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Course ReflectionXin WangCEP 891Summer 2012What did you learn in this course?The main idea about what I learned is social and emotional development from early childhood to adolescents through this course. The author introduced this idea from the following areas: family, sibling and peer relationships, gender differences, personality and emotional development and social behaviors. In the first chapter, I learned some theories of child development from different perspectives such as psychoanalytic, learning, cognitive, biological, ecological and sociocultural perspectives. I would like to talk about some theories and characteristics I learned from the following chapters with the order of early childhood, middle childhood and adolescents.Early childhoodParents, siblings and peer relationshipsThere are 3 kinds of parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian and permissive. I think children would benefit the most from authoritative parenting style because they are not only restrictive but also warm. This style, therefore, is good for child’s comprehensive development. Furthermore, siblings also provide care giving, role models, emotional support and competition during children’s development. Also older child usually is more achievable and helpful than younger one. Except parents and siblings influences, children can learn social skills from peers as well. Gender differencesUsually female are stereotyped as dependent, gentle and home oriented while males are stereotyped as aggressive, self-confident and independent. This can be illustrated well by the picture from the textbook-a girl was given a choice to pick up doll or a toy soldier and she was interested in the doll. Because of this characteristic, people think that males tend to excel in math whereas girls tend to be good at verbal skills. In this part, three theories were mentioned: social cognitive theory (Children learn the difference between boys and girls from observational learning.), cognitive-developmental theory (gender typing involves gender identity, gender stability and gender constancy.), and gender-schema theory (According to Sandra Bem, children use sex as one way of organizing their perception of the world).Personality and emotional developmentTo this age group, self-definition is about concrete external traits. Their self-esteem develops from secure attachment and competence. What’s more, what they fear are more likely animals, imaginary creatures and the dark. Social behaviorsChildren show preferences for gender-stereotyped toys. For example, boys like cars, weapons and outdoor activities whereas girls like dolls, arts and crafts. Additionally, children of this age prefer to play with someone who has the same sex. At the same time, prosocial behavior (empathy and perspective taking) and aggressive behavior began to develop as well. Middle childhoodParents, siblings and peer relationshipsIn middle childhood, parents do less monitoring of children and coregulation develops. Divorce, conflict between parents and financial status strongly influence children’s development. There is no big difference, however, between children of heterosexual parents and children of lesbian and gay parents. Moreover, peers play more important role in children’s development of social skills and popular children tend to be attractive. Personality and emotional developmentUnlike early childhood, children of this age group start to be more able to take perspectives of other people and be less egocentric. Furthermore, self-definition turns from concrete external traits to abstract internal traits. Children’s self-esteem is related to competence and social acceptance but it tends to decline in this age. What’s more, low self-esteem results in learned helplessness. Helpless children would think the reason of failure is that they are lack of abilities but not efforts.Social behaviorsThis age group of children more likely has the following problems: conduct disorders, depression and anxiety. Children with conduct disorders like to break rules or violate the rights of others. According to the text, I learned that genetic component, antisocial family members, deviant peers and inconsistent discipline all contribute to this issue. Rewarding for good behaviors and involving parental training in cognitive-behavioral methods will be helpful. Children with depression tend to be lack of energy and have the feelings of worthlessness. From the text, I learned that parents and teachers can help deal with this problem by involving children in enjoyable activities, encouraging the development of skills and offering praise when appropriate to help build up their self-esteems. Furthermore, antidepressant medication is also one of the treatments to this problem. For the children with separation anxiety disorder, because it may take the form of school phobia, the best solution is to insist that the child attend school. AdolescentsParents, siblings and peer relationshipsChildren of this age group spend less time with their parents whereas peers play an increasing role in adolescents’ relationships. Adolescents are much more likely to stress the importance of acceptance, self-disclosure, and mutual understanding in their friendships (Gonzalez et al., 2004). Also they start to date during early and middle adolescence. Gender differencesMost of them are interested in forming romantic relationships with people of the other sex but some have a homosexual orientation. This is influenced by early reinforcement of sexual behavior according to a learning theory point of view. Additionally, adolescents who have close relationships with parents prefer to have late sexual activities. During this age, teenage girls are more likely to become pregnant because of the ignorance about sex. Personality and emotional developmentAt this stage, adolescents like to develop ego identity (who they are and what they stand for.)James Marcia (1991) theorized four identity statuses: identity diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium and identity achievement. Furthermore, the development of self-identity is more complex for adolescents who are members of ethnic minority groups (Arnett & Brody, 2008; Phinney & Ong, 2007; Verkuyten, 2009). As minority youths grow up, they tend to explore and achieve ethnic identity. Different from early and middle childhood, adolescents focus on describing themselves in terms of psychological traits and their self-concept is more differentiated. From middle childhood to early adolescence, self-esteem gradually declines first, and then improves again. Social behaviorsBoys are more likely than girls to engage in delinquent behaviors. The factors are poor school performance, delinquent friends, low self-esteem and so on. What’s more, considering stress, feelings of depression and identity problems, suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers. What specific concepts did you find most relevant to your future work as a teacher?Because I will teach upper elementary school students and they are in middle childhood stage so I would like to talk about some specific concepts I find most relevant to my work from this stage.Industry versus InferiorityAccording to Erikson’ theory, mastery of tasks leads to a sense of industry, whereas failure produces feelings of inferiority. It shows that the importance of success to this age group. As a teacher, therefore, I should try my best to help my students’ access to success.ModelingAccording to social cognitive theory, modeling helps children acquire moral and social standards for judging their own behaviors. As a teacher, I spend most of time with students, so I think being a role model in front of students is very important. Self-esteemPeers play an important role in middle childhood’s self-esteem. Developing good peers’ relationships will help students build up strong self-esteem.Learned HelplessnessThis results in low self-esteem in academics. Helpless children always think success is due more to ability than to effort. It is crucial for the teacher to have students realize that the key point to failure is because they don’t make efforts on their study. Conduct Disorders, Childhood Depression and Childhood Anxiety-School PhobiaThese concepts are usually connected with middle childhood’s development. As a teacher, I should understand the origins of these problems and find out solutions to help students overcome them. How will you apply what you’ve learned in the classroom?Industry versus InferiorityI plan to use the following ways to increase students’ successes.Set up differentiated assignments. Students are different on learning skills and levels. Some of them are good at audio learning while some are good at visual learning. Considering this characteristic, as a Chinese teacher, I need to provide various kinds of assignments (some focus on audio and some are visualized) so that students will have more chances to choose. For example, when I ask students to do the presentations about Chinese New Year, first they can choose different topics such as food, cloth, activities, etc. according to their likes to prepare the projects. Then they will be also encouraged to present the projects in many ways such as song, poem, pictures, PPT and so on. Make assignments open endedThere are many ways to access students’ projects. Take food learning for example, after I teach students Chinese food and drinks, I will advice them to do role play to show what they learned. They can choose the vocabularies and sentences they learned to use in the role play depending on their learning abilities. The students with strong learning skills are able to pick some difficult words as challenges whereas lower learning students can also be successful by presenting relative sentences they are familiar with.Allow extra timeBecause of differences, students with lower learning skills will be given more time to complete their assignments. For example, when the whole class is doing one project or one worksheet, for the students who finish earlier, I will give them more advanced assignment to do and for the students who are still working on the original, I will provide them more time to do it. Provide additional helpExcept extra time, lower learning students will have a chance to get help from the teacher. I will use the time of individual work to walk around and help some students to finish the project so that they will be more confident to be successful.ModelingSocial cognitive theory focuses on the continued importance of rewards and modeling in middle childhood (Rathus, 2011). As a teacher, I will be my students’ role model. My behaviors and reactions will influence them a lot. So it is necessary for me to be careful of my words and behaviors in front of students such as my dressing code, attitude and so on. For example, to be a teacher, I need to wear formal dress as school rules require. Also I should show my respect to everyone such as listening carefully when someone is talking, giving a reasonable response to others’ opinions. What’s more, I am able to tell students stories as well to teach them recognize the good and bad behaviors. There are many Chinese stories telling about sharing such as “Kong ru rang li (Kong ru share his pear with others)”. Through the story telling, students will have a better idea and understanding about giving and sharing and I believe this will also guide them to imitate it in their real life. Self-esteemSince peers relationship has an increasing role in middle childhood’s self-esteem development. It requires the teacher to have the ability to strengthen the relations between peers. For example, I can organize some group works and individual presentations to help students gain the acceptances and agreements from their peers so that they can receive higher self-esteem. In group works, they can also take the discussion time to learn cooperation and take perspectives of others.Learned HelplessnessTo less the numbers of learned helplessness students, I will encourage them to make connections between outcome and effort. I will let them know that the success is from constant efforts but not abilities. For example, I will say to the student “John, you did a good job on this test because you listened to my instructions and finished homework every time. Through your own efforts, you are making a great success on learning. Congratulations! ” In this way, I believe students will treat their success or failure better and will have a clearer goal to make efforts in the future.Conduct Disorders, Childhood Depression and Childhood Anxiety-School PhobiaMiddle childhood is more likely to have the above problems. For children with conduct disorders, they like to break rules or violate the rights of others. Through learning, I found genetic component, antisocial family members, deviant peers and inconsistent discipline are the factors to this issue. So I should build up a good relationship with parents and work with them together to help the children with this problem such as calling parents, meeting with them and organizing some activities including parents and their kids.For children with childhood depression, they tend to be lack of energy and have the feelings of worthlessness. Through learning, I found because children with depression are lonely in their life so helping them involve more fun games and activities is important. For example, I can separate students into different groups and teach them to do the game named ”mu tour en (wood people)-a popular Chinese game”. This game requires group members working together then they can make a success. Students will learn to recognize the power of people as a whole group and the importance of every member in the group. I think this game will help depressive children build up more confidence about them and notice their vital roles to others.For children with childhood anxiety, school phobia is the main form. From learning, I know the best solution is to ask the children to attend school whatever excuses they will use. So whenever I encounter this problem, I will have confidence to instruct parents and help them solve the problem. ................
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