Professional Knowledge Flashcards
Past that test.
Theories of development - Erickson’s psychosocial
theory of development comes from a psychodynamic perspective and is based on the idea that individuals internal conflicts (often called “crises”). The resolution of each crisis results in development of the person’s sense of self (i.e., ego integrity) and interactions with the world in the future. Erikson proposed eight central crises, beginning with infancy and ending with old age. He argued that during middle childhood and early adolescence (approximately ages 6-12), children face tasks that require more individual responsibility, but they also begin to compare their abilities to those of their peers and the outcomes of their efforts to the expectations of parents/guardians and teachers. Some develop a strong sense of industry; they feel that they can master new tasks and complete challenges successfully. Others resolve this conflict on the side of inferiority; they feel that their efforts or their outcomes are inadequate. During later adolescence, as teens explore their vocational, religious, ethnic/cultural, and other beliefs and interests, they either develop a strong sense of identity — how they see themselves and their goals for the future — or they experience role confusion, a diffuse identity without a clear sense of self. Critical to understanding Erikson’s theory is the idea that all conflicts are ultimately resolved one way or the other (e.g., in favor of identity or in favor of role confusion), and the outcome of each then influences how the person tackles the next crisis. However, individuals continue to revisit the issues in later stages of life. For example, a 50-year-old man who loses his job may struggle to redefine his identity if he chooses to move into a new vocational field. Figure 1.1 offers suggestions for supporting identity development based on Erikson’s theory.
Examples of Erickson’s Identity Formation -
Give students many models for career choices and other adult roles.
- Point out models from literature and history. Have a calendar with the birthdays of eminent women, minority leaders, or people who made a little-known contribution to the subject you are teaching. Briefly discuss the person’s accomplishments on his or her birthday.
- Invite guest speakers to describe how and why they chose their professions. Make sure all kinds of work and workers are represented.
Examples of Erickson’s Identity Formation -
Help students find resources for working out personal problems.
- Encourage them to talk to school counselors.
- Discuss potential outside services.
Examples of Erickson’s Identity Formation -
Be tolerant of teenage fads as long as they don’t offend others or interfere with learning.
- Discuss the fads of earlier eras (neon hair, powdered wigs, love beads).
- Don’t impose strict dress or hair codes.
Examples of Erickson’s Identity Formation -
Give students realistic feedback about their work and support fo improving. Adolescents may need many “second chances”.
- When students misbehave or perform poorly, make sure they understand consequences of their behavior - the effects of themselves and others.
- Give students model answers or show them other students’ completed projects from previous years so they can compare their work to good examples.
- Because students are “trying on” roles, keep the roles separate from the person. Criticize the behavior without criticizing the student.
Piaget’s Stage Theory
Cognitive-developmental perspective and addresses the qualitative changes in children’s thoughts processes from from infancy through adolescence. Piaget proposed that infants are born with sensory and reflexive skills that they use to engage the environment and ultimately construct mental representations of it. He proposed four stages, during which children first develop representational abilities and then learn to manipulate those representations using “operations,” which include mental transformations. During adolescence, according to Piaget, most individuals progress from the concrete operational to the formal operational stage of thinking. Formal operations are characterized by hypothetico-deductive reasoning, and individuals capable of this type of reasoning can consider many different solutions to a problem, make predictions about future behaviors and events, think logically about abstract ideas, and engage in systematic scientific thinking.
Piaget’s theory - Educational practices for Teaching the Concrete-Operational Child
- Continue to use concrete props and visual aids, especially when dealing with sophisticated material.
- Use time lines in history and three-dimensional models in science.
- Use diagrams to illustrate hierarchical relationships such as branches of government and the agencies under each branch.
Piaget’s theory - Educational practices for Teaching the Concrete-Operational Child
- Continue to give students a chance to manipulate and test objects.
- Set up simple scientific experiments such as the following involving the relationship between fire and oxygen. What happens to a flame when you blow on it from a distance? (If you blow it out, the flame gets larger briefly, because it has more oxygen to burn.) What happens when you cover the flame with a jar?
- Have students make candles by dipping wicks in wax, weave cloth on a simple loom, bake bread, set type boy hand, or do other craft work that illustrates the daily occupations of people in the colonial period.
Piaget’s theory - Educational practices for Teaching the Concrete-Operational Child
- Make sure presentations and reading are brief and well-organized.
- Assign stories or books with shorts, logical chapters, moving to longer reading assignments only when students are ready.
- Break up a presentation with a chance to practice the first steps before introducing the next.
Piaget’s theory - Educational practices for Teaching the Concrete-Operational Child
- Use familiar examples to explain more complex ideas.
- Compare students’ lives with those of characters in a story. After reading Island of the Blue Dolphins (the true store of a girl who grew up along on a deserted island), ask “Have you ever had to stay along for a long time? How did you feel?”
- Teach the concept of area by having students measure two school rooms that are different sizes.
Piaget’s theory - Educational practices for Teaching the Concrete-Operational Child
- Give opportunities to classify and group objects and ideas on increasingly complex levels.
- Give students slips of paper with individual sentences written on each paper and ask the students to group the sentences into paragraphs.
- Compare the systems of the human body to other kinds of systems; the brain to a computer, the heart to a pump. Break down stories into components, from the broad to the specific: author; story, characters, plot, theme; pace, time.
Piaget’s theory - Educational practices for Teaching the Concrete-Operational Child
- Present problems that require logical, analytical thinking.
- Discuss open-ended questions that stimulate thinking: “Are the brain and the mind the same thing?” “How should the city deal with stray animals?” “What is the largest number?”
- Use sports photos or pictures of crisis situations (Red Cross helping in disasters, victims of poverty or war, senior citizens who need assistance) to stimulate problem-solving discussions.
Piaget’s theory - Educational practices for Helping Students to Use Formal Operations
- Continue to use concrete-operational teaching strategies and materials.
- Use visual aids such as charts and illustrations as well as somewhat more sophisticated graphs and diagrams, especially when the material is new.
- Compare the experiences of characters in stories to students’ experiences.
Piaget’s theory - Educational practices for Helping Students to Use Formal Operations
- Give students the opportunity to explore many hypothetical questions.
- Have students write position papers, then exchange these papers with the opposing side and debate topical social issues - the environment, the economy, national health insurance.
- Ask students to write about their personal vision of a utopia; write a description of Each after humans are extinct.
Piaget’s theory - Educational practices for Helping Students to Use Formal Operations
- Give students opportunities to solve problems and reason scientifically.
- Set up group discussion in which students design experiments to answer questions.
- Ask students to justify two different positions on animal rights, with logical arguments for each position.
Piaget’s theory - Educational practices for Helping Students to Use Formal Operations
- Whenever possible, teach broad concepts, not just facts, using materials and ideas relevant to the students’ lives.
- When discussing the Civil War, consider racism or other issues that have divided the Uniter States since then.
- When teaching about poetry, let students find lyrics from popular songs that illustrate poetic devices, and talk about how these devices do or don’t work well to communicate the meaning and feelings the songwriters intended.
Vygotsky
Vygotsky argued that children’s thought structures develop through interaction with individuals in their environments, informed by the culture in which they live. They learn the tools for communicating and the norms of behavior, and once internalized, these concepts form the basis for later decision-making, reasoning, and other thought processes. Central to sociocultural theory is the idea that individuals learn best when they are assisted or scaffolded when performing tasks that are not yet possible for them to perform alone but are manageable with guidance — in Vygotsky’s words, these tasks are in the person’s zone of proximal development (ZPD). Individuals who attempt a task that is above their current ZPD do not learn to complete it independently and often cannot complete it even with scaffolding, but tasks in the ZPD that are appropriately scaffolded are soon mastered and can be completed independently. For example, safe driving may be a skill that can be successfully taught to an older adolescent because of the physical and cognitive maturation that occurs during this developmental period.
Applying Vygotsky’s Ideas in Teaching
- Tailor scaffolding to the needs of students.
- When students are beginning new tasks or topics, provide models, prompts, sentence starts, coaching, and feedback. As the students grow in competence, give less support and more opportunities for independent work.
- Give students choices about the level of difficulty or degree of independence in projects; encourage them to challenge themselves, but to seek help when they are really stuck.
Applying Vygotsky’s Ideas in Teaching
- Make sure students have access to powerful tools that support thinking.
- Teach students to use learning and organizational strategies, research tolls, language tools (wikis, dictionaries, or computer search), spreadsheets, and word-processing programs.
- Model the use of tools; show students how you use an appointment book or electronic notebook to make plans and manage time, for example.
Applying Vygotsky’s Ideas in Teaching
- Build on the students’ cultural funds of knowledge.
- Identify family knowledge by having students interview each others’ families about their work and home knowledge. (agriculture, economics, manufacturing, household management, medicine and illness, religion, child care, cooking, etc.)
- Tie assignments to these funds of knowledge and use community experts to evaluate assignments.
Applying Vygotsky’s Ideas in Teaching
- Capitalize on dialogue and group learning.
- Experiment with peer tutoring; teach students how to ask good questions and give helpful explanations.
- Experiment with cooperative learning strategies.
Kohlberg’s Theory
Kohlberg’s theory emphasizes the development of moral reasoning. He suggested that children progress from preconventional reasoning, in which they made judgments about moral behavior based on the likelihood of rewards or punishments, to conventional reasoning based on the approval of and rules established by others. Most adolescents reason conventionally, although Kohlberg argued that some older teens and some adults may develop post-conventional reasoning based on universal principles of right and wrong. Knowing the type of reasoning that adolescents are likely to use allows educators to provide appropriate explanations, rules, and guidelines for their own behaviors.
