In the interest of time, in this analysis of Erikson’s thought we will focus only on Stage 4 (ages 5-12) and Stage 5 (age 12-18), the stages that most concern us as teachers. The reader is invited to research this more deeply here: https://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html – which website is the source for the quoted text below (italics mine).
Erikson’s Stage4: Industry vs. Inferiority
“Erikson’s fourth psychosocial crisis, involving industry vs. inferiority occurs during childhood between the ages of five and twelve.
“Children are at the stage where they will be learning to read and write, to do sums, to do things on their own. Teachers begin to take an important role in the child’s life as they teach the child specific skills.
“It is at this stage that the child’s peer group will gain greater significance and will become a major source of the child’s self-esteem. The child now feels the need to win approval by demonstrating specific competencies that are valued by society and begin to develop a sense of pride in their accomplishments.
“If children are encouraged and reinforced for their initiative, they begin to feel industrious (competent) and feel confident in their ability to achieve goals. If this initiative is not encouraged, if it is restricted by parents or teacher, then the child begins to feel inferior, doubting his own abilities and therefore may not reach his or her potential.
“If the child cannot develop the specific skill they feel society is demanding (e.g., being athletic) then they may develop a sense of inferiority. Some failure may be necessary so that the child can develop some modesty. Again, a balance between competence and modesty is necessary. Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of competence.”
My commentary:
Clearly, in this fourth stage of a child’s development, with the increasing role of teachers in their lives, we can see that anything that a teacher does in a classroom should have as a primary goal the development of competence in their work in our classrooms. If we cannot convey to our 5-12 year olds through our language instruction that they are good at what we are asking them to do on a daily basis in our comprehensible input classrooms, then we cannot be said to be meeting their psychosocial needs and hence risk plunging them into a psychosocial crisis with the resulting unavoidable damage to them as language students.