Stages of Development

The difference between growth and development

Growth is a quantitative change in the body's size, weight and height, and it stops after a certain age. It can be measured easily — for instance, a child's height increasing in centimetres or weight in kilograms.

Development is a much broader concept, covering mental, emotional, social and linguistic change alongside physical growth. It is qualitative too, is a continuous process running from birth to death, and never fully stops — even though its pace changes with age. This is why growth is said to be only a part of development, not the whole of it.

For example, an increase in a child's height and weight is 'growth', while that same child gradually learning to speak more words, understanding others' feelings, and solving problems logically are examples of 'development'. REET often gives such examples and asks whether the change described is growth or development.

The major stages of development

Age ranges are averages based on standard classifications in developmental psychology; different scholars place these boundaries slightly earlier or later.

General principles of development

Continuous process

Development runs uninterrupted from birth to death.

An orderly, predictable sequence

Every child passes through the same general sequence of stages, even though the pace differs.

Direction laws

Development proceeds in a cephalocaudal direction (head to foot) and a proximodistal direction (from the body's centre outward).

Individual differences

Every child's pace and style of development differ, so even children of the same age show variation.

Interrelated aspects

Physical, mental, emotional and social development are interconnected and influence one another.

Adolescence: the 'storm and stress' stage

Psychologist G. Stanley Hall called adolescence the 'storm and stress' stage, because rapid physical changes during this period come along with emotional instability, conflict with parents, and a rise in questions about self-identity. From a REET standpoint, this is an important name-based fact that is often asked as a direct question.

Why teachers need to know this

A child's capacity to think, learn and feel differs at every stage. If a teacher does not adapt the teaching method to the stage — for example, explaining abstract reasoning meant for an adolescent to a child in early childhood — learning becomes difficult and discouraging. That is why curriculum, activities and assessment methods should all be decided with the child's age and stage in mind.

This understanding also helps teachers with classroom management — for instance, putting the sense of group belonging in later childhood to positive use, or respecting independent thinking and identity-formation in adolescent students. At the same time, individual differences exist among children even within the same class, so stage-based general understanding needs to be paired with attention to each child's own pace.

Given how the syllabus is structured, the most useful preparation strategy for this topic is memorising the names of the stages, their correct order, their approximate age ranges, and one or two key traits of each — because CDP questions here are usually built on straightforward definitions and classification.

It is also worth remembering that these age ranges are guidelines, not rigid boundaries — a child's actual stage can be influenced by health, nutrition, environment, and individual temperament, so two children of the exact same age may show traits from adjoining stages. For REET, though, the exam expects the standard textbook ranges given in the table above, so aspirants should answer according to the commonly accepted classification rather than real-world exceptions, while still keeping the underlying idea of individual variation in mind when actually teaching. A useful revision habit is to test yourself the other way around too — given only a characteristic, such as 'gang age' or 'egocentric thinking', name the stage and its age range without looking at the table, since REET questions are just as likely to start from the characteristic as from the stage name.

Applying this in the classroom

Practice questions

Frequently asked questions

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