Diploma in early childhood care and education PDF

DIPLOMA IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE

Childhood aggression is a very complicated behaviour that holds no proper
explanation or justification to understand its common occurrence in children.
Aggression can be temporary or permanent in children but it is always complicated to
handle aggression. In the present case study, the young child shows aggressive
behaviour that was further managed by technique applied by his teacher. This young
child is showing ‘instrumental aggression’ of hitting other children in the class
(Baltes, Reese & Nesselroade, 2014).
According to Black et al. (2017) studies on Instinct theory of aggression,
aggression is a part of human instinct that occurs in almost all human beings visible in
some phase of life or the other. Further, Fink & Rockers (2014) studied about the
Dollard and Millers ‘Frustration and Aggression hypothesis’, as per this theory, an
event or situation can disturb human creating frustration that leads to aggression.
Frustration occurs when a person is not able to achieve the designated goal that gives
rise to aggressive behaviour as a reaction of frustration. Basically, frustration is a
common phenomenon in younger children because childhood is generally helpless
and separated from their mothers in school and other social situations. As these
children are not able to perform as per their will, the general aggression due to
frustration is a common behaviour. The young child behaviour in provided case study
could be very well explained using this Frustration and Aggression hypothesis
because child behaves aggressively on a day-to-day basis as recorded by his teacher.
The child generally hits other children in aggression that clearly defines his frustration
about something. Apart from this aggression, the child was also observed showing
positive behaviour indicating that his aggression is not a part of his nature but it is
merely an outcome of frustration or anger.
Further, teacher to suppress a child’s aggressive behaviour used the act of
ignorance. She gave attention to the positive behaviour of the child and completely
ignored his aggressive actions. This lead to a change in the child’s behaviour where
his aggression was found to be suppressed and positive behaviour increased with
time. This control in aggression can be explained with ‘Social Learning Theory’.
This theory describes aggression is a human behaviour developed as a form of social
learning or social situations. Aggression can either be increased or decreased with
social learning’s (Fox & Schirrmacher, 2014). Human’s generally intimate or follows
what they learn from their surrounding situations, people and the environment. This
social learning influences human behaviour that can be positive or negative (Baltes,