EPSE 307/308 Lecture Notes
What is development?
Development: The growth of humans throughout the lifespan,
from conception to death, including all aspects of growth – physical,
cognitive, social, emotional, intellectual, moral, personality, etc.
-Includes physical and biological changes; changes due to
social and educational influences
Maturation
-Physical growth, biological unfolding
-Mostly genetically influenced
Theories of
Development
-Development implies growth and change
A developmental theory:
-is a set of logically related statements that attempt to
explain how and why children change with age
-Proposes which facts are most important for understanding
how children change with age (Thomas, 2005)
Proposes what sorts of relationships among the facts are
most important for understanding development
-structural relationships (age, mental ability, taxonomy)
-casual relationships (heredity, environment)
Why Should Teachers
Care?
Children’s place in development is foundational for:
-Interpersonal relations with adults and peers
-Cognitive abilities
-Learning styles
-Understanding of the world
-Interest in subject matter
-Motivation
-Coping styles when facing challenges
-Sense of right and wrong
Teachers need to
understand child development and different theories to:
-Choose appropriate learning material
-Provide appropriate instructions
-Teach successfully
-Form relationships with children that promote learning and
development
-Understand children’s social and emotional skills at a
given stage in development
-Be a smart consumer of educational materials
Theoretical Issues in Development
Nature and Nurture
-Is development innate (genetically determined) or is it the
product of socialization?
-is it a product of the child’s environment?
-how much of one or the other? We know that its both. But
how much of each?
Behavioral Genetics
-What % is attributable to
1) Heredity
2) Environment
B.1 Shared Environment
B.2 Unshared Environment
-what environment is shared? Home life? School environment?
Unshared environment = everything else ie. Neighborhood etc.
Percent attributable to…
For Personality and intelligence
For aggressive behaviors
Heredity 40-50% 41%
Shared environment 0-10% 16%
Non-shared environment 14% 43%
Why is this important? Cause TEACHERS are the NONSHARED
environment
We will have the kids for 6 hours a day, nine months of the
year, which is a huge impact.
Theoretical Issues in Development
Nature and Nurture
Active or Passive
Continuous – Gradual, quantitative changes
Discontinuous – large, qualitative shifts
Example – crawling to walking
Typical or Atypical
The Normal Curve
Universalities and Individual Differences
-Is human development unique to the individual or are we all
developing in generally same ways?
What are your assumptions about how children develop?
Assume for a moment that you have just been informed by your
principal that you will be getting anew student in your class who is highly
aggressive.
What questions would you want to ask about this student
prior to coming to your class?
His or her?
Triggers?
Type of aggression?
Type à
physical à
nature
Abuse? à
nurture --> family environment
Parent help à
Context è
classroom context – home context
Has behavior been diagnosed?
Nutrition? Sleep?
Maslow’s hierarchy
Self-harm? Or outward aggression?
Piaget
Behaviourism dominated until the 1960’s
-learning was evident by an outward change
-he believed learning was actually shown by a change in
knowledge – so this is not observable
-pretty revolutionary at the time
-prior to his work, at the time people were focusing on
entresic rather than extresic
-what and when children know – changes to how do they know
what they know
-not a psychologist but a biologist and a philosopher
-fascinated with children’s incorrect responses
- why do children make identical mistakes at the same age?
-proposed that cognitive growth takes place in stages
-children construct their own knowledge in response to
experiences
-children learn many things on their own
-primed to learn from the get go
4 factors
1 maturation
-simple biological process of growing older
-activity is key
-social interaction – interacting with peers and lesser with
adults
How children come to know and stages
Interested how organisms adapt into environments
Scheme – more
motor or cognitive
-stable, organized activity or behavior to gather and
interpret info about objects
Schema
-stabilized info about features of objects (colour, shape,
sound, texture)
schemas influence how we think about things in the world
Structure: stable interaction of schemes and schemas
Processes if
Cognitive Development
Paiget described two processes used by the individual in its
attempt to adapt
Assimilation
Accommodation
Both of these processes are use throughout life as the
person increasingly adapts to the environment on a more complex matter
Assimilation –
the process of incorporating new experiences into already exisiting schemes
No change or learning occurs
Ex. Infant uses a sucking scheme that was developed by
sucking on small bottle and attempting
to suck on a larger bottle
Ex. Preschooler uses a riding scheme that was developed
while riding Big Wheels to try ride a tricycle
Accommodation
The process of incorporating new experiences into new and
different schemes
Change or Learning Occurs
Ex. Infant modifies a sucking scheme developed on a pacifier
to one that would be successful for sucking on a bottle
Piaget hypothesized that infants are both with schemes operating
at birth – called reflexes
Reflexes are quickly replaces with constructed schemes
As schemes become increasingly complex, they are termed
structures
As one’s structures become more complex, they are organized
into a hierarchical manner
Equilibration – we
seek to know
It is the process of balancing what we already know
(assimilation) and what we may be asked to learn that doesn’t quite fit
(accommodation)
Explains how we go rom one stage to the next through
Sensorimotor
(Birth-2ish)
Intellectual functioning is organized around sensing infor
and performing actions accordingly
-unconscious, self-unaware, and non-symbolic cognition
6 sub-stages
1.
Reflexes
2.
Schemes
3.
Procedures
4.
Intentional behaviours
5.
Experimentation
6.
Representation
Pre-operational
(2ish-7ish)
The stage before mastering logical mental operations
Preconceptual period (2-4)
Intuitive Period (4-7)
Accomplishments:
Symbolic – gold star means good job, heart means love etc.
Pretend play – becomes more complex (storylines more
imaginative)
Errors:
Animism – personifying inanimate objects – ex. giving
personality to plants/stuffed animals
Illogical or Magical thinking – ex. Believing that if they
were mad at someone and they wished something would happen to them, that could
become true
Ex. Confusing their dreams with reality
Egocentrism (2-7) tendency to focus on own viewpoint and
ignore perspectives of others
-trying to comfort another child or adult by bringing them a
blankey or something
Theory of mind (3) – understanding that others have different
minds, thoughts, feelings and beliefs
Classification
Conservation of mass, liquid, number
Centration –focusing on one dimension of objects or events
and on static states rather than transformation
Pre-operational
(2-7ish)
More symbolic than sensorimotor
Egocentric
Inability to engage in operations
Intuitive, rather than logical
Can’t mentally reverse actions
Lack of conservation skills
Focus on one variable or characteristic
Overgeneralize from their experience
Tend to believe what they see
Concrete Operations (7ish-11ish)
The stage at which mental tasks are tied to concrete objects
and situations
Accomplishments:
-logical reasoning
-reversibility
-seriation
-conservation task
Errors:
-lack abstract thinking
Thought characteristics:
Tend to be concrete, fixed and inflexible
Logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning, but only in
concrete circumstances
Highly abstract thinking and reasoning about hypothetical
situations still remains very difficult
Formal Operations (11ish - )
Ability to think abstractly and reason hypothetically
Ability to reason systematically about all different
outcomes
Ability to engage in scientific thinking
Ability to think about possibility and ideas
BUT…not everyone reaches this stage
Formal Operations
Logic, ideals, meta-thought
Abstract ability + maturation = self thought
Elkind (1967)
Imaginary Audience –Under
differentiating thoughts
Personal Fable –overdifferentiating
thoughts
Pros and Cons of Piaget
Guidelines for understanding typical development
-no account for developmental or learning disabilities
BUT some of his achievements and errors are still the basis
of cognitive assessment today
Piagets tasks in lab setting
We know altering wording, working with adults, helps
Children think differently than adults
Cognitive development at any one stage depends on activity
Children must engage in appropriate activities in order to
learn
Children need every opportunity to do things for themselves
Children must be developmentally ready to learn
Teachers should use developmentally appropriate practices to
enable children to learn
Vygotsky – post
Russian revolution 1917
Contemporaries were Watson & Pavlov
-Explanations too simple
Cognitive development depends on interaction with people in
one’s world
“More Knowledgeable Others”
-speech patterns
-written language
-other symbolic knowledge
Cultural Tools
Real Tools = rules and computers – tangible
Symbols = numbers and language
Speech = the primary culture tool – private speech and inner
speech
Piaget viewed this as immature, an error in cognition
The Zone of Proximal Development
ZPD = huuuge
-difference of what a learner can do on their own, and what
they can do with the help of a more knowledgeable other
Stage 1: Assistance provided by More Knowledgeable Others
Stage 2: Assistance provided by self
Stage 3: Automatization through practice
Stage 4: De-automatization; referring back to the previous
three stages
Behaviorism
Theoretical perspective in which behavioral and emotional
responses change as a direct result of particular environmental stimuli
Learning is evidenced by observable changes in behavior
Focuses on external behaviors; little consideration of
internal thought processes
Classical Conditioning
Operant Conditioning
Child is harassed at school
Child feels bad when harassed
Child associates being harassed and school
Child begins to feel bad when she thinks of school
Child is corrected frequently when reading aloud
Child feels anxious about reading
Child associates reading and classroom
Child begins to feel anxiety when thinking of classroom
Positive reinforcement
= strengthening or increasing the frequency of behavior by presenting or
adding a desired stimulus
Autonomy, mastery, and purpose = lead to better performance
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