CHAPTER 5

• Early childhood


  From birth to 8 years of age
• This presentation focuses on understanding how the developing child becomes socialised into his or her society
• We will also focus on developmental theorists to facilitate our understanding of early childhood and the issues faced in this developmental period
• Case study: Muriel and Eva

  • Muriel is a 31-year-old convicted shoplifter living in Johannesburg jail with her 18-month-old daughter Eva
  • Eva was born in prison and has never been outside
  • Muriel is worried about how Eva will adapt to the outside world when Muriel is released
• Muriel's story highlights the challenges that a child's environment can have on his or her developmental trajectory
• The developing child


  1. From the moment of birth, children are in constant interaction with adults who actively seek to incorporate them into their culture

  2. In the beginning, children's responses are dominated by natural processes provided by their biological heritage

  3. Through the constant intercession of adults, more complex, instrumental psychological processes begin to take shape

  4. These processes can only operate in the course of the children's interactions with adults

  5. As children grow older, the processes that were initially shared with adults come to be performed within children themselves
• Interpsychic processes


  Processes that are shared between people
• Intrapsychic processes


  Processes that are performed within children themselves
• It is through the interiorisation of historically determined and culturally organised ways of operating on information that the social nature of people comes to be their psychological nature as well
• Developmental psychology


  • Deals with the intricate nature of human activities and the processes that transform 'substance' into an invisible experience in a person's individual inner world
  • People communicate their felt experiences as realities of the world they live in, which is received through the sensory channels and then individually understood through the mechanism of perception
• Child development, particularly early childhood development, is a dynamic, moving target. It is important to take into account the particular situation of each child in a particular family and consider all his or her physical, social, intellectual, emotional and educational needs in that particular context, to understand fully the child and his or her development
• Basic avenues of learning

  The basic means/channels through which children mentally develop and grow, such as using their eyes (sight) and hands (touch), as well as speech and hearing
• Piaget's cognitive developmental stages

  • Sensorimotor (0-2 years): Reflex based, co-ordinate reflexes
  • Pre-operational (2-6/7 years): Self-orientated, egocentric
  • Concrete Operational (6/7-11/12 years): More than 1 viewpoint, no abstract problems, consider some outcomes
  • Formal Operational (11-12 and up): Think abstractly, reason theoretically
• In early childhood development the pre-operational and concrete operational stages of development are important
• Children are actively involved in constructing knowledge
• Assimilation


  The child responds to the environment, constructing knowledge
• Accommodation


  The child constructs knowledge through the processes of assimilation and accommodation
• Sensorimotor stage


  • The infant develops object permanence and the foundations of symbolic functioning, preparing for the pre-operational stage
• Pre-operational stage


  • Characterised by a specific mode of thought where the developing child is able to focus on only one aspect of a task or situation to the exclusion of others (centration)
  • Manifested in egocentric thinking, where the child views the world or situation in terms of his or her own viewpoint, to the exclusion of others' viewpoints
• Conservation experiment


  • The child is unable to conserve because they can focus on only one salient aspect of the situation (the height of the water in the container, rather than the breadth of the container)
  • Children confuse appearance and reality, e.g. a straw that appears bent when placed in water
  • Children have difficulty perceiving that the water in the bottle is the same amount that is poured into the glass
• Piaget's example of pre-operational thinking


  • Jacqueline asked "What's the baby's name?" when seeing Lucienne in a new bathing suit, and only recognised Lucienne again when she had her dress on
• Concrete operational stage


  • A major achievement is the ability to decentre, focus on more than one aspect of a situation
  • Declining egocentrism, children can listen to other's viewpoints, follow rules in games, and begin to understand that a person may act one way but feel another
• Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory


  • Emphasises the social, cultural, and historical impact on a child's developmental trajectory
  • Differs from Piaget in the focus on the importance of social interactions in the development of thinking
• Vygotsky's work on ECD

  • Two aspects: the development of self-regulation and the understanding that play is the leading activity of this developmental phase
• Self-regulation


  • A deep internal mechanism that underlies mindful, intentional and thoughtful behaviours of children
  • The capacity to control one's impulses, both to stop doing something and to start doing something
• How children acquire self-regulation

  1. Initially external, occurring between the mother and the child, before being internalised by the child

  2. The presence of an adult/more capable other is essential to the development of self-regulation

  3. Play contains certain rules which require the child to self-regulate

  4. Social activity, particularly at preschool level, allows for profound developmental activity because it provides opportunities to 'test' new learning safely and establish appropriate dialogue
• The learning of specific abilities in one domain transforms the intellectual functioning in other areas
• Mediation of cultural tools

  The child changes from simply exploring his or her environment to observing and internalising cultural tools and ways of thinking
• Mediation


  The adult plays a key role in the child's ability to self-regulate by presenting an attitude towards learning, providing stimulating objects, modelling situational language, and helping the child to develop their motivation to learn
• Mediation


  Helps the child to learn to regulate behaviour and internalise new learning
• Self-regulation


  Occurs through the child in the course of mediation when the child acquires and masters new psychological tools, which result in the development of new mental processes
• Mediation of cultural tools

  1. The child changes from simply exploring his or her environment to observing the links between the objects he or she is manipulating and their purpose

  2. The adult draws the child's attention to the context of the object
• Self-regulation and fantasy play


  In fantasy play, the learners are continuously describing how the game will be played out, organising their thinking and regulating their behaviour
• By engaging in play children are learning to regulate their behaviour because they are experiencing the need to regulate within their imagined roles
• Zone of Proximal Development

  1. Baseline level of child's existing knowledge

  2. Collaborating with expert to build on existing knowledge

  3. Continuing to scaffold information and adjust to facilitate learning

  4. Where the child is capable of being, with the assistance of the expert
• Learning will lead to development if it occurs within the child's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) where skills and concepts can come to fruition with the appropriate guidance of the educator, peers, or significant others
• At preschool level, the year proceeding grade one, guidance within fantasy play provides the opportunity for the pre-schooler to learn how to delay gratification, listen to instructions, and plan a task, developing self-regulation
• Educators should allocate more time to play in the preschool programme because it is through play that the child moves forward and develops
• Play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form; in play it is as though the child were trying to jump above the level of his normal behaviour
• Adult mediation, children's prior knowledge, and language are key factors that shape socio-dramatic play and influence the development of abstraction