Development and early childhood

Attachments:

• Early childhood development

1. How does development occur 2 theories Nature or Nuture
   1. Nativist Theorist belief

      Annotations:

      • A natural processes of maturation where a genetically encoded development plan unfolds.
      1. Rationalism - knowledge is what we have and born with

         Annotations:

         • An approach to human learning originally associated with Plato, which proposes that learning is based not so much on actual experience but on revealing to ourselves knowledge which we already have, and indeed are born with.
   2. Development as experience - Environmentalist’ theories

      Annotations:

      • emphasize the influences of learning and experience
      1. Empiricism - Locke, Berkeley and Hume all knowledge is gained from experience

         Annotations:

         • The belief, associated with the seventeenth to eighteenth century philosophers that all knowledge comes from experience.
         1. Known as Social Learning theory
   3. Development by 2 way interactions through child & environment- KANT

      Annotations:

      • The merging of the two Kant proposed that we are born with certain mental structures that help us to interpret input from our senses in particular ways. He called these mental structures categories of understanding. By themselves, they cannot give us knowledge and it is only through interaction with the environment that these structures order and organize experience. Furthermore, there is an active role for individuals as organizers of experience: no longer are they seen either as passively receiving sensory stimuli (as in empiricism), or passively following some biological programme (as in rationalism or nativism). The major mechanism for development is the continuous, two-way interaction between the child and the environment. In this view, both nature and nurture play an important role in development.

      Attachments:

      • Early childhood development
      1. A 2 way cause & affect - A Transactional Model
      2. Constructivist Theory - Piaget

         Annotations:

         • The child’s own role in their development is recognized in constructivist theories, such as Piaget’s stage theory. Interactions between the child and their environment
      3. Social Constructivist Theory

         Annotations:

         • Social constructivist theories ask about young children’s guided induction into particular settings, sets of relationships and ways of thinking. They see development as involving social processes of communication, teaching and learning, not just the individual child interacting with their environmen

Annotations:

• Piaget saw children as having to construct their understanding of the world for themselves, prompted a massive volume of research activity, which continues today

1. Jean Piaget

   Annotations:

   • In contrast to the behaviourist view, saw children as an independent agents in their own learning and more important than influences from their parents and teachers.  It described in detail a series of four successive stages through which all children were believed to progress  
   1. The 4 successive stages of child progression

      Annotations:

      • Piaget believed that children think differently than adults and stated they go through 4 universal stages of cognitive development.  Development is therefore biologically based and changes as the child matures.  Cognition therefore develops in all children in the same sequence of stages.
      1. Schemas

         Annotations:

         • A schema can be defined as a set of linked mental representations of the world, which we use both to understand and to respond to situations. The assumption is that we store these mental representations and apply them when needed.
         • Piaget believed that newborn babies have some innate schemas - even before they have had much opportunity to experience the world.  These neonatal schemas are the cognitive structures underlying innate reflexes. These reflexes are genetically programmed into environment.
         • For example babies have a sucking reflex, which is triggered by something touching the baby's lips.  A baby will suck a nipple, a comforter (dummy), or a person's finger.  Piaget therefore assumed that the baby has a 'sucking schema'
         1. Intrinsic Motivation

            Annotations:

            • The desire to spontaneously apply existing schemas to new situations.
         2. Accommodation

            Annotations:

            • This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation
         3. Assimilation

            Annotations:

            • Using an existing schema to deal with a new object or situation
         4. Equilibration

            Annotations:

            • Equilibrium is occurs when a child's schemas can deal with most new information through assimilation
   2. Piaget suggest that individuals developed mental representations of the environment based on their own actions and the consequences of these. PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT
      1. Object Permemance

         Annotations:

         • The understanding the object still exists when it can no longer be seen. This idea of ‘centring’ – the sense of the baby feeling herself to be the centre and the moving force of her world – runs through much of Piaget’s theory, Centration particularly the ideas of centration and egocentrism. The tendency of infants to The tendency to focus or ‘centre’ on a single aspect of a situation illustrates the complete focus exclusively dominance of their own perceptions. For example, when an object disappears on a single aspect from their sight and they behave as if the object has ceased to exist, they are of a situation. ‘centring’ on their own perception  
         • According to Piaget the more the baby experiences repetitive actions and their affects, babies will then understand that actions will have consequences 
         1. Summary Object Permanence

            Annotations:

            • The findings that Piaget originally produced have proved remarkably robust although the interpretations he placed upon them have been strongly challenged by subsequent researchers. Some studies have shown that infants of 5 months of age behave in ways that are consistent with an understanding that things continue to exist even when they are no longer visible. The findings of investigations with younger infants are ambiguous but suggest that children as young as 2 months have some appreciation of the properties of objects. While infants may have some idea of the permanence of objects, keeping track of objects which move from place to place is a more difficult problem since it makes demands on various parts of their still developing cognitive system. Children’s apparent lack of ‘object permanence’ can also be explained in terms of the development of short-term memory abilities. 　 　 　 　    
      2. Piaget’s observations baby immations

         Annotations:

         • Piaget’s report that in early imitation, infants would only produce actions that were already in their repertoire In the case of tongue-poking, the baby is able to see the original behaviour but not their own attempt. It was Piaget’s proposition that this form of ‘unseen imitation’ is a more sophisticated development    
         1. Summary of immation

            Annotations:

            • Research sheds light on imitation, experimental techniques and theories of the nature of childhood. Piaget took the view that knowledge of the world is constructed as a result of the interaction between infants and their environments. Other theorists are inclined to the view that infants are born with much more comprehension than Piaget allowed. Piaget’s original studies suggested that the development of imitation is a lengthy process which is not complete until 9–12 months. Subsequent investigations reported by Meltzoff and Moore presented counter-evidence that infants in the first days of life have the capacity to imitate behaviours demonstrated by an adult. Evidence also showed that infants of 6 weeks can store a ‘to-be-imitated’ action and perform it 24 hours later.  
      3. how representations are symbolized and stored 2 kinds
         1. Procedural

            Annotations:

            • Procedural representations are ‘know how’ kinds of knowledge – all those things that one knows how to do, but that are difficult to explain. An adult example would be something like riding a bicycle. Early infant knowledge of behaviours like reaching or grasping is said to be of this kind.
         2. Declarative.

            Annotations:

            • Declarative knowledge is the description given to the kind of knowledge that you have represented and that is available to your conscious thinking (e.g. 2 +2=4). As it is available to you in this way, it is possible for you to tell others of your knowledge and to pass it on. Because of its flexibility and power, developmental psychologists have been very interested in the origins and development of declarative knowledge.  
         3. Summary of representation

            Annotations:

            • The ability to hold in mind and understand representations is essential to be able to carry out planned actions. These representations can take many forms including words, numbers, gestures and expressions. A great deal of development in the understanding of representations occurs in the first year of life, including the understanding of the existence of objects which are out of sight and the ability to hold in mind and replicate actions performed by other people. There are also significant developments which occur later in life including the understanding of models as representations of the real world.    

Annotations:

• The social learning model thus recognized the more active part that a child can play in learning from their environment. It also stressed the significance of ‘role models’ in children’s development

1. Challenges behaviourism, children learn from observation and imitation

   Annotations:

   • Supported by research that showed how aggressive behaviour was often imitated by children who observed others engaging in it.      
   1. Bandura Theory 4 related factors to immitate

      Annotations:

      • Attend to relevant aspects of the ‘model’ and their behaviour  Retain what they have seen, through appropriate encoding and rehearsal. Be physically able to reproduce the behaviour. Be motivated to perform the new skill, through the presence of reinforcement and punishment in the settingImportantly, he acknowledged the role of observing others experiencing reinforcement and punishment, but argued that its role was in influencing which behaviours children attend to in the first place, and also in affecting children’s motivation to reproduce a behaviour. 　 　  
   2. Bandura's experiment

      Annotations:

      • Bobo doll research: Bandura conducted a series of experimental studies into children’s tendency to imitate. In these experiments pre-school children watched adult models act either non-aggressively or aggressively towards an inflatable doll called a Bobo doll. The children were subsequently observed to see to what extent they imitated what they had seen
   3. Children & Television violence

      Annotations:

      • Bandura bobo doll experiment prompted other researchers to look at imitation on violence. One researcher looked at the implications on the influence of TV violence Bandura also explored the idea of  televised aggression may have on children's behaviour and considered some of the variables that a child will imitate.  
      • Bandura also explored the idea of  televised aggression may have on children's behaviour and considered some of the variables that a child will imitate. eg a child is more likely to copy if the model is the same age and gender of the child and if the model is attractive and has desirable characteristics.

Annotations:

• This theory sees children as active participants in their own development, but in addition stresses the roles that other people and the culture the child grows up in play in fostering development.  

1. Vygotsky

   Annotations:

   • Vygotsky’s perspective was that human history is created through the construction and use of cultural tools. Cultural tools are ways of achieving things in the world, acquired in the course of development and passed on to subsequent generations 　 　 Cultural tools are ways of achieving things in the world, acquired in the course of development and passed on to subsequent generations 　 　 　 　 Cultural tools are ways of achieving things in the world, acquired in the course of development and passed on to subsequent generations  
   1. Thought and Language reasoning

      Annotations:

      • Vygotsky (1986) however, proposed that language has two functions: inner speech, used for mental reasoning, and external speech, used for communication with other people. 　 　
   2. Teaching & Learning ZPD

      Annotations:

      • Vygotsky proposed that through contact with other, more able people children appropriate new ways of thinking and doing. Indeed Vygotsky saw learning as best supported when there is a degree of inequality in skills and understanding between two people. People of different abilities working together can create what Vygotsky termed a zone of proximal development (ZPD): ZPD supports the child’s cognitionZPD supports the child’s cognition
      1. Applied to Deaf/Blind education

         Annotations:

         •  Application by simple basic teaching eg  child feeding itself with support of an adult and stimulating aspects of the environment. 2nd - task is to develop language with hand gestures eg mimicking eating with other finger movements so that there is distinction bewteen food to eating outdoors.  This then moves the child to a symbolic form of communication.  Finally the child is taught to the associations of the words to the  equivalent spoken words  by touching the face and throat of their teacher while she speaks, and eventually trying to produce the same movements and sounds themselves 　 　
   3. The metaphor of Scaffolding

      Annotations:

      • The support provided by a more able partner allows the less able to tackle a new task, which in turn encourages development into a new level of competence. The social interaction and situation that create the ZPD supports the child’s cognition The metaphor of a scaffold, which is gradually withdrawn as the learner becomes able to work with less support, stresses the significance of social support in learning and development

Annotations:

• At the heart of Piaget’s theory is the idea that intelligence derives from the coordination of action in the child’s environment. Through such action children come to explore and build personal representations of how the world ‘works’. These representations become progressively less dependent on physical experience as rules are abstracted, ultimately leading to the ability to make predictions about aspects of the environment without needing to have had direct experience of them. The development and education of the intellect are thus a matter of active discovery of reality    
• Intellectual development is therefore a process of self-regulation and adaptation to one’s environment. It is this sense of children reinventing and constructing knowledge for themselves that gives this approach the name ‘constructivism’

1. Piaget ideas

   Annotations:

   • Piaget’s ideas also gave rise to notions of ‘readiness’ where it was suggested that to learn effectively, educational experiences need to be matched to a child’s current level of understanding and acknowledge that children’s interests and ways of learning are diverse and subject to change. This view may now seem to be rather obvious, however it was not a common view at the time when Piaget was proposing it.
   • Many attempts have been made to develop educational approaches that apply Piaget’s ideas to classroom activity. An excellent example of such an application is the work of Constance Kamii (1985, 1994, 2004) who has applied Piagetian ideas to the teaching of mathematics. She argues that children need to rediscover and reinvent mathematical principles for themselves, but that the ways in which numbers are represented (by digits) and the mathematical procedures that are taught inhibit children’s ability to do so.
   1. Piaget view is that children are inwardly focussed and remains relatively egocentric for a period of time until the childs thinking and behaviour becomes socialised
2. Summary of Constructivisim

   Annotations:

   • Piaget’s approach to child development, referred to as constructivism, emphasizes the cognitive processes that underpin learning and sees the child as actively constructing their own learning, independently of adults. Constructivism leads to an emphasis on learning rather than teaching in classrooms. Activities from which children are able to develop their own strategies and ideas are valued. Peer interaction is seen as important in leading children to overcome egocentric ways of reasoning. Kamii has demonstrated that a constructivist approach to teaching mathematics promotes greater understanding of mathematical concepts than traditional approaches. Constructivist approaches have been criticized for emphasizing learning as an individualized process, thereby downplaying the social and cultural context it occurs within.
   1. Child constructs own learnng independent of adutls
   2. Emprahis is on learning rather than teaching in the classroom
   3. Peer interaction is seen as leading children to overcome egocentrism
   4. KAII suggests that constructivist approach to teaching mathematics promotes understanding of math concepts than the normal approach
   5. Downside: have been criticized for emphasizing learning as an individualized process, thereby downplaying the social and cultural context it occurs within
3. Peer Interaction & Egocentrism

   Annotations:

   • The egocentric child, he suggested, does not understand other points of view, and takes his or her own view for reality. This egocentrism limits moral thinking and communication in fairly obvious ways, but it also limits cognitive development in other more subtle ways. Since children cannot appreciate that the first thing that strikes them about a problem might not be the only way the problem can be thought about, they cannot reflect on alternatives or understand how different factors might interact with one another. Importantly, Piaget saw this egocentrism of children’s thinking as being overcome through social experience of a particular kind.
   • Piaget regarded children’s relations with adults (whether parents or others) as inherently asymmetrical, and the difference in power and status was such that children could not balance their own views against those of adults. However, in more symmetrical relationships between the child and his or her peers, differences of viewpoint could provide the foundations for intellectual progress. When children interact with one another on more or less equal terms there are opportunities for a divergence of views and also a social need to reach a resolution of this difference of view. Thus, peer interaction was seen to hold a very special potential for helping egocentric (‘pre-operational’) children to overcome their egocentrism and make progress towards higher level (‘operational’) thinking.

1. See interaction with others then the child becomes aware of self withthe capacity for reflection development proceeds from the social to the individual
   1. cultural tools becoming part & parcel of the childs mental resources - LANGUAGE
      1. Discussion, interaction and argument become internalized as the basis for reflection and logical reasoning
      2. Consequently, meanings constructed through social interaction become embedded in individual thought processes.
   2. Vygotsky saw interaction with adults as a key element of successful mental development
      1. ZPD -The difference between what a child can do unaided, and what the same child can do with the help of more able others.
         1. The term ‘scaffolding’ is used to refer to the support given to a child by a more able person.
      2. Mercer 1995 - Vygotsky ideas in classroom practice
         1. elicit knowledge from students,
            1. Teachers can see what students already know and understand and so that the knowledge is seen to be ‘owned’ by the students as well as teachers
            2. Teachers response to students with feedback to gather students contributions to construct generalised meanings
            3. describe the classroom experiences that they share with students in such a way that the educational significance of those joint experiences is revealed and emphasised.