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Cognitive Development - Changes in mental skills that occur through increasing maturity and experience.Cognitive Development: Concepts for TeachingThe Importance of Cognitive Development to TeachersExpert teachers know what level of cognitive development they can expect from most of the students in their classes. They use that knowledge to plan lessons, activities, & assessment, as well as to manage the classroom.We usually think in terms of children being influenced by their environment. It is important as well to remember that children influence their environment, especially in the context of their families & friends.Maturation Versus LearningMaturation - any relatively permanent change in thought or behavior that occurs as a result of biological aging, regardless of personal experience.Expert teachers know that they cannot force a student to think or to do what he or she is not biologically old enough to do. Learning - Any relatively permanent change in thought or behavior that occurs as a result of experience.Clarifying the distinction between maturation and learning is important. As a teacher you need to know which kinds of abilities and behavior you can expect from children of a certain age, regardless of their particular childhood experiences. Canalization: A Key to TeachingCanalization - extent to which a behavior or an underlying ability develops without respect to the environment A highly canalized ability is one that develops in nearly all children, despite widely varying environments. Canalization is closely related to the concept of innateness. For example, perceptual abilities, such as the ability to see and to hear, are relatively highly canalized. So are simple memory abilities, such as those used in learning a list of vocabulary words. We develop simple memory abilities in almost any environment, regardless of whether we are urged to do so. A weakly canalized ability develops only if the environment supports it. The interpersonal skills children use with one another and with teachers are relatively weakly canalized; in other words, children need support and direction from parents, teachers, and their peers to learn how to deal with others in an appropriate way. Thus a child's environment affects social skills more strongly than it affects simply memory skills. Teachers are most easily able to help students develop weakly canalized skills.Cognitive Development: Continuous Versus Stage likeContinuous DevelopmentTheories that suggest development proceeds continuously assume cognitive abilities are acquired gradually, such that each new accomplishment builds directly on those that came before it. Continuous-development theories propose that a person's thinking is not fundamentally different at any one age or level of development than it is at any other age.Stagelike DevelopmentEach stage is associated with qualitatively distinct set of cognitive structures, or mental patterns of organization that influence our ways of dealing with the world. For example, in Piaget's stage theory, older children are able to arrange their mental patterns, and to interact with the world, in ways that younger children, who have not reached that stage, cannot. That is, the thinking of children in later stages of cognitive development is said to be fundamentally different from the thinking of children in earlier stages.Behavior unfolds in a one-directional, invariable sequence. In other words, development always moves forward, never backward; likewise, it always moves in the same way for everyone, although the rate at which the stages unfold may differ from one person to another. Later stages build on earlier stages. As the child grows older, he or she consolidates previously developed skills and develops new ones. Domain-General Versus Domain-Specific Cognitive DevelopmentDomain-General Development - development that occurs more or less simultaneously in multiple areasDomain-Specific Development - development that occurs at different rates in different areas.Implications for TeachingA number of skills, including many academic and interpersonal skills, develop only with respect to the environment. Expert teachers are able to recognize these weakly canalized abilities and provide support and direction for them. They also know what to expect of their students by understanding their environmental experiences. Some expert teachers subscribe to stage-like views of development- they assume that largely inborn factors determine the unfolding of a child's abilities over time. As a consequence, they do not push students into development or force them to skip a stage, because they think that nonenvironmental forces determine development. Other expert teachers may support a continuous view of development- they expect children to have at least the rudiments of adult thinking at relatively early age.Piaget's Stage Theory of Cognitive DevelopmentAt all ages, children actively seek to explore the world and to come to terms with it. Piaget's theory remains the most nearly complete, influential theory to date, although it is certainly not the only theory of cognitive development.Piaget's theory is a stage theory of cognitive development. It specifies qualitative changes in cognitive development with each successive stage. Although a child's accomplishments at each stage build on those in the previous stage, these accomplishments are also distinct from the ones the child demonstrated at the previous stage.Piaget's theory is also largely domain general. It predicts that children who show cognitive development in one area generally should show comparable cognitive development in other areas.Explaining Different Levels of Performance in Different SkillsHorizontal Decalage - Piaget's term for the temporary difference in performance that a child shows between various cognitive domains or activities, within a given stage of development.Mechanisms of Cognitive DevelopmentEquilibration - balancing of cognitive structures with the needs of the environmentDisequilibrium - state of confusion encountered when a situation does not match a preconceived notion of the way the world is or should be. Piaget suggested that disequilibrium is good for children, because it serves as the impetus for the development of expertise.Schemas - cognitive framework that provides a way to understand and organize new knowledgeAssimilation - revision of existing cognitive schemas to incorporate new informationAccommodation - process of creating new schemas, or mental frameworks, to organize information that cannot be assimilated into existing schemas.Stages of Cognitive DevelopmentPiaget proposed 4 stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.Sensorimotor StageSensorimotor Stage - Piaget's first stage of cognitive development, occurring between birth and about age 2. the sensorimotor stage is characterized by the development of sensory (simple input) and motor (simple output) functions. During this stage, infants respond largely in reflexive (inborn) ways; as they develop, children modify these reflexes to suit the demands of the environment.Object Permanence - realization that an object continues to exist even when it is not immediately visible.Representational Thought - well-formed mental representations, or ideas, of external stimuliPreoperational StagePreoperational Stage - Piaget's second stage of cognitive development, occurring between approximately 2 and 7 years of age. During this stage, the child actively begins to develop mental representations and learns to use words.Egocentric - centered on the self without understanding of how other people perceive a situation.Concrete Operational StageConcrete Operational Stage - Piaget's third stage of cognitive development, occurring from about ages 7 to 12 years. During this stage, children become able to mentally manipulate internal representations of concrete objects.Conservation - recognition that even when the physical appearance of something constant in quantity or amount changes, its underlying quantity remains the same.Reversible Thinking - Ability mentally to reverse a physical operation. According to Piaget, this ability develops during the concrete operational stage of cognitive development.Formal Operational StageFormal Operational Stage - Piaget's final stage of cognitive development, occurring at about 11 or 12 years of age and extending through adulthood. Individuals in this stage form and operate on (e.g., reverse) abstract as well as concrete mental representations.Second-Order Relations - relations between relations, as required by analogical reasoning. Another important ability that develops during the formal operations stage is the ability to think abstractly- that is, to think about concepts, such as justice or inner peace, that do not have any concrete, physical equivalents.Evaluating Piaget's TheoryPiaget's theory is the most nearly complete theory of cognitive development to date, although it is heavily oriented toward developing expertise in scientific modes of thinking. The theory offers fewer ideas about the development of expertise in other modes. Piaget's theory has also been useful in generating a tremendous amount of research and in suggesting to teachers what children at given ages can and cannot do. The validity of Piaget's theory-the extent to which it is accurate in describing children's cognitive development- has been questioned on a number of grounds:The limitations of the stagelike nature of developmentThe ages at which children can first perform various kinds of tasksWhether children's failures to perform certain tasks are actually due to the reasons Piaget gaveWhether all adults ever become fully formal operationalWhether the theory can be generalized across cultures.The Stagelike Nature of DevelopmentNo full consensus has been reached among cognitive developmentalists as to whether development is stagelike or continuousThe ages at which children can first Perform TasksPiaget seems to have overestimated the ages at which children are really capable of performing various kinds of cognitive tasks. The general trend in research in this field has been to suggest that children can do many tasks at ages earlier than Piaget thought, as long as the children are familiar with the content domain in which they are working.Reasons for Failures to PerformWhat Piaget had taken to be a reasoning failure was actually a memory failure. Cross-Cultural GeneralizationsTeachers need to learn as much as they can about the cultural background of their students, and to treat the children in a way that is respectful of their cultural diversity.Sometimes children from diverse cultures do not even understand tests developed in western cultures. When you teach culturally diverse children, do not make assumptions about the cognitive readiness of members of one group on the basis of knowledge about the cognitive readiness of members of another group.Reaching the Formal Operations StageMany adolescents and adults in Western cultures also may not reach formal operations.Neo-Piagetian ViewsProposing Different StagesDistinction between optimal and typical levels of performance. The optimal level is the best performance an individual is capable of making on a given task; the typical level is the level of performance at which the individual typically operates. Just because people are optimally capable of performing at a certain level, it does not mean they will typically perform at that level in their every day lives.Proposing More StagesPostformal Thinking - Thinking that goes beyond that of formal operations in some way.Problem Finding - stage of cognitive development proposed by Patricia Arlin, in which an individual becomes able not just to solve problems, but to find important problems to solve. Dialectic Thinking - Recognition, usually occurring during late adolescence or early adulthood, that most real-life problems do not have a unique solution that is fully correct, with other solutions being incorrect; involves thesis, antithesis and synthesis.Thesis - proposed solution to a problemAntithesis - proposed solution to a problem that directly contradicts an existing thesis.Synthesis - proposed solution to a problem that reconciles 2 opposing points of view (the thesis and the antithesis)Teaching Beyond PiagetPiaget defined some of his stages in terms of what children cannot do. A focus on what children cannot do may set up negative expectations, which in turn can become self-fulfilling prophecies.Expert teachers know they can expect, and ask for, students to show higher levels of thinking in subjects in which the students have expertise.Implications for TeachingPiaget's TheoryMix assimilations and accommodationsTake into account children's level of cognitive developmentTeach children in a way that reflects their nature as natural-born scientistsPay as much attention to understanding and correcting the bases of children's errors as to rewarding their correct answersTeach children in a way that allows new cognitive structures always to build on old ones.Neo-Piagetian ViewsProblem finding is at least as important as problem solving, and becomes more important in adolescence and beyond.Students, as they become adolescents, need to be encouraged to think dialectically.Beyond PiagetExpert teachers focus on what children of a given age can do.Children can be pushed just a bit beyond their current level of cognitive developmentChildren should be taught as multifaceted human beings, not just as developing scientists.Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive DevelopmentSociocultural Theory - Vygotsky's major premise that cognitive development is largely from the outside, inward. Children reflect on the interactions between the people in their world and others, including themselves, and then make use of these interactions to further their own development.InternalizationInternalization - absorption, or taking in, of knowledge from the social contexts in which it is observed, so that one can use it for oneself.Vygotsky believed that language development is the key to being able to internalize complex ideas.Bilingual children have a special advantage in that they can understand conversations in 2 languages. But they also face special challenges, in that the language in which they are more comfortable may not be the language in which instruction occurs in school.The Zone of Proximal DevelopmentZone of Proximal Development (ZPD) - Range between a child's level of independent performance and the level of performance a child can reach with expert guidance. Also called the zone of potential development.Dynamic Assessment Environment - Testing situation, designed to assess a child's zone of proximal development, in which the examiner not only gives the child problems to solve, but also gives the child a graded series of hints when the child is unable to solve the problems.Static Assessment Environment - testing situation in which the examiner gives the child problems to solve, but provides little or no feedback about the child's performance.ScaffoldingDirect Instruction - learning situation in which a teacher, parent, or other authority imparts knowledge to a child by teaching it. Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) - Learning situation in which an adult or older child indirectly helps a child learn by explaining events in the environment, but without directly teaching some lesson.Scaffolding - Competent assistance or support, usually provided through mediation of the environment by a parent or teacher, in which cognitive, socioemotional, and behavioral development can occur.Scaffolding is a centrally important technique for stimulating cognitive development. In addition to the strategies described previously, scaffolding strategies include questioning students, modeling behaviors, and providing feedback on student performance.Teachers who use scaffolding can respond not only to the developed and developing cognitive abilities of children, but also to their developed and developing behaviors and socioemotional needs. Scaffolding agents include expert, self, peerScaffolding domains include content and heuristicEvidence suggests that appropriate cognitive, socioemotional, and behavioral scaffolding has positive effects on cognitive development. Interventions - Action undertaken to improve a child's cognitive, socioemotional, or behavioral development.Studies of the long-term effects of intervention indicate that if a program does not last long enough, and if there is inadequate scaffolding after the program, cognitive gains tend to disappear.Evaluating Vygotsky's TheoryTheoristPosition on StagesDirection of DevelopmentMajor ConstructsPiagetStages: Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, Formal OperationalInside, outwardEquilibrium, assimilation, accommodation, stageVygotskyContinuousOutside, inwardInternalization, zone of proximal development, scaffoldingImplications for TeachingServe as a role model for studentsChildren learn by internalizing external dialogue. They learn to think critically and well by observing those around them doing it. One of the most important aspects of being a teacher is serving as a role model for students. Other, more expert students also can serve as role models, although as with any such models, they can do so for good or for ill.Build rather than hinder languageLanguage and though are intimately and inextricably related. The view that language is key to both direct instruction and mediated learning experience has direct implications for everyone. It is especially important for students who come to school speaking a language that is not the principal language of the school. Teachers need to build rather than hinder children's native languages when they do not correspond to the language of the school. When language learners are able to interact within their ZPD, increased positive outcomes are observed.Make sure you neither expect too much nor too littleChildren do not always operate at the peak of their capacity. Obviously, teachers can expect too much of children. At least as often, however, they expect too little. Vygotsky's theory points out that children have a zone of proximal development, and that with proper guidance, children can be helped to develop further within the range of this zone. One means of development is through the enhancement of information processing in learning and rmation-Processing Theories: Examining learning and Memory SkillsInformation-processing theorists look at cognitive development in terms of how people of various ages process information and represent it mentally.Verbal SkillsVerbal Comprehension - Ability to understand spoken and written materialWords in SentencesChildren (as well as adults) use various cues to figure out word meanings. These findings suggest a link between the ability to use verbal contexts and the level of vocabulary a person develops. One of the best ways for children to increase their vocabulary is simply to read a lot, which gives them many opportunities to learn words in their natural contexts.Sentences in ParagraphChildren don't notice when sentences in a paragraph contradict each otherQuantitative SkillsMany times students scramble steps for arithmetic or have a wrong algorithm they are using. Memory SkillsChildren's memory skills improve with age. 2 factors that influence this improvement: people's knowledge about the domain in which they are learning and remembers, and people's understanding of their own memory.Children will learn better, generally speaking, in domains about which they already have more knowledge.Deficits in memory are frequently observed in children with both reading and mathematical disabilities. Rehearsal - memory strategy in which a person, either mentally or aloud, recites information over and over again to remember it. Implications for TeachingTry to understand children's thought processes, not just their final answersTeach strategies for learningTeach knowledge not for its own sake, but rather to help children develop expertisePay attention to how students represent information3 major Approaches to Cognitive Development: A ComparisonTheory of MindAutistic children seem to lack or have a seriously defective theory of mind (understanding of how the mind operates). They also are deficient in their language development. It is, therefore, not surprising that the development of theory of mind is highly related to children's verbal ability. Language DevelopmentWhat makes a language a language?CommunicationArbitrarinessMeaningful StructureMultiplicity of StructureProductivityStages of Language AcquisitionPrenatal Responsiveness to the Human VoiceCooingBabblingOne-Word UtterancesOverextension Errors - Application of a word beyond its legitimate use.Underextension Errors - Limiting the application of a word so the word's proposed meaning has too narrow a range of possible examples.Two-Word UtterancesSyntax - rules for combining words.Telegraphic Speech - speech that uses simple syntax in utterances of 2 or 3 words to impart a simple meaning. Children begin to develop this form of speech at about age 3.Basic Adult sentence structureTheories of Language Acquisition: A comparisonNurture: Acquisition of language by ImitationEmphasizes the role of nurture in language acquisitionIt has been shown that children prefer listening to child-directed speech (simplified way of speaking) over other kinds of speechOverregularize -To use word forms that follow a rule rather than recognize an exception to it. (I Goed Home)Nature: An Innate Ability to Acquire LanguageLanguage Acquisition Device (LAD) - Innate predisposition or ability to acquire language.Critical Periods - Certain points during development when individuals are particularly attuned to various aspects of language (or other) development.Generally, if children learn a second language in an environment of native speakers, they acquire the accent of a native speaker. Adults, however, typically retain an accent that identifies them as speakers of another first language, whether or not they learn the second language from native speakers.Nature and NurtureHypothesis Testing - As specific to this chapter, children's learning of language by forming hypotheses about language and linguistic forms and then testing those hypotheses in their environments.The Relationship between Language and ThoughtLinguistic Determinism - Theory of the relationship between language and thought that suggests the structure of our language shapes or thought processes.Linguistic Relativity - Theory of the relationship between language and thought that suggests the structure of our language shapes our thought processes.Bilingualism and Education: An IntroductionSome people think children need to learn English and we should have English-only classrooms, others think the children should keep and learn in their original language.Bilingualism - Ability to communicate in 2 languages.Moving Between CulturesSome children may also be devastated by the teasing they suffer as a result of stumbling over English, even though they have acquired an age-appropriate mastery of their native language. Also problems in school because they don't fully understand English.The status of LanguagesWhen the student's native language is valued as much or virtually as much as English, then the bilingual experience will be a positive one. The individual's cultural identity will not suffer, nor will cognitive development and learning.The first Language as a Resource for LearningBilingual Education - Schooling in which 2 languages are used as the medium of instruction.Additive Bilingualism - Addition of a second language that builds on an already well-developed first languageSubtractive Bilingualism - Learning of a second language that starts to replace a first language that has not yet been fully formed.Implications for TeachingEnsure that children understand the language in which new material is presentedBe aware of the effects of your use of languageShow respect for all languages, regardless of the language in which you teachTry to develop additive bilingualismBrain DevelopmentExpertise and Cognitive Development? ................
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