Description:
This week we are focusing on the development of students. Children develop rapidly in the first 18 years of their lives, but what does that development look like? What influences it? This week we are focusing on the development of students and the philosophies of several well revered theorist.
Analyze:
Over the course of 18 years children grow and change in both physical and intellectual ways. They do not develop at the same rate, or in the same ways as others. Slavin (2015) states, “Individual children develop in different ways and at different rates, and development is influenced by biology, culture, parenting, education, and other factors.” (p. 23). When teaching a classroom full of children, it is important for a teacher to realize that while they may all be relatively the same age they have not had the same experiences. These experiences can greatly affect development in a positive or negative way.
Although Piaget’s views have been
scrutinized in recent years he believed that all students move through the same
four basic stages of development (Slavin, 2015, p. 25). Through that first
stage, sensorimotor, they are trying to decipher the world through schemes.
They use what they know, make adjustments, and develop new schemes. It is through
this repeated process that they grow cognitively (Slavin, 2015, p. 26). Piaget
believes that after leaving that first stage they move into a stage called
preoperational. At around 2 years of age, through about the age of 7, children
are concrete thinkers and unable to see in an abstract way. This causes their
viewpoints to often be misguided. For example, they do not understand that a
sandwich cut into pieces is still the same amount as the uncut sandwich
(Slavin, 2015, p. 28). After this stage, children move into the concrete
operational stage. From the ages 7-11 children move away from being as
self-centered, they begin to infer, and they can process simple problems such
as the sandwich mentioned earlier. They are, however, not abstract thinkers. This
does not come about until the last stage, formal operational (Slavin, 2015, p.
29).
Vygotsky believed that “cognitive
development is strongly linked to input from others” (Slavin, 2015, p. 33). He
felt that children learned first by use of non-verbal command, such as
pointing, later moving to talking to oneself, especially if they are trying to
puzzle out a problem on their own. The next stage is proximal development or
working with or next to a more capable individual. This is followed by, learning
through meaningful, teachable moments and/or scaffolding. Finally, they learn
through cooperative learning (Slavin, 2015, p. 29).
Bronfenbrenner believed that the world
around a child greatly influences their development. This is in contrast to Piaget
whom focused mainly on the child him/herself. Bronfenbrenner focused more on a
mesosystem believing that every person that a child came into contact with
influenced that child (Slavin, 2012, 37).
Literacy is by far the most important
aspect of education. Slavin points out that a child’s vocabulary increases
rapidly and can become more extensive in direct part by their parent’s
influence (Slavin, 2012, 43)
Reflection:
I teach in a co-taught classroom and see all stages of development going on around me every day. I am constantly reminded that we do not all learn in the same way or at the same time. However, I am also reminded that we are each good at something. By understanding where my students are individually in their development, I am better able to serve them. I would never ask a child that is reading at a 150 Lexile to perform to the same degree as the student with a 700 Lexile or a child that still struggles that the fingers on her hand will always equal five to multiply two digit numbers. With that being said, they are all expected to perform at a standard level at the end of the year, during state testing.
The “powers that be” tend to frustrate me
from time to time. I do not feel that they always take into consideration
children’s cognitive abilities. For example, I have taught third grade for a
number of years. We are required to teach abstract nouns (GA DOE, 2015). My
students struggle with this every year and rarely do I have someone understand
the concept. I believe this is because they are still concrete thinkers.
While nothing will ever be perfect, it is
good to be reminded by this chapter that while everyone is not in full
agreement all the theorist discussed believed that children are capable of many
things and it is up to us to help facilitate their journey to a productive
adulthood where they are everything they ever wanted to be.
Reference:
3rd Grade English Language Arts Georgia Standards of Excellence (ELAGSE). (2015). Retrieved May 18, 2018, from https://www.georgiastandards.org/Georgia-Standards/Frameworks/ELA-Grade-3-Standards.pdf
Slavin, R. E. (2015). Educational Psychology: Theory and practice (12th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson.
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