledge, helps teachers to
hold appropriate expectations for students as well as to keep students’ individual diversity in perspective. From
kindergarten through the end of high school, students double their height, triple their weight, experience the social
and hormonal effects of puberty, and improve basic motor skills. Their health is generally good, though illnesses are
affected significantly by students’ economic and social circumstances.
Cognitively, students develop major new abilities to think logically and abstractly, based on a foundation of
sensory and motor experiences with the objects and people around them. Jean Piaget has one well-known theory
detailing how these changes unfold.
Educational Psychology 61 A Global Text