Transcript
WEEK 9: EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Continuing with childhood development
Types of environments beneficial for child’s early development
Pre-school age kids and an interesting time when forming friendships and sense of self
Gender: area of lots research and parenting styles
Vygotsky and Early Childhood education
Vygotsky is a recent theorist who talked about the sociocultural aspect of cog, development
Learn from older and wiser people
Vygostkian classrooms promote assisted discovery:
Teachers guide children’s learning with explanations, demonstrations and verbal prompts (work together to come up with ideas and solutions)
Reciprocal teaching/learning/collaborative
Challenges to Vygotsky’s theory:
Verbal communication/private speech but doesn't account for other ways of learning such as: social modelling or learning those skills in different ways
Natural line of development and cultural line of development (this is explained REALLY WELL)
Natural line isn’t discussed well such as: motor, perception, attention, memory and problem-solving skills
Because he is a recent theorist, there hasn't been any proper critic to challenge, but with Piaget, it was possible to challenge his findings
Piaget and Education:
Active learning: Children encouraged to discover/individual’s effort
E.g: Child led activities in classroom and strong emphasis on individuals progress
Discovery learning: spontaneous interaction with environment
Sensitivity to children’s readiness to learn: Building on Children’s current thinking
Acceptance of individual differences: Activities for individual children/groups
Types of preschool and kindergarten:
Different styles/theories on cog development
Decision of care, back at work, option of being home/day care
Formal education for ¾ year old’s
Child- centred programs: Teachers provide activities of choice (play day)
Academic programs: Formal lessons structured though teachers
Montessori education: Child-centred and about balance of social and emotional development as well as academic
Rudolf Steiner: Similar as they look at holistic education rather than academia
Childcare:
Debate about going back to work/staying/day care
Stimulating Home care/ day care equally important and effective
It is the type of care is bad/ not substandard
Impoverished/poor standard of care/unsafe will impact social/ emotional and cognitive development
It is about the quality of care
Good childcare enhances language, cognitive and social development especially for low SES children
Center- based care is more strongly linked to cognitive gains than home-based care
Signs of Developmentally Appropriate Early Childhood programs
Research conducted on such stuff
Learning environments
Differences in student and teacher ratio/types of classroom/interaction between staff and student
Different cultural interaction
No more than 18-20 children with 2 teachers
No more than 8-10 with each teacher
Early education programs are strictly monitored
Academic Achievement and Class Size
Small size class from kindergarten through 3rd grade
Greater likelihood of graduating from high school
Is associated with better academic progress
Teachers in small classes:
Spend less time disciplining
More time teaching and giving individual attention
Children who learn in smaller groups show:
Better concentration
Higher quality class participation
Favourable attitudes towards school
Educational Philosophies
Traditional vs constructivist classrooms
Piaget and Vygotsky: Constructivists (active in learning)
Social constructivist classrooms: community of learners, learn from each other, reciprocal learning/teaching
Teacher student interactions: More interactions, children contribute = higher level of academic self-esteem, sense of achievement
Self-fulfilling prophecies: Self talk, beliefs around learning and experiences
Grouping practices: Vygotsky’s idea mixed groups with children who are finding content difficult vs easy (homogenous vs heterogenous
Cooperative learning
Special needs children
Inclusive education: Children in classes teaching in development typical
Children with mild intellectual disability may be included in mainstream classroom
Experience for other children in classroom with children with special needs
Benefits such as prosocial behaviour, positive peer relationships
Students with learning disabilities
Difficulty with one or more aspects of learning, usually learning
Some benefit inclusion, some don't
Achievement gains depends on severity of disability and support services available
Adequate staff needed to provide the care
Erikson’s Theory: Initiative vs guilt
Initiative: Eagerness to try new tasks, join activities with peers
Try new skills through play
Acting out family scenes and visible occupations
Guilt: Psychoanalytic perspective (overly strict, superego or conscience, too much guilt)
Excessive threats, criticisms, punishment from adults
Self-concept: Based on observable characteristics
Appearance
Possessions
Everyday behaviours
By age 3.5 self-concept includes emotions and attitudes
Warm, sensitive parent-child relationship foster +ve, coherent self-concept
Elaborative reminiscing focuses on children’s internal states especially important
Cultural variations in Personal Storytelling
Children telling a story, relying on their language
Difference between different cultures
Autobiographical memory: see themselves and role in socialising children in meaning of their cultures
Example: Irish- American parents attributed transgressions to spunk and assertiveness, downplayed seriousness (individualistic: child misbehaved, you talk to them about it)
Chinese parents emphasized severity of children’s misbehaviour and its impact on others
Differing emphasis in Children’s self-image
Chinese children: Belonging, obligations to others
Irish American: Autonomy
Self esteem
Children: evaluative self-judgments
Young children’s self-judgements:
Making friends
Getting along with parents
Treating others kindly
Learning in school
Cognitive and physical confidence (puzzle solving/runners)
As they develop self-esteem, they are confident to explore world and move out independently (Initiative vs guilt)
Emotional Development in Early Childhood
Supported by mental representation/language develops
As they get older, they gain emotional confidence (emotional self-regulate/recognise emotions)
Parenting strongly influences pre-schoolers’ emotional competence (helping children navigate and understand those emotions and learning ways to manage them)
Cognitive Development and Emotional Understanding
As pre-schoolers age, they
Better able to judge causes and consequences of emotions (recognise if someone is upset or why they are upset)- theory of mind starting to develop
Infer how others are feeling based on their behaviour
Effective ways to relieve other’s negative emotions.
Social Experience and Emotional Understanding
For children to learn, they need experience from parents
Labelling and explain emotions
Expressing warmth and enthusiasm when conversing with children
Engaging in elaborative discussions about causes of emotions
Talk about the causes of emotions (angry/happy/sad)
Emotional Self-Regulation
Language helps children manage experience and expression of emotion
Effortful control is vital to manage emotions
Inhibiting impulses
Shifting attention
Temperament and parent – child interaction affect development of emotional self-regulation
Looking at a chart for children’s behaviours and emotional regulation (“Looks like and I can”)- colour coded in terms of red, orange, yellow, green and blue) e.g: Kids at 5, not learning, not destressing
Common fears of Early C.H (2.5- 4 y.o)
Monsters
Ghosts
Darkness
Preschool/childcare
Animals
Phobias (less common)
Fears become realistic as children age and mature
Self- conscious Emotions
Pre-schoolers becomes sensitive to praise and blame
Secondary emotions where pre-schoolers feel the sense of shame (susceptible to self-conscious emotions linked to their own evaluations)
Parents can promote adaptive levels of pride and shame by focusing on how to improve performance, not on child’s worth
Consequences of shame for adjustment vary across cultures
Empathy and Sympathy
After 1 year a child can show awareness
2-3-year old will comfort someone who is distressed
By 4-7 they will want to do these helping behaviours (help clean up classroom/or help mum/dad in class
Prosocial or altruistic, behaviour benefits another person with no expected reward for the self
For children with poor emotion regulation, empathy leads to personal distress, not to sympathy
Development of empathy is promoted by:
Sociable, assertive temperament
Secure parent-child attachment relationship
Peer sociability in play:
They are in a particular order
The way they interact with one another
Non-social is seen in 3-4-year old’s: play by themselves
Parallel: Play together, using different toys, alongside each other
Associative play: Exchanging and sharing
Cooperative play: 5-year-old having a story and rules with games
Puzzles etc..: non-social and constructive
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Cognitive play categories:
Creating and constructing something
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Follow up research on peer sociability
Pre-schoolers move between play types
Parallel play often serves as a respite
Type of solitary ad parallel play changes during early childhood
Certain types of non-social activity are cause for concern:
Aimless wandering
Hovering near peers
Functional play involving immature, repetitive motor action
Cultural variation in peer sociability
Different cultural context/social norms/interaction with peers
C.V depends on relative importance cultures place on group vs individual autonomy
The types of games and activities children engage in
Village/tribal cultures: Interpretive play (reflecting everyday roles and experiences)
Industrialized/urban cultures: Inventive play (generating make-believe scenarios unconstrained by experience)
Friendships in Early Childhood
Friendships with young kids change several times a day
Not based on enduring qualities like adolescence person
With little kids if they like you and you have similar interests, then you are friends
Pre-schoolers give more reinforcement to friends- greetings, praise, compliance and receive more from them
Early childhood friendships offer social support
Friendships change quite a lot
Peer Relations and School Readiness
If children find it easy to make friends, then it can predict experiences in formal education
More likely to be cooperative in classrooms (self-directed learner)
Socially competent pre-schoolers students do better academically than those less socially skilled peers
Kindergarten programs that promote social competence have:
Children model behaviour
Sensitive teachers who provide emotional support
Small group sizes
Generous teacher-child ratios developmentally appropriate daily activities
Social Problem Solving
Generating and applying strategies that prevent or resolve disagreements
Achieving outcomes that are acceptable to others and beneficial to self
Crick & Dodge’s model takes information-processing approach to social problem solving
Social problem solving improves greatly in early childhood
2984545656500Interventions such as Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) teach children the ingredients of social problem solving
Looks at social cues- interpret social cues- formulate social goal (acceptable)- generate- evaluate effectiveness and then respond
Poor self-impulse- grab the shovel and hurt someone with it in order to respond that way
Helping them recognise and understand what that means and interpreting it
Working out social goals
Develop ideas
Impulse control
How to monitor their behaviour against others
Parental Influences on Early Peer Relations
Direct influence:
Arranging informal peer activities
Encouraging a child to be good host
Indirect Influences
Secure attachment
Sensitive, emotionally +ve parent-child conversations and play
Parent-child play as a model of good interaction
Gender-Stereotyped Beliefs and Behaviours
Children view gender in terms of activities and behaviours
Pre-schoolers associate common objects, occupations, colours and behaviours with gender (they do this through social modelling: viewing and watching their parents “mum: girl and dad: boy”)
Gender- stereotyped beliefs influence play preferences and personality traits
Pink for girls and blue for boys: Subjected to those stereotypes
Influences are from a huge variety of sources (children play differently according to gender of the baby).
Strengthen in early childhood as a product of
Gender stereotyping in the environment
Young children’s cognitive limitations
Can’t make sense of those things
Influences on Gender Typing
Association of objects, activities, roles or traits with one sex or the other in ways that conform to cultural stereotypes
Children gender typed from birth
Biological: Anatomy and prenatal hormones
Environmental: Family: expectations of sons vs daughters
Teachers: actions that extend gender role learning
Peers: Reinforcement for gender- typed play
Broader social environment
Children Learn about Gender through Mother-Child conversations
Mothers often affirm gender stereotypes voiced by children and call attention to gender unnecessarily
To combat stereotypical thinking, parents can
Refrain from labelling order gender unnecessarily
Substitute references to individuals or qualified statements for generic expressions
Monitor their inclination to affirm children’s stereotypical claims
Discuss gender biases language: ask them to avoid using gender labels
We are socialised from birth in terms of the jobs we can do, opportunities we have, types of language, dress etc...
Changing the language so children do not feel restricted
Study looked at word’s mothers used (Stories mum told- Bob the Builder: language was stereotyped)
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-20256527622500Theories of Gender identity in Early Childhood
Example: Caitlyn Jenner (her change and comfort, we can form and identify a particular way)- S.L.T
Gender constancy: Full understanding of the biologically based permanence of their gender including the realisation that sex remains the same overtime even if clothing, style and plan activities change
Gender constancy video: JAMES
-5334036014900Cognitive Pathways for Gender- schematic and Gender-Aschematic Children
Ideas for reducing Gender Stereotyping in Young Children
Delay pre-schoolers exposure to gender stereotyped messages
Model non-traditional gender roles and provide non- traditional alternatives
Children spend time in mixed gender activities
Point out exceptions to gender stereotypes
Lesbian and Gay Families:
20-35% of lesbians and 5-15% gay couples are parents
They are committed to and effective at parenting as heterosexual parents
Children of same sex and opposite sex parents develop similarity
-28702056934400Major concern of lesbian/gay parents is that their children will be stigmatised by parents’ sexual orientation.
Child rearing styles
What makes Authoritative Child Rearing Effective
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Cultural Variations in Child Rearing
Ethnic minority parents often have distinct child rearing beliefs and practices
Chinese parents: more controlling
Hispanic, Asian Pacific Island and Caribbean families combine insistence on respect for parental authority with high parental warmth
Low SES African American: Expect immediate obedience, strict parenting fosters self- control and vigilance
Child Maltreatment:
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-22420023754900Factors related to Child Maltreatment
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