DEVELOPMENT

• Early Brain Development

  1. Foetus ¾ weeks old: Long tube develops in the brain, forming 3 distinct sections

  2. 5 weeks old: Forebrain and hindbrain split into anterior and posterior parts

  3. 6 weeks old: Cerebellum and medulla oblongata develop
• Anterior


  • Front part of the brain
• Posterior


  • Back part of the brain
• Cerebellum

  • Joins the midbrain and spinal cord, responsible for balance, coordination and moving
• Medulla Oblongata

  • Responsible for automatic/involuntary responses e.g. breathing, blinking and sneezing
• Neural connections development

  1. Birth to 3 years: Rapid brain development, increase in neural connections (700-1000 per second)

  2. Brain doubles in size in 1st year, reaches 80% of size by 3 years
• Cognitive development

  Changes in thinking, problem solving, perception and language
• Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

  • 0-2 years - Sensorimotor
  • 2-7 years - Pre Operational
  • 7-11 years - Concrete Operational
  • 11+ years - Formal Operational
• Sensorimotor Stage

  • Infants explore the world using their senses, learn through smell, hearing and touch
  • Develop object permanence by 6 months
• Pre-Operational Stage

  • Symbolic Stage: Use symbols to represent objects, show animism and egocentrism
  • Intuitive Stage: Use reasoning, focus on one aspect (centration), cannot reverse events (irreversibility)
• Concrete Operational Stage

  • Can apply rules and strategies, abilities include seriation, classification, reversibility, conversion, decentration
• Formal Operational Stage


  • Thinking has more control, can understand abstract thought, time, and consequences
• Piaget's stages of cognitive development are universal and invariant
• Piaget's theory has practical applications in education to help children develop
• Some studies show children develop earlier than Piaget thought, reducing the validity of the theory
• Piaget's theory did not look at the influence of social interactions or cultural setting
• Repeating Piaget's research in a more natural setting produced different results, reducing the reliability of the theory
• Equilibrium

  Children's schemas work for them, they experience the world around them
• Disequilibrium


  New information is added that does not make sense in terms of their schema
• Assimilation


  Children incorporate new information into their existing schemas
• Accommodation

  Children modify their existing schemas to incorporate new information or experiences
• Piaget and Inhelder (1959) Study

  1. Aim: Extent to which children take the view of another person and put together different views

  2. Procedure: 100 participants aged 4-12, shown a model of 3 mountains and asked to show the view for themselves and a doll

  3. Findings: Pre-operational children (4-6.5 years) chose pictures for their own view, concrete operational children (7-9 years) started to understand the doll had a different view, 9-10 year olds understood the doll's view
• Piaget's 'three mountains' task supports his stages of cognitive development
• Borke (1975) found that children as young as 3 and 4 could accurately recall the view of Grover (a Sesame Street character) when the task was made more realistic
• Growth mindset

  Believing that practice and effort can improve abilities
• Fixed mindset

  Believing that abilities are fixed and unchangeable
• Dweck's theory has research support, e.g. Yeager and Dweck found using a growth mindset improved low achieving students' grades
• Dweck's theory acknowledges we have free will and the power to change our thinking about challenges
• Some research has questioned Dweck's theory, e.g. Dadau (2017) argued that just believing in a growth mindset doesn't increase abilities
• Willingham suggested that to learn and develop skills, you must have previous knowledge to free up working memory for practice
• Practicing allows knowledge and skills to move from short-term to long-term memory, enabling automatic performance and freeing up working memory
• Praise

  Teachers are now instructed to praise effort and give continuous feedback about how to improve their work, rather than being grade focused
• Weaknesses of the theory that praise effort and give continuous feedback:
• Lacks research support: For example David Dadau (2017) wrote an article questioning the theory as he believed that just because you believe you have a growth mindset doesn't increase your abilities
• Not useful: The methods used to support the theory include questionnaires which are lack validity because participants might lie and provide socially desirable responses
• Willingham's theory of practice

  To learn and develop skills you must have previous knowledge. Knowledge frees up space in our working memory. This allows us to practice skills such as problem solving
• Practice and effort

  Practicing allows knowledge and skills to move from STM to LTM. Enough practice allows you to do things automatically. This leaves space in your working memory to learn new things
• Willingham's strategies to boost children's development

  • Cognitive development: Use problems that are not too far out of student's reach, Remember that children's abilities change every day
  • Physical Development: Focus on what movements would be necessary for a task, Practice the muscle movements in front of children
  • Social Development: Encourage self-regulation, Demonstrate appropriate behaviour for children to model
• Willingham's theory of cognitive development

  • Strengths: Real work application, Research support
  • Weaknesses: Not useful, Not reductionist (holistic)
• Person praise

  Praising the individual