Schooling and Development in Middle Childhood

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Chapter 13
Schooling and Development in Middle Childhood
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The Contexts in Which Skills are Taught

• Formal Schooling
• Motivation is for the long-term not immediately
  applicable
• Social relations teachers and students have
  different and distinct roles
• Social Organization one adult and many children
• Meduim of instruction primarily written

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Impact of Schooling
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Written Language

• Bottom-up Processing first decoding the letters
  to read words, then phrases, sentences (most
  common)
• Top-down Processing stresses comprehension
  first and applicability (ex. Whole-language
  curriculum)

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Teaching Mathematics

• 3 types of knowledge (Gelman, 1986)
• Conceptual Knowledge understanding of
  underlying principles
• Procedural Knowledge ability to carry out
  sequence to solve a problem
• Utilization Knowledge ability to know when to
  apply procedures

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Orgnaization of Instruction

• Standard
• Initiation (teacher) reply (students)
  feedback (teacher)
• Alternative Reciprical Teaching
• Students take turns leading discussions and
  claify as a group
• Uses the ZPD of the group to help each individual
• Realistic Mathematics Project Based
• Comceptual understaning and real world
  application

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Organizational Comparison
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• The Cognitive Consequences
• of Schooling
• Cross-Cultural Research on the Effects of
  Schooling
• Logical thinking appears universal
• Memory enhanced strategies from school
• Metacognitive skills schooling does impact

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Aptitude for Schooling

• The Origins of Intelligence Testing
• Why some children would learn and some wouldnt?
• Binet and Simon
• 50 of children score at the expected age level
• 43 score within one year of the expected age
• 7 score more than 2 years from the expected age
• Mental Age average performance of a child at a
  given age

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Distribution of IQ scores
Refined later to include chronological age
Intelligence Quotient IQ(MA/CA)100
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General or Specfic Intelligence

• Gardners Multiple Intelligences
• Linguistic sensitivity to language, grasp new
  meanings easily
• Musical sensitivity to speech and tone
• Logical-Mathematical abstract reasoning
  manipulation of symbols
• Spatial relations among objects, re-create
  visual images
• Bodily-kinesthetic represent ideas in movement
• Personal sensitivity and understanding of self
  and others feelings
• Social sensitivity to motives, feelings, and
  behaviors of others

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Triarchic Theory

• Sternberg
• Analytic ability to judge, evaluate, compare,
  contrast
• Creative ability to invent, discover, imagine
• Practical ability to apply knowledge to practice

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Contributions of Nature Nuture

• 1920s Innatist Hypothesis of Intelligence
• Some people are innately smarter than others
• No training or environmental change matter
• 1930s-40s Environmentalist Hypothesis
• Intelligence is both specific and dependent on
  experience

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Personal and Social Barriers to School Success

• Learning disabilities normal IO but poor
  performance in specific areas
• Motivation to learn Mastery vs. Helpless
• Mismatches between home and school cultures

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• Learning a Second Language
• Best time to teach it is in middle childhood
• Strategies
• Total immersion - approach that teaches a second
  language in which instruction occurs entirely in
  that language and the learners language is not
  used at all
• Bilingual education

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Deciding How Children Should Learn

• Learning is easiest and most efficient if it is
• In a warm friendly atmosphere
• built on a knowledge base
• connected to other material
• taught directly and sequentially
• has high and explicit expectations
• Communication between home and school is present

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Educational Structures and Policies

• Hidden curriculum
• Unofficial, unstated, or implicit rules and
  priorities that influence the academic curriculum
  and every other aspect of school learning
• Three aspects
• Class size
• Testing
• Expectations

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• Hidden Influences
• Class Size - children learn better when the class
  size is smaller
• Educational Standards and Testing
• Teacher Expecations influence students
  performance