2. Learning as We Grow - Development
Session Content Outline
- Pathways for development –
Teachers will understand that students develop along several developmental
pathways, all of which interact and play a part in a students'
learning. Teachers will
learn how they can enhance learning by observing their students
and supporting their development across these pathways.
- Developmental progression –
Teachers will understand that development progresses sequentially,
that teaching is more effective when it is appropriate to students'
developmental stages and within their "zones of proximal
development," and that development can be supported by teaching.
- Assessing and supporting readiness –
Teachers will begin to recognize students' developmental signs
of readiness across the different pathways. Teachers will understand
the need to assess students' current levels of skill and understanding
to make decisions about what students are ready to learn and how
they can best be taught.
Children's growth and development occurs across several interrelated
yet distinct domains, including physical, mental, social, emotional,
and moral. Two important themes are central to understanding children's
progress through their developmental stages. First, physical, cognitive,
emotional, and social changes are all occurring simultaneously. Although
these arenas develop simultaneously, they do not necessarily develop
Second, all of the internal changes that children
and adolescents experience at their important transition points
are mirrored by profound changes in their peer, school, and family
lives. Understanding development requires not only a consideration
of the "whole child," but also the whole child developing
in particular social contexts.
To understand and support the development and learning
of her students, a teacher must be able to take a developmental
perspective. This includes understanding that children move through
several stages or sequences of development and that they develop
through several "pathways of development." These pathways
- Physical pathway: the normal course and
variability of overall physical development
- Social-interactive pathway: children's increasing
ability to communicate and interact with a variety of people in
all social situations
- Emotional pathway: the child's growing ability
to recognize, respond to, and "manage" feelings –
what some might call the development of "emotional intelligence"
- Cognitive pathway: refers to how information
is processed, assimilated, and used in an increasingly sophisticated
manner as children develop
- Linguistic pathway: refers to the development
of both expressive and receptive communication abilities
- Psychological pathway: refers to the development
of a sense of self
- Ethical/moral pathway: refers to the ability
to understand moral thoughts and action; to respect the rights
of others; to evaluate one's own behavior; and to act in the interests
of others as well as oneself.
Developmentally Appropriate Teaching
Piaget described three aspects of cognitive growth:
- Children develop "mental structures" as they gain
skills and experiences
- These structures form when the child acts on objects in the
environment or when she performs "operations"
- The child's intelligence advances through a sequence of "stages"
that change the way the child thinks and acts.
- Developmental theory includes the concept of readiness for learning.
- Vygotsky and Piaget agreed that teaching should respond to the
child's developmental stage.
- Piaget believed that the child is primarily an independent learner.
- Vygotsky, however, believed that individual capacities develop
in social contexts designed to support them.
- According to Vygotsky, learning that takes place externally
in a social context is gradually internalized by the individual:
social knowledge becomes individual knowledge.
- Vygotsky believed that cognitive development is
supported through language, cultural
symbols and tools
nurtured by teachers and caregivers within
a particular students' zone of proximal development (ZPD).
- Vygotsky suggested that students could be helped to develop
if they are taught at the appropriate level, rather than the teacher
merely waiting for greater maturity to make them ready.
Supporting Learning as Children Grow
Developmentally appropriate practice in early and
middle childhood education has several features.
- The curriculum attends to social, emotional, and
physical goals as well as cognitive ones.
- A wide variety of learning experiences, materials
and equipment, and instructional strategies is used strategically
to accommodate individual differences in children's learning and
- Curriculum and instruction support individual,
cultural, and linguistic diversity and encourage positive relationships
with children's families.
- Curriculum builds on what children already know
are able to do (activating prior knowledge) to consolidate their
learning and foster acquisition of new concepts and skills.
- The curriculum encourages children to learn actively
– by observing, collecting information, describing, counting,
manipulating, and using what they have studied.
- Content and skills of application are linked rather
than taught in isolation, so as to encourage development of thinking,
reasoning, decision-making, and problem solving.
- To the greatest extent possible, teaching reflects
children's naturally recurring learning cycle that begins with
awareness and progresses through exploration, inquiry, and use
of constructed knowledge in authentic applications. Teachers help
children see how learning developed previously can be applied
in the current situation.
- Teachers convey respect for children's thinking
by probing thinking with questions such as, "What happens
if . . .?" and "What else works like this?" and
by using mistakes as occasions for further learning (National
Association for the Education of Young Children, 2002).
In later childhood and adolescence, developmentally
appropriate teaching has many of the same features. However, a qualitative
change in thinking occurs with the transition from concrete operations
to formal operations.
As students progress cognitively, they move beyond
one-to-one correspondence to manipulating variables in more complicated
ways, looking for patterns, and thinking abstractly.
Teaching in "developmentally appropriate"
ways means –
- being cognizant of where students are in the processes of their
development and taking advantage of their readiness.
- teaching to support development, not simply waiting for students
to be ready (Bruner, 1960).
What can a teacher do to teach for readiness?
- Teachers can use practices that are attuned to students' existing
skills and ways of learning while developing new understanding
and providing the tools that are needed for the next stage.
- Teachers can help students become ready to comprehend the upper
stages of higher order thinking.
- Teachers can use children's experiences strategically in encouraging
their further development.
The Importance of Context: Stage-Environment Fit
- Teachers can set the stage for students by creating developmentally
appropriate classrooms and schools in which their learning can
unfold in synch with their development.
- Although supporting development is important, David Elkind cautions
that hurrying a child's growth too much can increase stress and
create personal identity problems.
- Researchers have learned that academic achievement, mental health,
and identity develop optimally when the school and home environment
"fit" the child's needs.
- A developmentally healthy environment will support ways in which
cognitive reasoning develops with healthy identity development
and moral reasoning about how to support and care for others.
- Developmentally appropriate schools understand that students
learn through social interaction as well as individual effort;
thus, they are collaborative.