Development

Question 1

Stages of development

Answer 1

Prenatal (conception until birth)
Childhood (birth until 12yrs)
Adolescence(13-19yrs)
Arulthood(20yrs until death)

Question 2

Stages of brain development - Pre-natal

Answer 2

1st trimester - cerebral cortex forms and divides into frontal lobe temporal lobe parietal lobe and occipital lobe
2nd trimester
Brain becomes fully developed synapses form and neurons can interact
3rd trimester
The brain continues to grow

Question 3

Stages of brain development - childhood

Answer 3

After birth new neuron connections begin to form and things such a prefrontal codex peak so we have memory and can start to understand cause and effect we also start loosing meaning less connections

Question 4

Stages of brain development - adolescents

Answer 4

Grey matter reaches maximum density
Limbic system matures first which regulates emotion and helps form new memories
Prefrontal cortex matures last regulates desision making

Question 5

Stages of brain development - adulthood

Answer 5

At 25 prefronal cortex finally matures making rational desision and focusing on long term goals
During later adulthood can get things such as altzimers which can effect brain structure

Question 6

Piagets theory of cognitive development

Answer 6

It has 4 stages
Invarient children pass through them in the same order
Universal
Scheme- pictures of the world in there mind to help them learn how to react
Assimilation - new information encorperated into an existing schema
Accommodation- new information is used to alter or create a new schema

Question 7

Stages of cognative development - Sensory motor stage

Answer 7

Age 0-2

Object perminance - learning that just because something isn’t in sight it still exists

Question 8

Stages of cognative development - pre - operational stage

Answer 8

Age 2-7
Animism - belife that inanimate objects have feelings
Egocentrism - belife that everyone sees the world how they do(the three mountain problem)
Reversibility - unable to think about things in reverse order or somthing returning to original state

Question 9

Stages of cognative development - concrete operational

Answer 9

Age 7-11
Concervation - changing shape dosnt change volume mass or length (Concervation experiments)
Decentration- ability to focus on more than one aspect of a situation
Seriation- put things in rank order
Linguistic humour - playing with words to create jokes /humour

Question 10

Stages of cognative development - concrete operational

Answer 10

Age 7-11
Concervation - changing shape dosnt change volume mass or length (Concervation experiments)
Decentration- ability to focus on more than one aspect of a situation
Seriation- put things in rank order
Linguistic humour - playing with words to create jokes /humour

Question 11

Stages of cognative development -formal operational

Answer 11

Age 11+
Hypothetical thinking - Abstract thinking
Think more logically
Can comprehend and contrast diffrent ideas

Question 12

Stages of cognative development - criticisms

Answer 12

Under estimating the age at which children can achieve different parts of the stages
Researchers have shown that only around half of adults reach formal operational stage with many not being capable of abstract thinking
Piaget describes the diffrent stages but dosnt explain how these stages actually occur and what changes the child’s thinking
Some of his work is too complicated for children to understand
Piagets theory can be considered reductionist because he didn’t take into account the important role teachers have in children’s learning

Question 13

Piaget conservation of number - aim + Hypothesis

Answer 13

Aim
Demonstrate children in concrete operational stage are more likely to conserve than those in the pro operational stage
Hypothesis
concrete operational stage will be able to conserve those in pre operational will not

Question 14

Piaget conservation of number - method

Answer 14

Natural experiment and iv was naturally occurring (child age)
Dv Ability to conserve number
Cross sectional study
Independent measures
Sample
Small sample of school children from Geneva
Included 3 of his children
Procedure
Shown 2 rows of counters lined up then spread 2nd row then asked if there’s the same number of counters

Question 15

Piaget conservation of number -results and conclusion

Answer 15

3-4 pre operational stage said more in second row
5-6 end of pre operational some could say number the same but not that the length had changed
Concrete operational could recognise they had the same and explain why
Conclusion
Hypothesis is supported children in concrete operational are more likly to be able to conserve number and more likely to be able to justify their answer

Question 16

Piaget conservation of number - criticisms

Answer 16

Had methodological problems
Too artificial
Culturaly bias

Question 17

Dwecks idea on fixed and growth mind set

Answer 17

Fixed- where people think there intelligence is I ate and cannot change
Growth-where people think they can develop there intelligence over time
Mindset in school
Fixed means they won’t try to avoid failure and seem intelligent or won’t try because they can’t change how dumb they are
Having more than one mind set
Dweck says u can have diffrent mindsets for different topics
Reducing bullying
Growth mindsets can reduce agression and bullying

Question 18

Dwecks idea on praise for effort

Answer 18

Children who were praised for their effort offten chose problemsolving tasks to allow them to continue to achieve and therefore making them learn
Children praised for intellectual value focused of performance and compared themselves to others
Growth see failure as lack of effort fixed see as lack of intelligence

Question 19

Dwecks idea on praise for effort - criticisms

Answer 19

Convays the message to children that they arnt very good at what their doing
Places failure firmly on the student
Chalenged by a large scale study
There is more research that has failed to find significant evidence that mindsets work
Nurture is a key aspect of this theory and it assumes that the child can make the changes them selves but this can have a negative impact on their slef esteem if they fail to succeed

Question 20

Willinghams ideas on learning styles and importance of meaning

Answer 20

He believes even through people may have a preference on learning style it has no effect on how well they learn the content what is important is the idea that students should understand the meaning of what they are being taught rather than just being drilled infomation

Question 21

Willinghams ideas on learning styles and importance of meaning - criticisms

Answer 21

Many teachers and lectures at Universities would disagree with his views about there being little benifit in students trying to be like actually scientist or historians
Certain things might benifit from being drilled
Both Dweck and willinghams ideas favour nurture over nature
Although willinghams theory favours nurture he ignores the fact that some children are kinaesthetic learners because this is how they were taught at school when they were very young