EDU 145 Ch 12
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Transcript of EDU 145 Ch 12
Kathleen Stassen Berger
Part IV
Middle Childhood: Cognitive Development
Chapter Twelve
Building on TheoryLanguageTeaching and Learning
Building on Theory
• Theories of cognition in school-age children have been used to structure education.
Piaget and School-Age Children
• Concrete operational thought:– Piaget’s term for the
ability to reason logically about direct experiences and perceptions.
The Significance of Logic
• Identity– Certain characteristics of an object remain the
same even if other characteristics change.
• Reversibility– A thing that has been changed can sometimes
be returned to its original state by reversing the process by which it was changed.
• Vygotsky and School-Age Children– Educators should consider thought
processes of the child.
– Improvement over the meaningless acquisition curriculum that dominated education in his day.
• The Role of Instruction– Vygotsky regarded instruction by others as
crucial.• Teachers and peers provide bridge between the
child’s developmental potential and the necessary skill and knowledge.
• In the zone of proximal development, other people are crucial.
• Cultures (tools, customs, people) teach people.
• Information-processing-theory– cognition as the functioning of a computer
• Memory– sensory memory: component of the
information-processing system in which current conscious mental activity occurs.
– long-term memory: component of the information-processing system in which limitless amounts of information can be stored indefinitely.
• Speed and knowledge– Speed of thinking increases
throughout the first two decades of life.
– Knowledge base:• A body of knowledge in a
particular area that makes it easier to master new information in that area.
• Control processes– mechanisms that combine:
• selective attention• metacognition• emotional regulation
Language
• Language advances rapidly before middle childhood.
• By age 6 children have mastered most of the basic vocabulary and grammar of their first language.
• School-age children can learn up to 20 new words a day.
• Language acquisition is helped by increases in: – logic– flexibility – memory– speed of thinking
• Vocabulary and Pragmatics– vocabulary
• School-age children are more flexible and logical in their knowledge and use of vocabulary, understanding metaphors, prefixes, suffixes, and compound words.
– pragmatics• Advances markedly in middle childhood; the
use of language, including communication with varied audiences in different contexts.
• Second-Language Learning– English-language learner (ELL)
• A child who is learning English as a second language.
– Total immersion• A strategy in which instruction in all school
subjects occurs in the second (majority) language that a child is learning.
• Second-Language Learning– Bilingual education
• Taught in both original language and the second (majority) language.
– English as a second language (ESL)• All children who do not speak English
are placed together and given an intensive course in basic English so that they can be educated in the same classroom as native English speakers.
Teaching and Learning
• School-age children:– great learners– develop strategies– accumulate knowledge– apply logic, and think quickly
• No Child Left Behind Act of 2001– 2001 U.S. law intended to increase
accountability in education
• National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)– Nation’s Report Card– Ongoing measure of children’s achievement in:
• reading• mathematics
• Hidden curriculum– Unofficial, unstated, or implicit rules and
priorities that influence the academic curriculum.
• The outcome:– Most parents, teachers, and political leaders
believe that children are learning what they need.
• Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)– planned five-year cycle of international trend
studies in the reading ability of fourth grades– inaugurated in 2001
Iranian girls acting out a poem they have memorized from their third-grade textbook
• Education Wars and Assumptions– Adults differ in their beliefs about what children
should learn, and how.
• The Reading Wars
• phonics approach– Teaching reading by first teaching the sounds
of each letter and of various letter combinations.
Math Wars• Mathematic instruction in the U.S. has
become problematic.– Economic development depends on science
and technology-math is crucial here.– N. American and W. European students are
weaker in math than other areas, especially E. Asia
– Many children hate math and feel intimidated by it.• 2008 Google search showed 81,600 “math
phobia” hits.
• Other Assumptions in the educational landscape. – Children learn from homework.
– Smaller classrooms size is not necessarily better (Blatchford, 2003, Hanushek, 1999).
– Raising teacher salaries improves professional education.
– Extending school hours.
• Culture and Education– Controversies regarding cognitive
development related to education is political more than developmental.
– There are many hidden roles of culture.– The understanding of the child’s culture by a
teacher of another culture.