Factors Affecting Individual Development and Difference

Before a matter of individual development and difference, three terms must be considered. These terms are human nature, human potential and human need. Human nature brings the meaning of human natural characteristics, talent, and character. It contains such primitive instinctive elements as sexual elements as well as its harmony will be achieved when the body, mind, and soul are in equilibrium. Human potential herein refers to the natural ability and hidden capability that exist in every human’s mind, like the intelligence of linguistics, logic-mathematics, space, music, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal or intrapersonal skills. It can be developed and made explicit through proper encouragement and motivation. Human need is a kind of want to be satisfied during insufficiency and disturbance under imbalanced conditions. It can be classified into two main types: physiological or physical and psychological.
Based on human nature, human potential, and human need, there must be variations or characteristics of physical, cognitive, emotional, behavioural, social, spiritual or other possible attributes among individuals in a group as individual differences. No two persons entirely possess the same physical characteristics, for instance, sex, appearance, body size, and physical skills. An individual differs from another in terms of mentality, learning, memory, reasoning, analyzed abilities, and intelligence. They will never also express the same emotional feelings in any similar situation. It comes as no surprise to know that individuals will behave differently from one another in aspects of communication, interaction, and social activities. Every individual practises his own lifestyle different from each other’s, including those of his family members. And it is little wonder that they have their own philosophy of life, even if the religion they embrace might be the same as others.
Psychologists have shown that it is impossible to have two persons developed at the same rate of growth, simply due to heredity and environment that cause such rates of individuals to be diverse from one another. According to J G Mendel from Austria, the hereditary factor, now known as gene, determines an individual’s inherent characteristics of his or her parents, involving some of their diseases. Genetically, there can be seen three kinds of genetic differences: physical, mental or cognitive, and emotional. Except for twin children, every individual possesses unique physical characteristics like sensory organs, and physical skills as well as external physical characteristics such as height, weight, shape, and the colour of a child’s hair. Each individual has different levels of intelligence and mental ability among their peer groups, as observed from their academic performance in class. Apparently, the individual is born emotional, even when their mothers are pregnant with them.
Environmentally speaking, the family unit poses great influence over individual development, especially by such factors as home atmosphere, family background, food, guidance, and socioeconomic status of a family. Children who come from a friendly and affectionate family will likely experience healthy emotional development. Also, sufficient and balanced food will probably help to develop their physical health in a satisfactory condition. Similarly, those who mix with hard-working peer groups will be an asset for their intellectual and potential development as well as those who frequently socialize with courteous and well-disciplined peer groups will tend to follow their good examples. And again, differences in life values, culture and religion will produce different ways of living, personality, and human behaviour. The exposure of children to healthy technological resources in existence, for example, newspaper, magazine, advertisement, film, radio, television, and computer, will improve their rate of cognitive, emotional and social development. Teachers and schools influence children’s development in physical, intellectual, emotional and social aspects; in the main, teachers who are emphatic and efficient in organizing teaching-learning activities in class will be able to give birth to educated, adroit, well-mannered and responsible children, too.
Finally, genetic and environmental factors both influence the individual development of children differently in physical, emotional and social aspects. This means that every child is unique and possesses particular characteristics. Thus, teachers must be able to plan teaching-learning activities according to their individual differences. In this connection, they will need to adopt suitable strategies and approaches like group, remedial, and enrichment activities for children who are diverse in physical, intellectual, emotional and social aspects. Above all, any teacher ought to put up with individual differences, especially those that may be bad for them, to some extent, before their educational target concerning children.