Big Questions in Developmental Psychology Flashcards
(13 cards)
Active vs Passive Learning
A: Learning through:
* Trial and Error
* Intrinsic Motivation
* Autonomous Exploration
P: Learning through:
* Direct Instruction
* Through another facilitation of learning
What is the best age to start to read?
Early Exposure
Early experience of language is fundamental to later success
* 3-4 years old: Learning through phonics
* Encourages an interest in and familiarity with words
However, limitations include the education arms race or risk of schoolification
* May deter some children before they are ready to be in a classroom setting
What is the best age to start to read?
Child-led
Child led play based in preschools have shown to have better outcomes than more academically focused
* Finish students score higher in reading comprehension than UK and US students at 15
* Reading ability is more closely linked to a child’s vocabulary than to their age
* Spoken lanugage skills are a higher predictor of later literary skills
Rousseau
Birth certificate of Pedagogy
Child oriented pedagogy based on age related stages
Rousseau
4 Main Stages of Development
- Age of Nature (0-2 yrs): Experience and learn though the senses
- Age of Strength (3-12 yrs): Learn via imitation and own exploration
- Age of Reason (12-15 yrs): Rationality and the need for instruction of knowledge
- Age of Insight (15-20 yrs): Become social beings who are dependent on others and whose awakening passions threaten to overwhelm them
Empiricism
- Children are born as a tabula rasa (John Locke)
- What an individual is and who they will be is not pre-determined (No innate abilites)
- Environment and society shape child development
John Locke
Shaping the developing mind proceeded through
* Association
* Repetition
* Imitation
* Reward
* Punishment
Nativism
- The myth of the bon sauvage
- Education should be kept at minimum to allow the natural predisposition to grow naturally
- Educators should keep children safe and help to make their own decisions
‘Bon Sauvage’
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
* Human beings are innately good
* Social structures corrput this (Education, institutions, civilisation)
Nativist response:
* Children are born with innate structures, predispositions, and cognitive modules
* Some behavioural tendencies might be biologically rooted
(Rousseau)
Piaget: Constructivism
Four stages of development
* Sensorimotor Period (0-2 yrs): Infants learn about the world by coordinating sensory experiences with motor actions
* Pre-operational Stage (2–7 yrs): Thinking is centered on one feature at a time and influenced by immediate appearances
* Concrete Operational Stage (7–12 yrs): Children use logical thinking for concrete problems but struggle with abstract concepts
* Formal Operational Stage (12+ yrs): Adolescents can think logically about abstract and hypothetical situations
Criticisms of Piaget
- Underestimates children’s abilities
- Transition from one stage to another happens at different times for different domains
- Social world of infants and children is almost completely neglected
Vygotsky: Sociocultural Theory
Language served to organise higher psychological function and that it mediated cognition
* Private speech: Parent talking to child, child speaks aloud to self, child internalises the speech, private speech
Zone of Proximal Development
* The gap between what a learner can do without help and what they cannot do even with help
* Describes the problems that the learner can solve with someone’s help
Piaget vs Vygotsky
- Not the same as Nativism vs Empiricism
- Both posited that knowledge of the world is constructed through interaction with the environment
- Disagreed on the role and primacy in development of language: Language or thought first?
- Social interactions are at the core of Vygotsky’s approach
- Stages of development are at the core of Piaget’s approach
