Chickering's and Erikson's Theories of
             Understanding student development is a very important part of student affairs. Theories of student development can assist student development officials in understanding students. One type of theory that is particularly helpful to student affairs officials is psychosocial theories. Psychosocial theories of college student development address such issues as how people define themselves, how they define their relationships with others, and how they decide what they want to do with their lives. Student development theory is important because it can aid in describing, predicting, explaining, and controlling changes in student behavior (Evans, Forney, & Guido-DiBrito, 1998). This paper will compare Chickering's theory of student development and Erikson's theory of student development.
             According to Chickering, "Psychosocial theories view development as a series of developmental tasks or stages, including qualitative changes in thinking, feeling, behaving, valuing, and relation to others and to oneself" (Chickering & Reisser, 1993, p. 2). Chickering proposed seven vectors of development. Students move through each vector, however the vectors are not strictly sequential. Vectors build on one another, but one can go back and reexamine issues in each vector. The vectors are more like a spiral staircase than a sequence of steps. A person can be in two different vectors at once.
             Erikson's theory combines both internal psychological factors and external social factors to consider development. Erikson proposed eights stages of development. Like Chickering, Erikson's stages build upon one another and each stage focuses on a challenge or crisis that must be resolved in order to move effectively to the next stage of development. The resolution of each crisis depends on the interaction of the individual's characteristics and the support provided by the social environment. Resolution of a cris...