Lecture 11: Early and middle childhood Flashcards
what is an important thing to consider when thinking about children’s socialisation?
Every culture will be different in the ways it transmits cultural knowledge because cultures have different goals for the development of children and different ways of communicating knowledge to children
what characteristics do toddlers and pre-schoolers have?
- language learning is very fast
- more interaction with the world, acting on the world, understanding it via language and asking questions to increase understanding
- improvement in coordination and fine motor skills, body proportions becoming more similar to adults, most 5 year olds can hop, skip, walk backwards, cut with scissors, dress themselves, eat with utensils
- toilet training: most children are dry at night by age 6
- increasing awareness of self and others, developing theory of mind, but self is defined in physical and concrete terms (hair colour, family etc)
- Temperament, differences in nature, character
how is temperament measured?
measured in different ways: manageability- easy, difficult, slow to warm up, across domains
EAS: emotionality, activity, sociability and impulsivity
- it is considered to map onto personality types
what are the characteristics of toddlers and preschoolers
social development?
- Gender awareness
- Begin developing emotion regulation
- sibling relationships become important
- pro-social and anti-social behaviour
what is involved in gender awareness in toddlers and preschoolers?
- toddlers have an awareness of themselves as ‘girl’ or ‘boy’
- identify gender as things like hair length or types of clothes
- from about age 3, they are aware of gender role norms
what is involved in developing emotion regulation in toddlers and preschoolers?
- the processes involved in initiating, maintaining and altering emotional responses
- e.g. suppressing negative emotions or maintaining positive emotions
- this is influenced by temperament and caregiver response
what is involved in pro-social and anti-social behaviour in toddlers and preschoolers?
- individual differences in empathy and sympathy observed in early childhood. comparable to adults
- helping others is a feature of a ‘pro-social’ pre-schooler
- antisocial = intentional negative actions directed towards others. high levels in early childhood can be associated with conduct disorder and ODD
- children under 6 have strongest correlation between exposure to media violence and aggressive behaviour
- influenced by temperament, improved cognitive functioning, environmental factors
what is the social learning theory?
Albert Bandura - key researcher/thinker
- it takes ideas from learning theory/behaviourism. Skinner thinks we learn behaviour through reinforcement and punishment
what does bandura make of the social learning theory?
- reinforcement is part of learning but is not limited to the response to this individual
- social learning theory posits that people learn through observing others behaviour, attitude, and outcomes of those behaviours - cognitive learning in a social context
- relevant to behaviour modification - modelling, instruction
- can be seen in gender roles, moral and culturally appropriate behaviour
what is the importance of play?
- it is crucial to development
- is how children make sense of the world
- can be functional, constructive, imaginary
what is early childhood education like in NZ?
- 95% of children have has some ECE before going to school
- fees involved - can get 20 free hours
what are the types of ECE?
- childcare - home-based care, childcare centres (private and community based), centres with a philosophy (montessori, steiner), home based nannies, whanau and family care
- kindergarten, Te Kohanga reo, Pasifika Education and care centres, pre-school, play centre
how is the quality of ECE, choice and profit related?
- there are more profit-making ECE’s now than before
- non-profit community-based ECE’s are not part of the market as much anymore
- government has a limited role in planning and provision of services. each centre decides how they deliver the curriculum
what is involved in a quality ECE?
- good ratios (1:4)
- trained staff
- small number of children
- good relationships
- consistent and responsive adults
- safe and developmentally appropriate physical environment
which are Piaget’s stages of cognitive development are relevant for early and middle childhood?
- preoperational stage (2-7 years), symbolic thought via language
- concrete operations (7-11 years), mentally classify
what are Piaget’s key concepts for these stages?
Schemes - actions or mental representations that organise knowledge. Patterns of knowledge that help make sense of new information
Assimilation - use existing schemes to understand new experiences
Accomodation - adapt scheme to fit new information
Organisation - grouping isolated behaviours and thought into higher order system
Equilibration - when the organisation of previous thoughts has moved beyond assimilation and accommodation and child understands at a new level
what are the characteristics of a pre-operational stage?
- now have better symbolic representation: lots of imaginary play and can understand symbols in real life - photos, drawings, knows a word can apply to different versions of something (e.g. train = thomas the tank engine = train at station
- more advances knowledge of object permanence, they know its the same object even if its changed (e.g. painted car or burnt candle)
what does Piaget consider pre-operational stage children to be?
- Egocentric - challenges being able to see things from anothers perspective
- Prone to centrism - concentrate on one characteristic or aspect
- Unable to mentally reverse a series of events or steps of reasoning
- Likely to attribute events or objects ‘magical’ properties or causes
- considered this a ‘pre-logical’ stage. cannot mentally manipulate nor understand logic.
what was found from the experiments on children for classification, egocentrism and conservation?
classification: children at the preoperational stage will group things figurally or thematically rather than based on taxonomic categorisation
Egocentrism: confuse own point of view with that of another person
Conservation: the understanding that the essential characteristics of things (e.g. mass, number, quantity, volume) doesn’t change despite their outward appearance
what are some common challenges parents face in young children?
- eating
- tantrums
- sleeping
- ill children
- toilet training
what are the characteristics of middle childhood?
- growth slows
- eruption of first molars
- increasing BMI
- brain volume nearly at adult rate
- fine tuning of gross motor skills, still requires interaction with environment, children need to practise
- improvement in attention, memory, less distractible
- changes in play
- development in sense of self: - they can describe self in terms of personality characteristics, e.g. funny, smart,
- begin to use comparisons e.g. fastest runner
- identifies as part of social grouping e.g. school, sports team etc
- go to school, language learning now includes written language
what is schooling like in NZ?
- children must attend a school, kura or be home-schooled
- most children start on or just after 5th birthday, but not compulsory to start until you turn 6
- there are state, private, kura kaupapa maori, home schooling and state integrated schools
- state schools are “free”, but still have to pay school fees, uniforms, stationary, trips etc. government pays $150 per student
what are the changes and reforms being made to NZ education?
- NZ curriculum is being refreshed - bilingual, inclusive, user-friendly. Aotearoa history from 2022. other curriculum areas to follow
- increasing attention to obligations under te Tirity o Waitangi
- school boards of trustees role change, new enrolment scheme, new funding systems - intended to reduce inequity, encourage more inclusiveness
- changing thinking on testing - national standards gone but standardised testing might come back?
what is Piaget’s concrete operational stage?
- Understand conservation: easier with number than volume or weight
- Can make complex categorisations: sub-categories, inclusion in multiple categories
- Can understand relations between two things: seriation, comparison, transitivity (comparing things via characteristic e.g. size)
- can understand reversals
- can consider multiple aspects of a situation (decentring)
