Childhood: a developmental approach

Childhood: a developmental approach

1. The emergence of child development

   • Itard's study of the wild boy of Aveyron - shows there are competing cultural beliefs regarding how a child learns and develops. Also, one of the first attempts to apply scientific principles and testing
   • Developmental understanding of childhood is the pre-dominant way to study it - we instinctivally use age as a way to place our expectations of a child

2. A new science of child study

   • Charles Darwin - 'A biographical sketch of an infant' - detailed dairy about the development of his son William
     • Scientific in approach which made impact on society and caused them to view children as scientifically interesting
   • Dr Arnold Gesell - observed natural behaviour and recorded everything. Assembled a great bank of data detailing what we can expect from children at various ages
     • Industrilisation and urbanisation further whetted the appetite for more scientific research as people were curious about the effects of such issues
       • Compulsory educaction coming into force at the time also meant that teachers needed to be able to understand what they could expect from their pupils developmentally
         • Newson and Newson 1970s identified that survival of the child is not the paramount matter now - we are in a position to consider the psychological needs now
           • Bowlby's theory of attachment - consider arguments against. I.e Is it a minority world creation? Attachments may happen differently in other cultures

3. Stages of development

   • Piaget (1896-1980)
     • Interested in why children could master things a year later where they previously failed. Backed up Rousseaus vision of children having natural stages of development
     • His stages of development have influenced how we think about children
     • Dasen (60s and 70s) found some evidence that these stages existed worldwide and that those subjected to European schooling reached them earlier
       • Friedrich Froebel (creator of Kindergarten) found that children learned through play in 1887
         • Plowden report on primary education in 1960s drew heavily on Piaget theory - used to assess pupils readiness to learn. The theory is still used today
           • Further studies have proven that the stages are not concrete - scientists carrying out variations of Piagets experiments found that sometimes younger children could reach stages quicker than previously thought - showing it is always down to the individual child

4. Development in context

   • Lee Vygotsky (1896) argued that child development doesn't just happen inside the child it is linked to the context in which the child lives
     • His suggestion is that children aren't developing as naturally as we think and that thus we shape children's worlds and how they develop
   • Judy Dunn showed that children appear to be highly socially competent at home in everyday situations - raising questions about our beliefs in childhood innocence
     • They understood more than we thought - were able to make jokes/perform pretend roles/distinguish accidents from purposeful moves/become curious about how others feel ( are 2-3 year olds)