Week 1 The Developing Child
EDBED1017 Notes
Week 1 The Developing Child
What is Theory?
Atheoryis a group of linked ideas intended to explain something.Atheoryprovides a framework for explaining observations.
Theories are tested using evidence appropriate for the task, for example, observations of children, scientific experiments, mathematical calculations etc, provide support for, or challenge, thetheory.
A theory not only explains known facts; it also allows people to make predictions of what they should observe if a theory is true. Theories in education can be tested and many of the theoretical perspectives we study in this course, and in other courses you will study at university, have been established over a long period of time. Theories are strengthened when the central elements of a theory have been observed on numerous occasions.
What is Educational Psychology?
Duchesne and McMaugh (2019) define educational psychology as a branch of psychology that examines how people learn and the implications for teaching. Educational psychology has existed for over one hundred years and consists of a range of theories, research methods, problems and techniques to develop a range of concepts related to teaching and learning.
Factors that influence learning
There are many factors that influence our learning, whether it is formal learning in an educational setting or informal learning on other areas of our lives.The ways we learn influence both informal and formal learning in our lives. Many people learn to drive a car, play a sport, play a musical instrument, or learn how to work in a new employment space.
Emerging Skills
What is physical development?
This topic focuses on the developing child and physical development refers to the physical growth and changes that begin when a child is born and continue into late adolescence. We know that growth begins at conception.
Physical changes include the acquisition of gross motor skills that involve larger muscles in the body and fine motor skills that use smaller limbs such as fingers. Other characteristics are related to the onset of puberty.
Brain development
How the brain develops
The brain is a very complex organ that is associated with thinking, learning, memory, problem-solving and emotions. It is about the size of a coconut and has the texture of butter. As educators, we need to understand how the brain functions and how experiences assist in the development of new neural pathways. The childs brain development is related to cognitive development.
Week 2 Learning through Developmental Phases
Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. In the prescribed text, read Box 3.1 (p.97) about Piaget's life and while reading think about how Piaget's early life experiences shaped who he was to become and why his ideas were so influential.
What is Cognitive Development?
The field of Cognitive Development focuses on children's development in their intellectual/mental abilities - thinking, reasoning and understanding. Information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skills, language learning, memory, creativity and higher order thinking all form part of our understandings of cognitive development. It is a field of study that encompasses both psychology and more recently neuroscience that has advanced our knowledge through tools such as MRI scans and 3-D modelling.
When is a question complex?
Do you know the answer without using any other resources? Why or why not?
If you did not know the answer, how might you find out?
What might a young child do to find the answer?
What would a secondary student do to find the answer?
Factors that Influence Development
Growth, Activity, Interaction, Equilibrium
Growth: Biological development (maturation)
Piaget suggested that the development of the body (nervous system & brain development) is spontaneous and underpins the development of knowledge. Interestingly, as Piaget (1964, p. 176) put it,learning presents the opposite case. In general, learning is provoked by situations with: teachers, external situations, learning experiments
Social interaction
Interaction with parents, peers, teachers (the social world) contributes childrens learning experiences. These interactions result in challenging the childs ideas and current understandings as the child tries to take on ideas which differ from their own.
Response to new ideas/ inconsistencies in understanding (equilibrium)
Achieving a balance of understanding, to encompass new ideas that conflict with the childs own understanding. The child cognitively adjusts to new situations and experiences by"
modifyingadapting new ideas (schemas) into the already knownassimilation of new ideas &
accommodatingthese ideas to a new, more developed understanding
How did Piaget generate his insights about child development?
Interview techniques. Piaget worked with Binet (as in Binet of IQ test fame)
Piaget became interested in childrens misunderstandings & common cognitive errors.
Stages of Development
Piaget's Four stages (universal & unchanging)
The following sections will provide examples of children in each of the stages:
Sensorimotor stage (pre-verbal stage}
Pre-operational stage (beginnings of language)
Concrete operations
Formal operational stage
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Sensorimotor stage (pre-verbal stage, first 18 months of life)
Practical knowledge is developed during this stage, which supports the development of later representational knowledge.
Thinking at this stage is in the moment when an object disappears from the childs view, it disappears from the perceptual field no attempt made to find it again.
Thinking dominated by motor (movement) and sensory activities: hearing, touching, smelling, seeing & tasting.
Preoperational stage (the beginnings of language, ages 2-6/7 years)
Beginnings of language, of the symbolic function, and therefore of thought, or representation (Piaget, 1964, p. 177)
This stage focuses on language acquisition
Thinking at this stage is still limited & perception bound: appearance dominated perception and understanding e.g. the three mountain problem (below)
Children in this stage tend to talk about things from their own immediate perspective (egocentric) and may be surprised that a stranger does share their knowledge
Children in this stage are generally not able to focus on more than one or two elements in a situation/problem (centration)
Pays attention to physical appearance of objects
Children in this stage tend to attribute human characteristics to inanimate objects the fence bit me when zapped by electric fence
Concrete operational (ages 7-11 years)
Children can mentally manipulate objects and events and explain the transformation
reasoning is logical, flexible, organised
understands reversibility and conservation
able to order objects according to a dimension (length, colour, thickness)Seriation
Able to group objects together according to a criterion such as shape, colour, function)Classification
increasingly able to consider different perspectives, but still not able to think in abstractions
Start to develop understanding of jokes and humour not quite there with sarcasm
9 to 10 year olds were more accurate at understanding sarcastic and ironic speakers and they distinguished these speakers' intentions, rating sarcastic criticisms as more 'mean' than ironic criticisms. These results show that children can determine the non-literal meanings of sarcasm and irony by six years of age but do not distinguish the pragmatic purposes of these speech acts until later in middle childhood.
Conservation of different characteristics occurs at different times the rate may be varied according to experience
Logical reasoning replaces intuitive thought. Logical reasoning ability limited toSPECIFICandconcreteexamples.
Formal operational stage (ages 11 adult)
The ability to see that reality and thoughts about reality are different
Develop and testhypotheses(hypothetical-deductive reasoning)
Abstract/logical thinking (If A > B and B > C then A > C)
Second-order cognition (now Metacognition) - thinking about thinking e.g. adolescents increasingly choose what to think (or not think) about
Some limitations of Piagets theory
He failed to adequately study in detail key cognitive processes.
His explanations of cognitive changes are too general.
He failed to adequately study the effects of culture on cognitive development
Week 3 Learning in a Social Context
Vygotsky's Developmental Theory
Vygotsky's theoretical understandings about teaching and learning
Vygotsky argued from a sociocultural perspective of cognitive development that:
the most successful learning occurs when children are guided by adults towards learning things that they could not attempt on their own.
infants are born with an inherited capacity for specific patterns of action
from birth, infants acquire a sequence of skills and competencies, language being the most important
cognitive development is an outcome of interaction between a child, its carers and the environment.
He coined the term Zone of Proximal Development to refer to the zone where teachers and students work as children move towards independence. This zone changes as teachers and students move past their present level of development towards new areas of knowledge.
What are 'specific patterns of action?'
These are the actions infants use to learn about the world through their senses. They look around constantly, look at the faces of caregivers and respond to smiling faces. Their eyes focus on bright colours and they respond to sounds by looking toward the sound.During this time of sensory learning, infants also show interest in light and movement, such as a mobile above the crib.Infants also begin to recognise their own name (when spoken by another person) in this stage.
Their initial communication is through crying which is a general cry to bring attention to their needs.Later the cry changes and becomes different and more specific to identify what the baby needs or wants.The cry develops into gestures, and the beginning stages of language such as babbling, then monosyllables such as "ba" and "da" andlater to single words put together to make a meaningful sentence.
You can observe that infants also communicate through their motor actions. As they grow, they kick and use their arms to reach for people and things that are interesting to them. They respond to voices and seek to be picked up by reaching out.Infants continue to interact with their surroundings and make meaning out of their world, they also learn about themselves, their own bodies.Their hands and toes become body objects of interest. They suck on their hands and toes and may seem to be fascinated with their own hands.During this stage of sensory learning, infants reach for, hit at, and grasp objects that are within their reach, such as dangling jewellery and long hair.
Internalisation
One of the key concepts that distinguished Vygotskys theory of cognitive development from that of Piaget is the notion of internalisation.
The idea is that individuals internalise the ideas and processes they observe and participate in during social interactions as new ways of thinking.Their thinking is gradually transformed through interaction. Here are two examples:
1. In the classroom when ateacheris discussing the causes of the First World War, students put forward theories andthe teacher extends their thinking about the topic with questions and evidence for her knowledge of history.She responds to the students ideas, corrects misconceptions and ask questions to prompt them to think in new ways about history.Students draw on an respond to one anothers ideas.As a result of the discussion, student internalise these new ways of thinking and may apply them to other topics.
2. Students learning about the bush environment in an outdoor education activity can respond to questions and collaborate with others to deepen their understandings. Where there are misconceptions, the 'more knowing other' for example, theEnvironmental Education Officercan incorporate lines of questioning to support learning.
Social Interaction
Vygotsky argued very strongly that it is in interaction with others that we learn how to think.
Through discussion as just described above in the two examples, the co-construction of ideas and understandings were made by both the teacher and the student together as they interacted.Thus for Vygotsky, the individual is active in development but so are others and their development arises from social interactions.
Zone of Proximal Development
According to Vygotsky social interaction with others is the primary force driving cognitive development.His theory of cognitive development has been labelled sociocultural because of his focus on how social relationships, social interaction, historical context and culture, interact to promote cognitive development (Bergin & Bergin, 2015, p.123).In a nutshell, the ZPD is the level of competence between what a learner can do alone and what he/she can do with assistance of a competent other. It emphasises the social dimension of cognition.
From a sociocultural perspective, a teachers primary role is to scaffold children in their zone of proximal development. Bruners notion of scaffoldingis a metaphor of a scaffold that supports building during construction but is later removed. By breaking a task into smaller parts to direct the learners attention and giving specific strategies to solve the problem and provide lessons on how to learn. There is also a gradual ongoing exchange of knowledge between the teacher and the learner.
Think about a board game such as Chess where one person is perhaps unsure of some of the more intricate moves in the game. Chess involves two players and during the game there will be an exchange of the roles of teacher and learner.There will also be visible cognitive growth, for example, each player has to understand and remember the rules, has to think about strategies for winning as the game is being played and consequences for moving particular chess pieces.To start with one person will know how to play the game and the other will be learning but as the learner becomes more confident, both players gradually co-construct the rules. This is an example of social interaction resulting in active learning, assisted learning, reciprocal teaching, assisted discovery and collaborative cognition. Educational terms which you may have heard of during classes or on placement.
Reciprocal teaching is when peers assisteach other but learning takes place under the guidance of an expert who helps the group with understanding the content-matter and group thinking processes. Can be used in whole group instruction, small group instruction or one-to-one tutorials.
Reciprocal teaching involves four strategies predicting, questioning, summarising and clarifying. Teachers explicitly model each of the four strategies in activities to support student learning.Mental Tools
Language as a mental tool
Vygotsky argued that each culture has a set of artefacts physical and mental tools through which culture is expressed and passed from adults and peers to children during social interaction and include language Examples of such tools are systems for counting; mnemonic techniques; algebraic symbol systems; works of art; writing; schemes, diagrams; maps; and mechanical drawings. If he had lived to the 21st century he would have included a wide range of digital technologies in his list of mental tools.
One of the responsibilities of adults, including parents and teachers, is to give children the mental tools or cognitive strategies they will need to function effectively and independently within their own cultural and social environment.
For Vygotsky, language is the most important mental tool. Initially it has a social function but as a childs language skills increase, language begins to serve as an intellectual function and tool for problem solving and self-regulation and speech becomes internalised (in the head) or private speech.
Vygotsky believed that private language helped children to think. Think about when you use internal speech, for example to solve a problem, or to rehearse an answer.John Dewey's Theories on Education and Learning
John Dewey is one of the most influential thinkers in the history of modern educational theory. His ideas and approaches to schooling were revolutionary during the time he lived and remain fundamentally important to modern schooling today.
The starting place in Dewey's philosophy and educational theory is the world of everyday life. Unlike many philosophers, Dewey did not search beyond the realm of ordinary experience to find some more fundamental and enduring reality. For Dewey, the everyday world of common experience was all the reality that people had access to or needed. Dewey was greatly impressed with the success of the physical sciences in solving practical problems and in explaining, predicting, and controlling the environment.
He considered the scientific mode of inquiry and the scientific systematisation of human experience the highest attainment in the evolution of the mind of humans, and this way of thinking and approaching the world became a major feature of his philosophy.In fact, he defined the educational process as a "continual reorganisation, reconstruction and transformation of experience" (1916, p. 50), for he believed that it was only through experience that humans learnt about the world and only by the use of experiences could people maintain and better themselves in the world.
Dewey recognised that the major instrument of human learning is language, which is itself a social product and is learned through social experiences.He saw that in providing a pool of common meanings for communication, the language of each society becomes the repository of the society's ideals, values, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge.
To transmit the contents of the language to the young and to initiate the young in the ways of civilized life was, for Dewey, the primary function of the school as an institution of society. But, he argued, a way of life cannot be transmitted by words alone.
Essential to acquiring the spirit of a way of life is immersion in ways of living.
Progressive Education
Dewey blended ideas of philosophy with psychology and educational theory to develop the progressive education movement, a very radical idea in the late 19th Century! (Carol Garhart Mooney, 2000, p.4).
Progressive education is essentially a view of education that emphasises the need to learn by doing. In Europe, Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget were spreading the same message. We have already explored Piaget's theoretical understandings and will explore Montessori and others in Week 4.
Dewey believed that people learn through a 'hands on' approach. This places Dewey in the educational philosophy of pragmatism. Pragmatists believe that reality must be experienced. From Dewey's educational point of view, this means that students must interact with their environment in order to adapt and learn. Dewey felt that the same idea was true for teachers and that teachers and students must learn together. His view of the classroom was deeply rooted in democratic ideals, which promoted equal voice among all participants in the learning experience.
Dewey's Pedagogical Creed
Dewey believed in order to provide educational experiences for children, teachers must:
Have a strong base of general knowledge as well as knowledge of specific children;Be willing to make sense of the world for children on the basis of their greater knowledge and experience;Invest in observation, planning, organisation, and documentation.
His famous text My Pedagogic Creed is the springboard for some of his most provocative ideas such as the need for teachers to have confidence in their skills and abilities, to trust their knowledge and experience and using both, provide appropriate activities to nurture inquiry and dispositions for learning in the children they work with (Carol Garhart Mooney, 2000, p.4-5).
Dewey believed in an interdisciplinary curriculum, or a curriculum that focuses on connecting multiple subjects, where students are allowed to freely move in and out of classrooms as they pursue their interests and construct their own paths for acquiring and applying knowledge.Is this possible in the current formation of schooling contexts?
The role of the teacher in this setting would be to serve more as a facilitator than an instructor. In Dewey's view, the teacher should observe the interest of the students, observe the directions they naturally take, and then serve as someone who helps develop problem-solving skills.
Child Centred
As a progressive educator, he shared with Vygotsky, Montessori and Piaget, the central ideas of the movement:
education must be both active and interactive;education must involve the social world of the child and then community.
Dewey's pragmatic and democratic approach to schooling may not stand out as radical today, but in the early and mid-1900s his view of education was in contradiction to much of the then-present system of schooling. Dewey's approach was truly child-centred.A child-centred approach to education places the emphasis of learning on the needs and interests of the child. In Dewey's view, children should be allowed to explore their environments.
Summary of Dewey and Vygotskys Theories
The teacher serves as a mentor, or interlocutor.
Interest is created by the interaction the person and the situation.
Inquiry as based in progressive problem solving.
A child learns language through social interactions and then thinks in terms of that language.
Human condition is based in social interactions.
People learn more in a social situation.
Learners actively construct meaning by building on background knowledge, experiences and reflecting on those experiences.
Learners are given the freedom to think, to question, to reflect, and to interact with ideas, objects, and othersin other words, to construct meaning.
Learners are self-regulated.
Understanding requires the learner to actively engage in meaning-making.
It is the the difference between learning by doing and begin told something, for example, being told how to ride a bike versus riding the bike yourself to learn how to ride; or by providing a template to construct a document without allowing the student to think about a range of ways to develop a response to a task themselves.
Week 4 Student-centred Schooling Models
Teacher Impact on Student Learning
You may have heard a lot of talk in the media and between teachers and other stake holders about ensuring that teachers have an impact on the learning of their students. Education has always been a political environment where everything we do has to be justified. John Hattie, who is currently the Chair ofAITSL (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership)is well known for researching and exploring the effects and influences of different teaching approaches on learning and achievement. He developed a way of ranking various influences in different meta-analyses related to learning and achievement according to their effect sizes. In his ground-breaking studyVisible Learninghe ranked 138influences thatare related to learning outcomes from very positive effects to very negative effects.
Hattie found that the average effect size of all the interventions he studied was 0.40. Therefore he decided to judge the success of influences relative to this hinge point, in order to find an answer to the question What works best in education?
According to Hattie's analysis anything above 0.40 is deemed to have a positive effect on students. Have a look through these rankings with a particular focus on the following topics we have or will cover in this course:
Piagetian programs, conceptual change programs, cognitive tasks analysis, classroom discussion, reciprocal teaching, feedback, creativity programs, self-questioning, concept mapping, prior achievement, direct instruction, peer tutoring. cooperative learning
Three Different Approaches to Education
Three progressive approaches to education that still appear to have an influence on alternative forms of educational approaches:
Montessori
Reggio Emelia
Steiner or Waldorf approach
Their vision is on improving human society by seeing children as 'whole' people who can realise their full potential as intelligent, creative people. in these views children areactive agentsin their own learning and development which is impacted from self-righting forces within themselves, opening the way toward growth and learning. Partnering with parents is highly valued in all three approaches, and children are evaluated by means other than traditional tests and grades. The child's interest, modes of learning and needs drive the curriculum and how teachers interact and plan for teaching and learning sequences.
Maria Montessori was an Italian doctor who devoted herself to educating the children of Rome's ghettos.She became famous for her visionary methods and insight into how children learn. Her teachings spawned an educational movement which is enormously popular throughout the world.Montessori influenced many early educational theorists such as Piaget and Dewey focus on children constructing their own understandings of the world around them.
The use of natural observation in a prepared environment by an objective teacher led Montessori to consider her method scientific. After Montessori completed her direct study of children, she specified every particular detail of how the school should be operated to ensure accurate replication. The teachers role in a Montessori school is to observe in order to connect the child with the suitable materials (Goffin, 2001).
Montessori subscribed toconstructivism, a theory of education that says students do better if we let them piece together how the world works by moving through it themselves than if we deliver knowledge top-down.The centrepiece of the Montessori approach is allowing children to learn on their own while beingguided by the teacher.Montessori teachersdo not correct workand hand it back with lots of red marks.A child's work is not graded. The teacher assesses what the child has learned and thenguides him/her into new areas of discovery.
Montessori Teaching
Self-directed activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play
Teachers plan individual projects to enable each child to learn what he/she needs in order to improve.
The physical environment is arranged according to subject area, and children are free to move around the room. There is no limit to how long a child can work on any one project or activity.
Children are grouped in mixed ages and abilities in three to six year spans: zero to three and three to six. Montessori teachers believe this encourages constant interaction, problem solving, child-to-child teaching, and socialisation.
Montessori classrooms are designed in a multi-age mix from toddlers through adolescents which allows for both individual and social development.
The classrooms are beautiful by design. They are set up in an open style, with work areas throughout the room and materials available on accessible shelving. Since Montessori believed beauty helped with concentration, the setting is aesthetically pleasing.In the setting, each child is provided a place to keep her own belongings.
Montessori advocated that children learn best by doing, so activities are self-directed and collaborative in nature. (link to Vygotsky). In order to help children focus, the teacher silently demonstrates the use of learning materials to them. Children may then choose to practice on any material they have had a lesson about.Once children are given the lesson with the material, they may work on it independently, often on a mat that designates their space.
Montessori believed that the environment should be prepared by matching the child to the corresponding didactic (intending to teach) material.
The environment should be comfortable for children (e.g., child-sized chairs that are lightweight). The environment should be homelike, so child can learn practical life issues.For example, there should be a place for children to practice proper self-help skills, such as hand washing.
Reggio Emilia
The Reggio Emilia model of education
Reggio Emilia is a city in Northern Italy and Loris Malaguzzi was the founder of Reggio Emilias educational philosophy after World War two. Malaguzzi participated in the building of Reggio Emilias network of municipal preschools (3-6) and infant-toddler centres (0-3). The Reggio Emilia program fosters ideas of observation, documentation and collaborative interpretation of childrens discussions and actions
Hailed as an exemplary model of early childhood education (Newsweek, 1991), the Reggio Emilia approach to education is committed to the creation of conditions for learning that will enhance and facilitate children's construction of "his or her own powers of thinking through the synthesis of all the expressive, communicative and cognitive languages" (Edwards and Forman, 1993).
Key features of the Reggio Emilia approach
Emergent Curriculum:An emergent curriculum is one that builds upon the interests of children.Topics for study are captured from the talk of children, through community or family events, as well as the known interests of children (puddles, shadow, dinosaurs, etc.).Team planning is an essential component of the emergent curriculum.
Project Work:Projects, also emergent, are in-depth studies of concepts, ideas, and interests, which arise within the group. Considered as an adventure, projects may last one week or could continue throughout the school year. Throughout a project, teachers help children make decisions about the direction of study, the ways in which the group will research the topic, the representational medium that will demonstrate and showcase the topic and the selection of materials needed to represent the work.
Representational Development:Consistent with Howard Gardner's notion of schooling for multiple intelligences, the Reggio Emilia approach calls for the integration of the graphic arts as tools for cognitive, linguistic, and social development.Presentation of concepts and hypotheses in multiple forms of representation -- print, art, construction, drama, music, puppetry, and shadow play -- are viewed as essential to children's understanding of experience.
Collaboration:Collaborative group work, both large and small, is considered valuable and necessary to advance cognitive development. Children are encouraged to dialogue, critique, compare, negotiate, hypothesize, and problem solve through group work.
Teachers as Researchers:The teacher's role within the Reggio Emilia approach is complex. Working as co-teachers, the role of the teacher is first and foremost to be that of a learner alongside the children. The teacher is a teacher-researcher, a resource and guide as she/he lends expertise to children (Edwards, 1993)
Rudolph Steiner 1861-1925
Steiner grew up in rural Austria and was born into a religious family. He commenced school but was home schooled after an incidence with a teacher.
Steiner mentioned in his biography My father was concerned that I should learn early to read and write. When I reached the required age, I was sent to the village school. The schoolmaster was an old man to whom the work of teaching school was a burdensome business. Equally burdensome to me was the business of being taught by him.
He was an Austrian philosopher and spiritual scientistwho believed that we must awaken to our own inner nature and the spiritual realities of outer nature and the cosmos. He believed that the awareness of this relationship brings greater reverence for life.
Overview of Steiner Education
Steiner schools have a unique and distinctive approach to educating children, aiming to enable each stage of growth to be fully and vividly enjoyed and experienced. They provide a balanced approach to the modern school curriculum.
The academic, artistic and social aspects, or head, heart & hands, are treated as complementary facets of a single program of learning, allowing each to throw light on the others.
This is implemented by using art as a practice, and language to develop the feelings, by nourishing the children with the rich heritage of wise folk tales, histories, fairy stories, poems, music and games that are part of our world civilisation.
This creates the cultural atmosphere in which the children are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, nature study, geography, science, languages, music and other subjects.
How is it different from mainstream education?
Steiner designed a curriculum that is responsive to the developmental phases of childhood and the nurturing of the childs imagination in a school environment.
Steiner thought that schools should cater to the needs of the child rather than the demands of the government or economic forces, so he developed schools that encourage creativity and free-thinking.
His teaching seeks to recognise the individuality of the child and through a balanced education, allows them to go into the world with confidence.
Steiner schooling strives to support the development of well rounded human beings who are able to feel deeply to think broadly and clearly, and then to act rightly out of conscious and free choice.
He quotes: The need for imagination, a sense of truth and a feeling of responsibility these are the three forces which are the very nerve of education
What does Steiner education look like?
Early Years
The teacher endeavours to create an environment that gives children time to play and encourages them to exercise their imagination and learn to conjure up ideas from within themselves.
Simple homely tasks and artistic activities to both do and see are balanced with story telling, singing games and generous play times. A rich supply of natural materials provides scope for imagination in play, which refined toys often deny.
Activities offered for the four to six year olds are based on the house and garden. These include sweeping, gardening, cooking, building cubbies, looking after animals, singing, listening to stories, helping to prepare the meal table, cutting fruit, painting, clay modelling and drawing.
Children learn to enjoy building, using the natural materials in the room to make their own constructions and patterns. Practical experience helps the child develop confidence and capabilities.
Teaching Methods Classes 1- 6 (note language used!)
A central part of this teachers task is to intimately understand the needs of each child, and to nurture the development of a real spirit of sharing and community within the class.
In a loving, structured environment, with the encouragement of their classmates and teachers, the children develop and appreciate their strengths and work at their own difficulties to build reslience.
The social and moral learning that takes place in childhood is just as important as the academic learning.
Reading and writing are taught from Class 1. The child first learns to write using the shape of the letters to suggest meaning, ie. M for mountain, V for valley, W for waves.
In addition, they may walk the shape on the floor in the classroom and draw pictures that include the shape. This allows a deeper connection with, and an understanding of the letters, rather than just memorising the abstract shapes.
The children write words and read their own writing before working with printed literature.
An understanding of numbers is built on the basis of concrete, real-life tasks - such as dividing a cake to share, estimating, measuring and through counting aloud, chanting of tables, musical rhythms and skipping games.
These learning experiences are real and meaningful. The children may also learn games such as chess, which enhance thinking and mathematical ability.
Comparison Matrix
Inquiry-based Learning
You may have noticed many similarities or approaches used in mainstream classes that are drawn from some or all of the alternative models of education. All these approaches have the child at the centre of their learning, linking to their prior knowledge, interests and needs. Many schools in mainstream education use a form of this call Inquiry-based learning.
So what is it?
Inquiry based learning is an umbrella term that incorporates many current learning approaches (including project based learning, design thinking) and may take various forms, depending on the topic, resources, ages and abilities of students and other variables.
Common characteristics include:
Reflection, metacognition and depth of thought are valued and planned for in the teaching and learning space.
Learning takes place in a social context students learn from each other, together with others, and from those outside of the classroom context.
Students are actively involved in constructing understandings through hands-on experiences, research, processing and communicating their understandings in various ways.
Prior knowledge is recognised and built on to extend learning - connect the dots!
Genuine curiosity, wonderment and questioning (by teachers AND students) is central to the teaching and learning process.
Student voice is evident elements of the curriculum / learning are negotiated and student questions are taken seriously and addressed.
What is reflective teaching?
21st Century, educators need to be inquirers into professional practice who question their routine practices and assumptions and who are capable of investigating the effects of their teaching on student learning (Reid, 2004).
There are at least two reasons for this assertion. Firstly, many of the issues facing educators today are context-bound: they are not amenable to universal solutions. That is, educators face the considerable challenge of designing curricula for local contexts that are flexible enough to address the rapid growth of knowledge, and that recognise the increasing religious, cultural and ethnic diversity in their student populations. Support within the systemis crucial in assisting educators to meet these challenges. Educators must themselves have the capacity to be always deepening their understandings of teaching and learning through reflection and inquiry. Secondly, if the task of educators is to develop in children and young people the learning dispositions and capacities to think critically, flexibly and creatively, then educators too must possess and model these capacities. (Reid, 2004)
DonaldSchn, in his influential bookThe Reflective Practitioner, developed the term reflective practice (Schn,1983).Schnintroduced the concepts of reflection-in-action (thinking on your feet) and reflection-on-action (thinking after the event).Schnfocused his attention on five professional fields engineering, architecture, psychotherapy, town planning and education and talked of the inextricable link between the concept of professionalism and the process of reflective practice.
According to Schn, "a reflective teacher is one who finds joy in learning and in investigating the teaching/learning process one who views learning as construction and teaching as a facilitating process to enhance and enrich development".
Reflective Questions:
What am I/are we doing in relation to this practice /issue /question?
Why am I/are we doing this? (e.g. what theories are expressed in my/our practices, and whose interests do these represent?)
What are the effects of these practices? Who is most advantaged /least advantaged?
What alternatives are there to my/our current practice? Are these likely to result in more just outcomes?
How will I/we monitor these changes in order to assess outcomes?
Why do we ask ourselves these questions? What does this achieve?
Students sometimes enter teacher education courses with the aim of discovering the best way to teach. Researchers in educational psychology have looked at what makes an effective teacher and found that effective teachers drew on a variety of teaching and learning strategies.
Reflection has been described as important to quality teaching practice for some time. Dewey described reflection as a type of problem solving and argued that reflection involves teachers in the important work of connecting their beliefs and knowledge to current actions and situations potentially leading to the reframing of those ideas and beliefs and more effective actions.
So through asking reflective questions, you become a reflective practitioner as you reflect on your teaching practice; develop your personal philosophy of learning and teaching; use research to inform your practice and even conduct research of your own.
The next chapter focuses on developing your teaching philosophy.
Developing a teaching philosophy
Build Understanding: Constructing an Education Philosophy
A education philosophy is a statement that guides how you will create your teaching and learning environment. The statement will reflect your core values and beliefs related to teaching and learning. You will consider your thoughts regarding how children develop, the purpose of education and how people learn, and the role of teacher. Some theoretical perspectives and teaching strategies/practices will resonate with you as you consider how you might use these in a classroom As you progress through your teaching program, you will be able to adjust and change your philosophy as you take up new ideas, have professional conversations with more experienced people in the field and work with children and young people in various educational contexts.
Week 5 Sociocultural Factors in the Learning Process
Bioecological Systems TheoryUrieBrofenbrenner (1917-2005)
Bronfenbrenner's theory emphasises the importance of the dynamic environmental contexts in which children and young people develop.
Ecological theory is one of the foundation stones of the Child Indicators Movement, which seeks to operationalise the whole child approach measuring child development and child wellbeing across multiple dimensions from within a human rights framework.
Four elements influencing development:
Person e.g. characteristics, dispositions or abilities
Process e.g. activities, relationships and practices
Context e.g. environment (human and non-human)
Time e.g. stability/in stability of individual experience
This theory has three significant assumptions:
person is an active player, exerting influence on his/her environment,
environment is compelling person to adapt to its conditions and restrictions, and
environment is understood to consist of different size entities that are placed one inside another, of their reciprocal relationships and of micro-, meso-, exo- and macrosystems. (Bronfenbrenner 1979)
There are five systems which make up Bronfenbrenner's system
Microsystem
Mesosystem
ExosystemMacrosystem
Chronosystem
The theory is often represented in this interrelated diagram which indicates that it is not a staged approach, rather it explains how everything in a child and the child's environment affects how a child grows and develops.
The Starting Point The Child
Starting Point- Individual Characteristics
With Bronfenbrenner's theory the child is placed at the centre of the model. It ensures that the child is considered in his/her own right and not just part of a larger system. Then using this model the child's personal dispositions are taken into account including motivation, interest and intelligence.
Consider Hatties meta analysis of the most significant factors that impact on students academic achievement (Hattie, 2009):
Birthweight d = 0.54 (keeping in mind that the average effect size is 0.40)
Concentration d = 0.48
Motivation d = 0.48
INCLUDEPICTURE "https://moodle.federation.edu.au/pluginfile.php/7393331/mod_book/chapter/1587570/student.png" * MERGEFORMATINET Consider your focus child's individual characteristics.
You have already started to keep notes about your focus child and you will have answered the reflection questions each week.As you progress through this week's online study guide you will be prompted to apply Bronfennbrenner's theory to the focus child. Record each of your responses to keep a complete picture of the child as this information will be useful in the Assessment 2 case study.
The Microsystem
Next layer:The people/environment closest to the child (Microsystem)
Development through interaction:
Child- immediate family (parents & siblings)
Child- friend/s
Child- teacher
Things to consider:
The immediate environment the child lives in.
This would include any immediate relationships or organizations they interact with, such as their immediate family or caregivers and their school or day-care.
How these groups or organizations interact with the child will have an affect on how the child grows; the more encouraging and nurturing these relationships and places are, the better the child will be able to grow.
Furthermore, how a child acts or reacts to these people in the microsystem will affect how they treat him/her in return.
Each child's special genetic and biologically influenced personality traits, known as temperament, end up affecting how others treat them.
The Mesosystem
Next layer: connections between settings (Mesosystem)
This layer considers how the different parts of a child's microsystem work together for the sake of the child. Itprovides the connection between the structures of the childs microsystem. These connections/relationships can significantly impact on developmental outcomes, for example, the relationship between a childs teacher and his/her parents. Some things to consider:
Interactions between the people in the childs immediate surrounding may be influenced by other factors such as how the family is getting on/stability of relationships
The family members interacts with each other or with teachers. Again, all relationships are reciprocal teachers influence the parents and the parents affect teachers, and interactions affect the child.
According to Hatties meta analysis of the most significant factors that impact on students academic achievement (Hattie, 2009):
Socioeconomic status (parental income, parental education, parental occupation:d = 0.57 (keeping in mind that the average effect size is 0.40)
Family structure (singe/two-parent families): d= 0.17 (A small/insignificant effect size)
Home environment intellectual stimulation in the home & socio-psychological environment (responsively, restriction, play materials, (maternal) involvement, variety: d= 0.57
The ExosystemNext layer: the wider social setting (Exosystem)
This layer defines the larger social system in which the child does not function directly. The child may not be directly involved at this level, but he does feel the positive or negative force involved with the interaction with his/ her own system. For example: a parent's job experiences (job stress, hours, travel etc) will affect family life which in turn, will affect children.
The social settings that the child is not directly involved in but nevertheless indirectly influence their learning and development.
These social settings include parental employment and how this impacts on their parenting, the familys religious affiliation, community resources for health and recreation, or teachers relationships with school principals.
ICSEA Index
When getting to know your students the outer layers of Bronfenbrenner's model are harder to distinguish and determine in terms of their impact.Theindex of community socio-educational advantage (ICSEA)was created by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) specifically to enable meaningful comparisons of National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test achievement by students in schools across Australia.
Key factors in students family backgrounds (parents occupation, school education and non-school education) have an influence on students educational outcomes at school. In addition to these student-level factors, research has shown that school-level factors (a schools geographical location and the proportion of Indigenous students a school caters for) need to be considered when summarising educational advantage or disadvantage at the school level. ICSEA provides a scale that numerically represents the relative magnitude of this influence, and is constructed taking into account both student- and school-level factors.
The Macrosystem
Next layer: the even wider social setting (Macrosystem)
This layer may be considered the outermost layer in the childs environment it is comprised of cultural values, customs, and laws Influences in this layer have a cascading influence throughout all other layers, for example, living under a communist government will not afford the same opportunities as a democratic society, this would impact on all layers within the childs system. Themacrosystemis the larger society in which the child lives its subcultures or dominant values, laws conventions, and traditions. It is the cultural environment in which the child resides.The culture's belief systems and ideology influence the child directly, even though the child does not have much freedom in determining his or her cultural values. Other examples of macrosystems include socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and poverty.
For example, a child cannot determine the political norms of his or her culture, which are a part of themacrosystem. If it is a cultural belief that mothers should have the sole responsibility of staying at home and raising the children (macrosystem), the mother would be less likely to pursue work outside of the home (parent's workplace is part of the exosystem). This in turn would affect the amount of time that the child's mother has to interact with the child's school and neighbourhood (mesosystem). The mother's ability to carry out the responsibility of taking care of her child within the family (microsystem) would also be affected.
The Chronosystem
Time shapes our development (Chronosystem)
This layer encompasses the dimension of time as it relates to a childs environments. Elements within this system can be either external or internal
Different events affect people over time.These include events which are part of the life cycle (birth/death) and transitions.Also,non-normative events such as personal trauma and events such as war & conflict.
The Australian Context
The family context
What challenges face children whose parents are divorced?
In what ways does parenting style (authoritative, authoritarian and permissive), influence student behaviour?
During divorce itself, conflict may increase as property and custody rights are being decided. After a divorce, the custodial parent may have to move to a less expensive home, find new sources of income, go to work for the first time, or work longer hours.For the child, this can mean leaving behind important friendships in the old neighbourhood or school just when support is needed the most. Having only one parent who has less time that ever to be with the child, or adjusting to new family structures when parents remarry.
Adolescents withauthoritativeparents (demanding but responsive, warm and supportive, rational and democratic) are less likely to be influenced by peer pressure to use drugs or alcohol, especially when their friends have authoritative parents. They are more likely to do well in school, be happy, and relate well to others. When adolescents haveauthoritarian parents (very controlling, expect conformity to rules, undemocratic), they are more likely to feel guilty and depressed. Adolescents with parents who arepermissive(warm, nurturing but with few rules or consequences) are more likely to have difficulty interacting with peers and self-regulating their behaviour.Source Woolfolk & Margetts, (2013, p.62)
Economic and social class differences
What is socioeconomic status (SES)?
What is the relationship between SES and school achievement?
Socioeconomic status SES is a term used by sociologists for variations in wealth, power, and prestige.Socioeconomic status is determined by several factors not just income- and often overpowers other cultural differences. No single variable is an effective measure of SES, but most researchers identify three general levels of SES : upper, middle, and lower classes. Socioeconomic status and academic achievement are closely related. High-SES students of all ethnic groups show higher average levels of achievement on test scores and stay in school longer than low-SES students. Poverty during a childs preschool years appears to have the greatest negative impact. And the longer the child is in poverty, the stronger the impact on achievement.Source Woolfolk & Margetts, (2013, p.62-63).
Where are you YOU in a student's bioecological system?
This theory has dire implications for the practice of teaching. Knowing about the breakdown occurring within childrens homes, is it possible for our educational system to make up for these deficiencies? It seems now that it is necessary for schools and teachers to provide stable, long-term relationships. Yet, Bronfenbrenner believes that the primary relationship needs to be with someone who can provide a sense of caring that is meant to last a lifetime.
This relationship must be fostered by a person or people within the immediate sphere of the childs influence. Schools and teachers fulfill an important secondary role, but cannot provide the complexity of interaction that can be provided by primary adults. For the educational community to attempt a primary role is to help our society continue its denial of the real issue. The problems students and families face are caused by the conflict between the workplace and family life not between families and schools. Schools and teachers should work to support the primary relationship and to create an environment that welcomes and nurtures families.
EDBED1017 Notes
Week 1 The Developing Child
What is Theory?
Atheoryis a group of linked ideas intended to explain something.Atheoryprovides a framework for explaining observations.
Theories are tested using evidence appropriate for the task, for example, observations of children, scientific experiments, mathematical calculations etc, provide support for, or challenge, thetheory.
A theory not only explains known facts; it also allows people to make predictions of what they should observe if a theory is true. Theories in education can be tested and many of the theoretical perspectives we study in this course, and in other courses you will study at university, have been established over a long period of time. Theories are strengthened when the central elements of a theory have been observed on numerous occasions.
What is Educational Psychology?
Duchesne and McMaugh (2019) define educational psychology as a branch of psychology that examines how people learn and the implications for teaching. Educational psychology has existed for over one hundred years and consists of a range of theories, research methods, problems and techniques to develop a range of concepts related to teaching and learning.
Factors that influence learning
There are many factors that influence our learning, whether it is formal learning in an educational setting or informal learning on other areas of our lives.The ways we learn influence both informal and formal learning in our lives. Many people learn to drive a car, play a sport, play a musical instrument, or learn how to work in a new employment space.
Emerging Skills
What is physical development?
This topic focuses on the developing child and physical development refers to the physical growth and changes that begin when a child is born and continue into late adolescence. We know that growth begins at conception.
Physical changes include the acquisition of gross motor skills that involve larger muscles in the body and fine motor skills that use smaller limbs such as fingers. Other characteristics are related to the onset of puberty.
Brain development
How the brain develops
The brain is a very complex organ that is associated with thinking, learning, memory, problem-solving and emotions. It is about the size of a coconut and has the texture of butter. As educators, we need to understand how the brain functions and how experiences assist in the development of new neural pathways. The childs brain development is related to cognitive development.
Week 2 Learning through Developmental Phases
Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. In the prescribed text, read Box 3.1 (p.97) about Piaget's life and while reading think about how Piaget's early life experiences shaped who he was to become and why his ideas were so influential.
What is Cognitive Development?
The field of Cognitive Development focuses on children's development in their intellectual/mental abilities - thinking, reasoning and understanding. Information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skills, language learning, memory, creativity and higher order thinking all form part of our understandings of cognitive development. It is a field of study that encompasses both psychology and more recently neuroscience that has advanced our knowledge through tools such as MRI scans and 3-D modelling.
When is a question complex?
Do you know the answer without using any other resources? Why or why not?
If you did not know the answer, how might you find out?
What might a young child do to find the answer?
What would a secondary student do to find the answer?
Factors that Influence Development
Growth, Activity, Interaction, Equilibrium
Growth: Biological development (maturation)
Piaget suggested that the development of the body (nervous system & brain development) is spontaneous and underpins the development of knowledge. Interestingly, as Piaget (1964, p. 176) put it,learning presents the opposite case. In general, learning is provoked by situations with: teachers, external situations, learning experiments
Social interaction
Interaction with parents, peers, teachers (the social world) contributes childrens learning experiences. These interactions result in challenging the childs ideas and current understandings as the child tries to take on ideas which differ from their own.
Response to new ideas/ inconsistencies in understanding (equilibrium)
Achieving a balance of understanding, to encompass new ideas that conflict with the childs own understanding. The child cognitively adjusts to new situations and experiences by"
modifyingadapting new ideas (schemas) into the already knownassimilation of new ideas &
accommodatingthese ideas to a new, more developed understanding
How did Piaget generate his insights about child development?
Interview techniques. Piaget worked with Binet (as in Binet of IQ test fame)
Piaget became interested in childrens misunderstandings & common cognitive errors.
Stages of Development
Piaget's Four stages (universal & unchanging)
The following sections will provide examples of children in each of the stages:
Sensorimotor stage (pre-verbal stage}
Pre-operational stage (beginnings of language)
Concrete operations
Formal operational stage
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Sensorimotor stage (pre-verbal stage, first 18 months of life)
Practical knowledge is developed during this stage, which supports the development of later representational knowledge.
Thinking at this stage is in the moment when an object disappears from the childs view, it disappears from the perceptual field no attempt made to find it again.
Thinking dominated by motor (movement) and sensory activities: hearing, touching, smelling, seeing & tasting.
Preoperational stage (the beginnings of language, ages 2-6/7 years)
Beginnings of language, of the symbolic function, and therefore of thought, or representation (Piaget, 1964, p. 177)
This stage focuses on language acquisition
Thinking at this stage is still limited & perception bound: appearance dominated perception and understanding e.g. the three mountain problem (below)
Children in this stage tend to talk about things from their own immediate perspective (egocentric) and may be surprised that a stranger does share their knowledge
Children in this stage are generally not able to focus on more than one or two elements in a situation/problem (centration)
Pays attention to physical appearance of objects
Children in this stage tend to attribute human characteristics to inanimate objects the fence bit me when zapped by electric fence
Concrete operational (ages 7-11 years)
Children can mentally manipulate objects and events and explain the transformation
reasoning is logical, flexible, organised
understands reversibility and conservation
able to order objects according to a dimension (length, colour, thickness)Seriation
Able to group objects together according to a criterion such as shape, colour, function)Classification
increasingly able to consider different perspectives, but still not able to think in abstractions
Start to develop understanding of jokes and humour not quite there with sarcasm
9 to 10 year olds were more accurate at understanding sarcastic and ironic speakers and they distinguished these speakers' intentions, rating sarcastic criticisms as more 'mean' than ironic criticisms. These results show that children can determine the non-literal meanings of sarcasm and irony by six years of age but do not distinguish the pragmatic purposes of these speech acts until later in middle childhood.
Conservation of different characteristics occurs at different times the rate may be varied according to experience
Logical reasoning replaces intuitive thought. Logical reasoning ability limited toSPECIFICandconcreteexamples.
Formal operational stage (ages 11 adult)
The ability to see that reality and thoughts about reality are different
Develop and testhypotheses(hypothetical-deductive reasoning)
Abstract/logical thinking (If A > B and B > C then A > C)
Second-order cognition (now Metacognition) - thinking about thinking e.g. adolescents increasingly choose what to think (or not think) about
Some limitations of Piagets theory
He failed to adequately study in detail key cognitive processes.
His explanations of cognitive changes are too general.
He failed to adequately study the effects of culture on cognitive development
Week 3 Learning in a Social Context
Vygotsky's Developmental Theory
Vygotsky's theoretical understandings about teaching and learning
Vygotsky argued from a sociocultural perspective of cognitive development that:
the most successful learning occurs when children are guided by adults towards learning things that they could not attempt on their own.
infants are born with an inherited capacity for specific patterns of action
from birth, infants acquire a sequence of skills and competencies, language being the most important
cognitive development is an outcome of interaction between a child, its carers and the environment.
He coined the term Zone of Proximal Development to refer to the zone where teachers and students work as children move towards independence. This zone changes as teachers and students move past their present level of development towards new areas of knowledge.
What are 'specific patterns of action?'
These are the actions infants use to learn about the world through their senses. They look around constantly, look at the faces of caregivers and respond to smiling faces. Their eyes focus on bright colours and they respond to sounds by looking toward the sound.During this time of sensory learning, infants also show interest in light and movement, such as a mobile above the crib.Infants also begin to recognise their own name (when spoken by another person) in this stage.
Their initial communication is through crying which is a general cry to bring attention to their needs.Later the cry changes and becomes different and more specific to identify what the baby needs or wants.The cry develops into gestures, and the beginning stages of language such as babbling, then monosyllables such as "ba" and "da" andlater to single words put together to make a meaningful sentence.
You can observe that infants also communicate through their motor actions. As they grow, they kick and use their arms to reach for people and things that are interesting to them. They respond to voices and seek to be picked up by reaching out.Infants continue to interact with their surroundings and make meaning out of their world, they also learn about themselves, their own bodies.Their hands and toes become body objects of interest. They suck on their hands and toes and may seem to be fascinated with their own hands.During this stage of sensory learning, infants reach for, hit at, and grasp objects that are within their reach, such as dangling jewellery and long hair.
Internalisation
One of the key concepts that distinguished Vygotskys theory of cognitive development from that of Piaget is the notion of internalisation.
The idea is that individuals internalise the ideas and processes they observe and participate in during social interactions as new ways of thinking.Their thinking is gradually transformed through interaction. Here are two examples:
1. In the classroom when ateacheris discussing the causes of the First World War, students put forward theories andthe teacher extends their thinking about the topic with questions and evidence for her knowledge of history.She responds to the students ideas, corrects misconceptions and ask questions to prompt them to think in new ways about history.Students draw on an respond to one anothers ideas.As a result of the discussion, student internalise these new ways of thinking and may apply them to other topics.
2. Students learning about the bush environment in an outdoor education activity can respond to questions and collaborate with others to deepen their understandings. Where there are misconceptions, the 'more knowing other' for example, theEnvironmental Education Officercan incorporate lines of questioning to support learning.
Social Interaction
Vygotsky argued very strongly that it is in interaction with others that we learn how to think.
Through discussion as just described above in the two examples, the co-construction of ideas and understandings were made by both the teacher and the student together as they interacted.Thus for Vygotsky, the individual is active in development but so are others and their development arises from social interactions.
Zone of Proximal Development
According to Vygotsky social interaction with others is the primary force driving cognitive development.His theory of cognitive development has been labelled sociocultural because of his focus on how social relationships, social interaction, historical context and culture, interact to promote cognitive development (Bergin & Bergin, 2015, p.123).In a nutshell, the ZPD is the level of competence between what a learner can do alone and what he/she can do with assistance of a competent other. It emphasises the social dimension of cognition.
From a sociocultural perspective, a teachers primary role is to scaffold children in their zone of proximal development. Bruners notion of scaffoldingis a metaphor of a scaffold that supports building during construction but is later removed. By breaking a task into smaller parts to direct the learners attention and giving specific strategies to solve the problem and provide lessons on how to learn. There is also a gradual ongoing exchange of knowledge between the teacher and the learner.
Think about a board game such as Chess where one person is perhaps unsure of some of the more intricate moves in the game. Chess involves two players and during the game there will be an exchange of the roles of teacher and learner.There will also be visible cognitive growth, for example, each player has to understand and remember the rules, has to think about strategies for winning as the game is being played and consequences for moving particular chess pieces.To start with one person will know how to play the game and the other will be learning but as the learner becomes more confident, both players gradually co-construct the rules. This is an example of social interaction resulting in active learning, assisted learning, reciprocal teaching, assisted discovery and collaborative cognition. Educational terms which you may have heard of during classes or on placement.
Reciprocal teaching is when peers assisteach other but learning takes place under the guidance of an expert who helps the group with understanding the content-matter and group thinking processes. Can be used in whole group instruction, small group instruction or one-to-one tutorials.
Reciprocal teaching involves four strategies predicting, questioning, summarising and clarifying. Teachers explicitly model each of the four strategies in activities to support student learning.Mental Tools
Language as a mental tool
Vygotsky argued that each culture has a set of artefacts physical and mental tools through which culture is expressed and passed from adults and peers to children during social interaction and include language Examples of such tools are systems for counting; mnemonic techniques; algebraic symbol systems; works of art; writing; schemes, diagrams; maps; and mechanical drawings. If he had lived to the 21st century he would have included a wide range of digital technologies in his list of mental tools.
One of the responsibilities of adults, including parents and teachers, is to give children the mental tools or cognitive strategies they will need to function effectively and independently within their own cultural and social environment.
For Vygotsky, language is the most important mental tool. Initially it has a social function but as a childs language skills increase, language begins to serve as an intellectual function and tool for problem solving and self-regulation and speech becomes internalised (in the head) or private speech.
Vygotsky believed that private language helped children to think. Think about when you use internal speech, for example to solve a problem, or to rehearse an answer.John Dewey's Theories on Education and Learning
John Dewey is one of the most influential thinkers in the history of modern educational theory. His ideas and approaches to schooling were revolutionary during the time he lived and remain fundamentally important to modern schooling today.
The starting place in Dewey's philosophy and educational theory is the world of everyday life. Unlike many philosophers, Dewey did not search beyond the realm of ordinary experience to find some more fundamental and enduring reality. For Dewey, the everyday world of common experience was all the reality that people had access to or needed. Dewey was greatly impressed with the success of the physical sciences in solving practical problems and in explaining, predicting, and controlling the environment.
He considered the scientific mode of inquiry and the scientific systematisation of human experience the highest attainment in the evolution of the mind of humans, and this way of thinking and approaching the world became a major feature of his philosophy.In fact, he defined the educational process as a "continual reorganisation, reconstruction and transformation of experience" (1916, p. 50), for he believed that it was only through experience that humans learnt about the world and only by the use of experiences could people maintain and better themselves in the world.
Dewey recognised that the major instrument of human learning is language, which is itself a social product and is learned through social experiences.He saw that in providing a pool of common meanings for communication, the language of each society becomes the repository of the society's ideals, values, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge.
To transmit the contents of the language to the young and to initiate the young in the ways of civilized life was, for Dewey, the primary function of the school as an institution of society. But, he argued, a way of life cannot be transmitted by words alone.
Essential to acquiring the spirit of a way of life is immersion in ways of living.
Progressive Education
Dewey blended ideas of philosophy with psychology and educational theory to develop the progressive education movement, a very radical idea in the late 19th Century! (Carol Garhart Mooney, 2000, p.4).
Progressive education is essentially a view of education that emphasises the need to learn by doing. In Europe, Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget were spreading the same message. We have already explored Piaget's theoretical understandings and will explore Montessori and others in Week 4.
Dewey believed that people learn through a 'hands on' approach. This places Dewey in the educational philosophy of pragmatism. Pragmatists believe that reality must be experienced. From Dewey's educational point of view, this means that students must interact with their environment in order to adapt and learn. Dewey felt that the same idea was true for teachers and that teachers and students must learn together. His view of the classroom was deeply rooted in democratic ideals, which promoted equal voice among all participants in the learning experience.
Dewey's Pedagogical Creed
Dewey believed in order to provide educational experiences for children, teachers must:
Have a strong base of general knowledge as well as knowledge of specific children;Be willing to make sense of the world for children on the basis of their greater knowledge and experience;Invest in observation, planning, organisation, and documentation.
His famous text My Pedagogic Creed is the springboard for some of his most provocative ideas such as the need for teachers to have confidence in their skills and abilities, to trust their knowledge and experience and using both, provide appropriate activities to nurture inquiry and dispositions for learning in the children they work with (Carol Garhart Mooney, 2000, p.4-5).
Dewey believed in an interdisciplinary curriculum, or a curriculum that focuses on connecting multiple subjects, where students are allowed to freely move in and out of classrooms as they pursue their interests and construct their own paths for acquiring and applying knowledge.Is this possible in the current formation of schooling contexts?
The role of the teacher in this setting would be to serve more as a facilitator than an instructor. In Dewey's view, the teacher should observe the interest of the students, observe the directions they naturally take, and then serve as someone who helps develop problem-solving skills.
Child Centred
As a progressive educator, he shared with Vygotsky, Montessori and Piaget, the central ideas of the movement:
education must be both active and interactive;education must involve the social world of the child and then community.
Dewey's pragmatic and democratic approach to schooling may not stand out as radical today, but in the early and mid-1900s his view of education was in contradiction to much of the then-present system of schooling. Dewey's approach was truly child-centred.A child-centred approach to education places the emphasis of learning on the needs and interests of the child. In Dewey's view, children should be allowed to explore their environments.
Summary of Dewey and Vygotskys Theories
The teacher serves as a mentor, or interlocutor.
Interest is created by the interaction the person and the situation.
Inquiry as based in progressive problem solving.
A child learns language through social interactions and then thinks in terms of that language.
Human condition is based in social interactions.
People learn more in a social situation.
Learners actively construct meaning by building on background knowledge, experiences and reflecting on those experiences.
Learners are given the freedom to think, to question, to reflect, and to interact with ideas, objects, and othersin other words, to construct meaning.
Learners are self-regulated.
Understanding requires the learner to actively engage in meaning-making.
It is the the difference between learning by doing and begin told something, for example, being told how to ride a bike versus riding the bike yourself to learn how to ride; or by providing a template to construct a document without allowing the student to think about a range of ways to develop a response to a task themselves.
Week 4 Student-centred Schooling Models
Teacher Impact on Student Learning
You may have heard a lot of talk in the media and between teachers and other stake holders about ensuring that teachers have an impact on the learning of their students. Education has always been a political environment where everything we do has to be justified. John Hattie, who is currently the Chair ofAITSL (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership)is well known for researching and exploring the effects and influences of different teaching approaches on learning and achievement. He developed a way of ranking various influences in different meta-analyses related to learning and achievement according to their effect sizes. In his ground-breaking studyVisible Learninghe ranked 138influences thatare related to learning outcomes from very positive effects to very negative effects.
Hattie found that the average effect size of all the interventions he studied was 0.40. Therefore he decided to judge the success of influences relative to this hinge point, in order to find an answer to the question What works best in education?
According to Hattie's analysis anything above 0.40 is deemed to have a positive effect on students. Have a look through these rankings with a particular focus on the following topics we have or will cover in this course:
Piagetian programs, conceptual change programs, cognitive tasks analysis, classroom discussion, reciprocal teaching, feedback, creativity programs, self-questioning, concept mapping, prior achievement, direct instruction, peer tutoring. cooperative learning
Three Different Approaches to Education
Three progressive approaches to education that still appear to have an influence on alternative forms of educational approaches:
Montessori
Reggio Emelia
Steiner or Waldorf approach
Their vision is on improving human society by seeing children as 'whole' people who can realise their full potential as intelligent, creative people. in these views children areactive agentsin their own learning and development which is impacted from self-righting forces within themselves, opening the way toward growth and learning. Partnering with parents is highly valued in all three approaches, and children are evaluated by means other than traditional tests and grades. The child's interest, modes of learning and needs drive the curriculum and how teachers interact and plan for teaching and learning sequences.
Maria Montessori was an Italian doctor who devoted herself to educating the children of Rome's ghettos.She became famous for her visionary methods and insight into how children learn. Her teachings spawned an educational movement which is enormously popular throughout the world.Montessori influenced many early educational theorists such as Piaget and Dewey focus on children constructing their own understandings of the world around them.
The use of natural observation in a prepared environment by an objective teacher led Montessori to consider her method scientific. After Montessori completed her direct study of children, she specified every particular detail of how the school should be operated to ensure accurate replication. The teachers role in a Montessori school is to observe in order to connect the child with the suitable materials (Goffin, 2001).
Montessori subscribed toconstructivism, a theory of education that says students do better if we let them piece together how the world works by moving through it themselves than if we deliver knowledge top-down.The centrepiece of the Montessori approach is allowing children to learn on their own while beingguided by the teacher.Montessori teachersdo not correct workand hand it back with lots of red marks.A child's work is not graded. The teacher assesses what the child has learned and thenguides him/her into new areas of discovery.
Montessori Teaching
Self-directed activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play
Teachers plan individual projects to enable each child to learn what he/she needs in order to improve.
The physical environment is arranged according to subject area, and children are free to move around the room. There is no limit to how long a child can work on any one project or activity.
Children are grouped in mixed ages and abilities in three to six year spans: zero to three and three to six. Montessori teachers believe this encourages constant interaction, problem solving, child-to-child teaching, and socialisation.
Montessori classrooms are designed in a multi-age mix from toddlers through adolescents which allows for both individual and social development.
The classrooms are beautiful by design. They are set up in an open style, with work areas throughout the room and materials available on accessible shelving. Since Montessori believed beauty helped with concentration, the setting is aesthetically pleasing.In the setting, each child is provided a place to keep her own belongings.
Montessori advocated that children learn best by doing, so activities are self-directed and collaborative in nature. (link to Vygotsky). In order to help children focus, the teacher silently demonstrates the use of learning materials to them. Children may then choose to practice on any material they have had a lesson about.Once children are given the lesson with the material, they may work on it independently, often on a mat that designates their space.
Montessori believed that the environment should be prepared by matching the child to the corresponding didactic (intending to teach) material.
The environment should be comfortable for children (e.g., child-sized chairs that are lightweight). The environment should be homelike, so child can learn practical life issues.For example, there should be a place for children to practice proper self-help skills, such as hand washing.
Reggio Emilia
The Reggio Emilia model of education
Reggio Emilia is a city in Northern Italy and Loris Malaguzzi was the founder of Reggio Emilias educational philosophy after World War two. Malaguzzi participated in the building of Reggio Emilias network of municipal preschools (3-6) and infant-toddler centres (0-3). The Reggio Emilia program fosters ideas of observation, documentation and collaborative interpretation of childrens discussions and actions
Hailed as an exemplary model of early childhood education (Newsweek, 1991), the Reggio Emilia approach to education is committed to the creation of conditions for learning that will enhance and facilitate children's construction of "his or her own powers of thinking through the synthesis of all the expressive, communicative and cognitive languages" (Edwards and Forman, 1993).
Key features of the Reggio Emilia approach
Emergent Curriculum:An emergent curriculum is one that builds upon the interests of children.Topics for study are captured from the talk of children, through community or family events, as well as the known interests of children (puddles, shadow, dinosaurs, etc.).Team planning is an essential component of the emergent curriculum.
Project Work:Projects, also emergent, are in-depth studies of concepts, ideas, and interests, which arise within the group. Considered as an adventure, projects may last one week or could continue throughout the school year. Throughout a project, teachers help children make decisions about the direction of study, the ways in which the group will research the topic, the representational medium that will demonstrate and showcase the topic and the selection of materials needed to represent the work.
Representational Development:Consistent with Howard Gardner's notion of schooling for multiple intelligences, the Reggio Emilia approach calls for the integration of the graphic arts as tools for cognitive, linguistic, and social development.Presentation of concepts and hypotheses in multiple forms of representation -- print, art, construction, drama, music, puppetry, and shadow play -- are viewed as essential to children's understanding of experience.
Collaboration:Collaborative group work, both large and small, is considered valuable and necessary to advance cognitive development. Children are encouraged to dialogue, critique, compare, negotiate, hypothesize, and problem solve through group work.
Teachers as Researchers:The teacher's role within the Reggio Emilia approach is complex. Working as co-teachers, the role of the teacher is first and foremost to be that of a learner alongside the children. The teacher is a teacher-researcher, a resource and guide as she/he lends expertise to children (Edwards, 1993)
Rudolph Steiner 1861-1925
Steiner grew up in rural Austria and was born into a religious family. He commenced school but was home schooled after an incidence with a teacher.
Steiner mentioned in his biography My father was concerned that I should learn early to read and write. When I reached the required age, I was sent to the village school. The schoolmaster was an old man to whom the work of teaching school was a burdensome business. Equally burdensome to me was the business of being taught by him.
He was an Austrian philosopher and spiritual scientistwho believed that we must awaken to our own inner nature and the spiritual realities of outer nature and the cosmos. He believed that the awareness of this relationship brings greater reverence for life.
Overview of Steiner Education
Steiner schools have a unique and distinctive approach to educating children, aiming to enable each stage of growth to be fully and vividly enjoyed and experienced. They provide a balanced approach to the modern school curriculum.
The academic, artistic and social aspects, or head, heart & hands, are treated as complementary facets of a single program of learning, allowing each to throw light on the others.
This is implemented by using art as a practice, and language to develop the feelings, by nourishing the children with the rich heritage of wise folk tales, histories, fairy stories, poems, music and games that are part of our world civilisation.
This creates the cultural atmosphere in which the children are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, nature study, geography, science, languages, music and other subjects.
How is it different from mainstream education?
Steiner designed a curriculum that is responsive to the developmental phases of childhood and the nurturing of the childs imagination in a school environment.
Steiner thought that schools should cater to the needs of the child rather than the demands of the government or economic forces, so he developed schools that encourage creativity and free-thinking.
His teaching seeks to recognise the individuality of the child and through a balanced education, allows them to go into the world with confidence.
Steiner schooling strives to support the development of well rounded human beings who are able to feel deeply to think broadly and clearly, and then to act rightly out of conscious and free choice.
He quotes: The need for imagination, a sense of truth and a feeling of responsibility these are the three forces which are the very nerve of education
What does Steiner education look like?
Early Years
The teacher endeavours to create an environment that gives children time to play and encourages them to exercise their imagination and learn to conjure up ideas from within themselves.
Simple homely tasks and artistic activities to both do and see are balanced with story telling, singing games and generous play times. A rich supply of natural materials provides scope for imagination in play, which refined toys often deny.
Activities offered for the four to six year olds are based on the house and garden. These include sweeping, gardening, cooking, building cubbies, looking after animals, singing, listening to stories, helping to prepare the meal table, cutting fruit, painting, clay modelling and drawing.
Children learn to enjoy building, using the natural materials in the room to make their own constructions and patterns. Practical experience helps the child develop confidence and capabilities.
Teaching Methods Classes 1- 6 (note language used!)
A central part of this teachers task is to intimately understand the needs of each child, and to nurture the development of a real spirit of sharing and community within the class.
In a loving, structured environment, with the encouragement of their classmates and teachers, the children develop and appreciate their strengths and work at their own difficulties to build reslience.
The social and moral learning that takes place in childhood is just as important as the academic learning.
Reading and writing are taught from Class 1. The child first learns to write using the shape of the letters to suggest meaning, ie. M for mountain, V for valley, W for waves.
In addition, they may walk the shape on the floor in the classroom and draw pictures that include the shape. This allows a deeper connection with, and an understanding of the letters, rather than just memorising the abstract shapes.
The children write words and read their own writing before working with printed literature.
An understanding of numbers is built on the basis of concrete, real-life tasks - such as dividing a cake to share, estimating, measuring and through counting aloud, chanting of tables, musical rhythms and skipping games.
These learning experiences are real and meaningful. The children may also learn games such as chess, which enhance thinking and mathematical ability.
Comparison Matrix
Inquiry-based Learning
You may have noticed many similarities or approaches used in mainstream classes that are drawn from some or all of the alternative models of education. All these approaches have the child at the centre of their learning, linking to their prior knowledge, interests and needs. Many schools in mainstream education use a form of this call Inquiry-based learning.
So what is it?
Inquiry based learning is an umbrella term that incorporates many current learning approaches (including project based learning, design thinking) and may take various forms, depending on the topic, resources, ages and abilities of students and other variables.
Common characteristics include:
Reflection, metacognition and depth of thought are valued and planned for in the teaching and learning space.
Learning takes place in a social context students learn from each other, together with others, and from those outside of the classroom context.
Students are actively involved in constructing understandings through hands-on experiences, research, processing and communicating their understandings in various ways.
Prior knowledge is recognised and built on to extend learning - connect the dots!
Genuine curiosity, wonderment and questioning (by teachers AND students) is central to the teaching and learning process.
Student voice is evident elements of the curriculum / learning are negotiated and student questions are taken seriously and addressed.
What is reflective teaching?
21st Century, educators need to be inquirers into professional practice who question their routine practices and assumptions and who are capable of investigating the effects of their teaching on student learning (Reid, 2004).
There are at least two reasons for this assertion. Firstly, many of the issues facing educators today are context-bound: they are not amenable to universal solutions. That is, educators face the considerable challenge of designing curricula for local contexts that are flexible enough to address the rapid growth of knowledge, and that recognise the increasing religious, cultural and ethnic diversity in their student populations. Support within the systemis crucial in assisting educators to meet these challenges. Educators must themselves have the capacity to be always deepening their understandings of teaching and learning through reflection and inquiry. Secondly, if the task of educators is to develop in children and young people the learning dispositions and capacities to think critically, flexibly and creatively, then educators too must possess and model these capacities. (Reid, 2004)
DonaldSchn, in his influential bookThe Reflective Practitioner, developed the term reflective practice (Schn,1983).Schnintroduced the concepts of reflection-in-action (thinking on your feet) and reflection-on-action (thinking after the event).Schnfocused his attention on five professional fields engineering, architecture, psychotherapy, town planning and education and talked of the inextricable link between the concept of professionalism and the process of reflective practice.
According to Schn, "a reflective teacher is one who finds joy in learning and in investigating the teaching/learning process one who views learning as construction and teaching as a facilitating process to enhance and enrich development".
Reflective Questions:
What am I/are we doing in relation to this practice /issue /question?
Why am I/are we doing this? (e.g. what theories are expressed in my/our practices, and whose interests do these represent?)
What are the effects of these practices? Who is most advantaged /least advantaged?
What alternatives are there to my/our current practice? Are these likely to result in more just outcomes?
How will I/we monitor these changes in order to assess outcomes?
Why do we ask ourselves these questions? What does this achieve?
Students sometimes enter teacher education courses with the aim of discovering the best way to teach. Researchers in educational psychology have looked at what makes an effective teacher and found that effective teachers drew on a variety of teaching and learning strategies.
Reflection has been described as important to quality teaching practice for some time. Dewey described reflection as a type of problem solving and argued that reflection involves teachers in the important work of connecting their beliefs and knowledge to current actions and situations potentially leading to the reframing of those ideas and beliefs and more effective actions.
So through asking reflective questions, you become a reflective practitioner as you reflect on your teaching practice; develop your personal philosophy of learning and teaching; use research to inform your practice and even conduct research of your own.
The next chapter focuses on developing your teaching philosophy.
Developing a teaching philosophy
Build Understanding: Constructing an Education Philosophy
A education philosophy is a statement that guides how you will create your teaching and learning environment. The statement will reflect your core values and beliefs related to teaching and learning. You will consider your thoughts regarding how children develop, the purpose of education and how people learn, and the role of teacher. Some theoretical perspectives and teaching strategies/practices will resonate with you as you consider how you might use these in a classroom As you progress through your teaching program, you will be able to adjust and change your philosophy as you take up new ideas, have professional conversations with more experienced people in the field and work with children and young people in various educational contexts.
Week 5 Sociocultural Factors in the Learning Process
Bioecological Systems TheoryUrieBrofenbrenner (1917-2005)
Bronfenbrenner's theory emphasises the importance of the dynamic environmental contexts in which children and young people develop.
Ecological theory is one of the foundation stones of the Child Indicators Movement, which seeks to operationalise the whole child approach measuring child development and child wellbeing across multiple dimensions from within a human rights framework.
Four elements influencing development:
Person e.g. characteristics, dispositions or abilities
Process e.g. activities, relationships and practices
Context e.g. environment (human and non-human)
Time e.g. stability/in stability of individual experience
This theory has three significant assumptions:
person is an active player, exerting influence on his/her environment,
environment is compelling person to adapt to its conditions and restrictions, and
environment is understood to consist of different size entities that are placed one inside another, of their reciprocal relationships and of micro-, meso-, exo- and macrosystems. (Bronfenbrenner 1979)
There are five systems which make up Bronfenbrenner's system
Microsystem
Mesosystem
ExosystemMacrosystem
Chronosystem
The theory is often represented in this interrelated diagram which indicates that it is not a staged approach, rather it explains how everything in a child and the child's environment affects how a child grows and develops.
The Starting Point The Child
Starting Point- Individual Characteristics
With Bronfenbrenner's theory the child is placed at the centre of the model. It ensures that the child is considered in his/her own right and not just part of a larger system. Then using this model the child's personal dispositions are taken into account including motivation, interest and intelligence.
Consider Hatties meta analysis of the most significant factors that impact on students academic achievement (Hattie, 2009):
Birthweight d = 0.54 (keeping in mind that the average effect size is 0.40)
Concentration d = 0.48
Motivation d = 0.48
INCLUDEPICTURE "https://moodle.federation.edu.au/pluginfile.php/7393331/mod_book/chapter/1587570/student.png" * MERGEFORMATINET Consider your focus child's individual characteristics.
You have already started to keep notes about your focus child and you will have answered the reflection questions each week.As you progress through this week's online study guide you will be prompted to apply Bronfennbrenner's theory to the focus child. Record each of your responses to keep a complete picture of the child as this information will be useful in the Assessment 2 case study.
The Microsystem
Next layer:The people/environment closest to the child (Microsystem)
Development through interaction:
Child- immediate family (parents & siblings)
Child- friend/s
Child- teacher
Things to consider:
The immediate environment the child lives in.
This would include any immediate relationships or organizations they interact with, such as their immediate family or caregivers and their school or day-care.
How these groups or organizations interact with the child will have an affect on how the child grows; the more encouraging and nurturing these relationships and places are, the better the child will be able to grow.
Furthermore, how a child acts or reacts to these people in the microsystem will affect how they treat him/her in return.
Each child's special genetic and biologically influenced personality traits, known as temperament, end up affecting how others treat them.
The Mesosystem
Next layer: connections between settings (Mesosystem)
This layer considers how the different parts of a child's microsystem work together for the sake of the child. Itprovides the connection between the structures of the childs microsystem. These connections/relationships can significantly impact on developmental outcomes, for example, the relationship between a childs teacher and his/her parents. Some things to consider:
Interactions between the people in the childs immediate surrounding may be influenced by other factors such as how the family is getting on/stability of relationships
The family members interacts with each other or with teachers. Again, all relationships are reciprocal teachers influence the parents and the parents affect teachers, and interactions affect the child.
According to Hatties meta analysis of the most significant factors that impact on students academic achievement (Hattie, 2009):
Socioeconomic status (parental income, parental education, parental occupation:d = 0.57 (keeping in mind that the average effect size is 0.40)
Family structure (singe/two-parent families): d= 0.17 (A small/insignificant effect size)
Home environment intellectual stimulation in the home & socio-psychological environment (responsively, restriction, play materials, (maternal) involvement, variety: d= 0.57
The ExosystemNext layer: the wider social setting (Exosystem)
This layer defines the larger social system in which the child does not function directly. The child may not be directly involved at this level, but he does feel the positive or negative force involved with the interaction with his/ her own system. For example: a parent's job experiences (job stress, hours, travel etc) will affect family life which in turn, will affect children.
The social settings that the child is not directly involved in but nevertheless indirectly influence their learning and development.
These social settings include parental employment and how this impacts on their parenting, the familys religious affiliation, community resources for health and recreation, or teachers relationships with school principals.
ICSEA Index
When getting to know your students the outer layers of Bronfenbrenner's model are harder to distinguish and determine in terms of their impact.Theindex of community socio-educational advantage (ICSEA)was created by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) specifically to enable meaningful comparisons of National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test achievement by students in schools across Australia.
Key factors in students family backgrounds (parents occupation, school education and non-school education) have an influence on students educational outcomes at school. In addition to these student-level factors, research has shown that school-level factors (a schools geographical location and the proportion of Indigenous students a school caters for) need to be considered when summarising educational advantage or disadvantage at the school level. ICSEA provides a scale that numerically represents the relative magnitude of this influence, and is constructed taking into account both student- and school-level factors.
The Macrosystem
Next layer: the even wider social setting (Macrosystem)
This layer may be considered the outermost layer in the childs environment it is comprised of cultural values, customs, and laws Influences in this layer have a cascading influence throughout all other layers, for example, living under a communist government will not afford the same opportunities as a democratic society, this would impact on all layers within the childs system. Themacrosystemis the larger society in which the child lives its subcultures or dominant values, laws conventions, and traditions. It is the cultural environment in which the child resides.The culture's belief systems and ideology influence the child directly, even though the child does not have much freedom in determining his or her cultural values. Other examples of macrosystems include socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and poverty.
For example, a child cannot determine the political norms of his or her culture, which are a part of themacrosystem. If it is a cultural belief that mothers should have the sole responsibility of staying at home and raising the children (macrosystem), the mother would be less likely to pursue work outside of the home (parent's workplace is part of the exosystem). This in turn would affect the amount of time that the child's mother has to interact with the child's school and neighbourhood (mesosystem). The mother's ability to carry out the responsibility of taking care of her child within the family (microsystem) would also be affected.
The Chronosystem
Time shapes our development (Chronosystem)
This layer encompasses the dimension of time as it relates to a childs environments. Elements within this system can be either external or internal
Different events affect people over time.These include events which are part of the life cycle (birth/death) and transitions.Also,non-normative events such as personal trauma and events such as war & conflict.
The Australian Context
The family context
What challenges face children whose parents are divorced?
In what ways does parenting style (authoritative, authoritarian and permissive), influence student behaviour?
During divorce itself, conflict may increase as property and custody rights are being decided. After a divorce, the custodial parent may have to move to a less expensive home, find new sources of income, go to work for the first time, or work longer hours.For the child, this can mean leaving behind important friendships in the old neighbourhood or school just when support is needed the most. Having only one parent who has less time that ever to be with the child, or adjusting to new family structures when parents remarry.
Adolescents withauthoritativeparents (demanding but responsive, warm and supportive, rational and democratic) are less likely to be influenced by peer pressure to use drugs or alcohol, especially when their friends have authoritative parents. They are more likely to do well in school, be happy, and relate well to others. When adolescents haveauthoritarian parents (very controlling, expect conformity to rules, undemocratic), they are more likely to feel guilty and depressed. Adolescents with parents who arepermissive(warm, nurturing but with few rules or consequences) are more likely to have difficulty interacting with peers and self-regulating their behaviour.Source Woolfolk & Margetts, (2013, p.62)
Economic and social class differences
What is socioeconomic status (SES)?
What is the relationship between SES and school achievement?
Socioeconomic status SES is a term used by sociologists for variations in wealth, power, and prestige.Socioeconomic status is determined by several factors not just income- and often overpowers other cultural differences. No single variable is an effective measure of SES, but most researchers identify three general levels of SES : upper, middle, and lower classes. Socioeconomic status and academic achievement are closely related. High-SES students of all ethnic groups show higher average levels of achievement on test scores and stay in school longer than low-SES students. Poverty during a childs preschool years appears to have the greatest negative impact. And the longer the child is in poverty, the stronger the impact on achievement.Source Woolfolk & Margetts, (2013, p.62-63).
Where are you YOU in a student's bioecological system?
This theory has dire implications for the practice of teaching. Knowing about the breakdown occurring within childrens homes, is it possible for our educational system to make up for these deficiencies? It seems now that it is necessary for schools and teachers to provide stable, long-term relationships. Yet, Bronfenbrenner believes that the primary relationship needs to be with someone who can provide a sense of caring that is meant to last a lifetime.
This relationship must be fostered by a person or people within the immediate sphere of the childs influence. Schools and teachers fulfill an important secondary role, but cannot provide the complexity of interaction that can be provided by primary adults. For the educational community to attempt a primary role is to help our society continue its denial of the real issue. The problems students and families face are caused by the conflict between the workplace and family life not between families and schools. Schools and teachers should work to support the primary relationship and to create an environment that welcomes and nurtures families.
