1. Chapter 4: Middle Childhood Module 4.2 Intellectual
Development in Middle Childhood
2. Concrete Operational Stage - Piaget
7 - 12 years
Characterized by active and appropriate use of logic
Logical operations applied to concrete problems
Conservation problems; reversibility; time and speed,
decentering
3. Concrete Operational Stage - Piaget
Shift from preoperational thought to concrete operational
thought:
Children shift back and forth between preoperational and
concrete operational thinking
They attain the concept of reversibility, which is the notion
that processes transforming a stimulus can be reversed, returning
it to its original form.
Because they are less egocentric, they can take multiple
aspects of a situation into account, an ability known as
decentering .
Once concrete operational thinking is fully engaged, children
show several cognitive advances
4. Concrete Operations Videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alZXoALQJr4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMgb42EBpMc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJyuy4B2aKU
5. Memory - Information Processing Model
Memory in the information-processing model is the ability to
encode, store, and retrieve information.
Memory capacity may shed light on another issue in cognitive
development. Some developmental psychologists suggest that the
difficulty children experience in solving conservation problems
during the preschool period may stem from memory limitations.
In school age years:
Increasing ability to handle information
Memory improvement
Short term memory capacity improvement
6. Thinking about Memory: Metamemory
Understanding about processes that underlie memory
Improves during school age years
Helps children use control strategies (conscious, intentional
tactics to improve functioning)
7. Memory Strategies for School Age Children
School-age children can be taught to use particular
strategies
Keyword strategies - one word is paired with another that
sounds like it
See Center for Development and Learning (10 Strategies to
Enhance Memory) for additional strategies
Cognitive advances occur through exposure to information within
zone of proximal development ( ZPD) - The ZPD is the level at which
a child can almost, but not quite, understand or perform a
task
Influential in development of classroom practices
Cooperative learning
Reciprocal teaching
9. Cooperative Learning and Reciprocal Teaching
Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which
small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use
a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of
a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for
learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus
creating an atmosphere of achievement.
Documented results include improved academic achievement,
improved behavior and attendance, increased self-confidence and
motivation, and increased liking of school and classmates.
Cooperative learning is also relatively easy to implement and is
inexpensive.
Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity that
takes place in the form of a dialogue between teachers and students
regarding segments of text. The dialogue is structured by the use
of four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying,
and predicting. The teacher and students take turns assuming the
role of teacher in leading this dialogue.
10. Language in Middle Childhood
Vocabulary continues to increase
Mastery of grammar improves
Understanding of syntax grows
Certain phonemes remain troublesome
Decoding difficulties when dependent on intonation
More competence in pragmatics
Increase in meta-linguistic awareness
11. Metalinguistic Awareness
One of most significant developments in middle childhood is
childrens increasing understanding of their own use of
language
By age 5 or 6,
Understand language is governed by set of rules
By age 7 or 8,
Realize that miscommunication may be due to factors
attributable not only to themselves, but to person communicating
with them
12. How does language promote self-control?
Helps school-age children control and regulate behavior
Self-talk used to help regulate behavior
Effectiveness of self-control grows as linguistic capabilities
increased
13. Bilingualism
English is second language for 32 million Americans
14. Immigrants in the United States
Are monolingual speakers of their native language
Develop bilingualism as they acquire English
Establish English-speaking households
Raise their children as English-speaking monolinguals
(Pease-Alveraz, 1993)
15. Long-term Bilingualism
According to survey data, even Spanish, a language thought to
be particularly enduring in the United States, seldom lasts beyond
the second or third generation (Pease-Alveraz, 1993)
16. Cognitive Advantages of Bilingualism
Greater cognitive flexibility
Higher self-esteem
Greater meta-linguistic awareness
Potential improved IQ scores
17. Schooling Around the World
In the United States, as in most developed countries, a primary
school education is both a universal right and a legal requirement.
Virtually all children are provided with a free education through
the twelfth grade.
More than 160 million of the worlds children do not have access
to even a primary school education. An additional 100 million
children do not progress beyond a level comparable to our
elementary-school education, and overall close to a billion
individuals (two-thirds of them women) are illiterate throughout
their lives.
18. Reading
No other task that is more fundamental to schooling than
learning to read
Reading involves significant number of skills
Low-level cognitive skills (the identification of single
letters and associating letters with sounds) to higher level skills
(matching written words with meanings located in long-term memory
and using context and background knowledge to determine the meaning
of a sentence).
19. How Should We Teach Reading?
Disagreement about nature of mechanisms by which information is
processed during reading:
Code-based approaches emphasize the components of reading, such
as the sounds of letters and their combinationsphonicsand how
letters and sounds are combined to make words. They suggest that
reading consists of processing the individual components of words,
combining them into words, and then using the words to derive the
meaning of written sentences and passages.
Whole-language approaches - reading is viewed as a natural
process, similar to the acquisition of oral language. According to
this view, children should learn to read through exposure to
complete writingsentences, stories, poems, lists, charts, and other
examples of actual uses of writing. Instead of being taught to
sound out words, children are encouraged to make guesses about the
meaning of words based on the context in which they appear. Through
such a trial-and-error approach, children come to learn whole words
and phrases at a time, gradually becoming proficient readers.
National Reading Panel and National Research Council support
reading instruction using code-based approaches
20. No Child Left Behind Act
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 aimed to ensure that all
children would be able to read by the time they reached the third
grade. The law requires school principals to meet this goal or risk
losing their jobs and their school funding.
Negative Outcomes:
Frequent testing becoming commonplace
Student scores related to federal funding
Reading instruction sometimes replaces recess, social studies
and music
Increase in amount of homework
Some schools reading programs have become so intense that some
children are simply burning out.
21. Homework
Time spent on homework is associated with greater academic
achievement in secondary school
Relationship gets less strong for the lower grades; below grade
5, the relationship disappears
For older children more homework is not necessarily better
Some research indicates that benefits of homework may reach
plateau beyond which additional time spent on homework produces no
further benefits
22. Multicultural Education
23. Multicultural Education
As the U. S. population has become more diverse, elementary
schools have also paid increased attention to issues involving
student diversity and multiculturalism. And with good reason:
Cultural, as well as language, differences affect students
socially and educationally.
The demographic makeup of students in the United States is
undergoing an extraordinary shift.
For instance, the proportion of Hispanics will in all
likelihood more than double in the next 50 years.
Moreover, by the year 2050, non-Hispanic Caucasians will likely
become a minority of the total population of the United
States.
24. Cultural Assimilation or Pluralistic Society?
Cultural assimilation model - in which the goal of education
was to assimilate individual cultural identities into a unique,
unified American culture.
Pluralistic society model - suggests that American society is
made up of diverse, coequal cultural groups that should preserve
their individual cultural features.
Over the past decade or so, educators began to argue that the
presence of students from diverse cultures enriched and broadened
the educational experience of all students. Pupils and teachers
exposed to people from different backgrounds could better
understand the world and gain greater sensitivity to the values and
practices of others.
25. Bicultural Identity
School systems encourage children to maintain their original
cultural identities while they integrate themselves into dominant
culture
More contemporary approaches emphasize a bicultural strategy in
which children are encouraged to maintain simultaneous membership
in more than one culture
26. Intelligence
Intelligence is the capacity to understand the world, think
with rationality, and use resources effectively when faced with
challenges (Wechsler, 1975).
Has this definition changed over the years?
Part of the difficulty in defining intelligence stems from the
manyand sometimes unsatisfactorypaths that have been followed over
the years in the quest to distinguish more intelligent people from
less intelligent ones.
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for ChildrenFourth Edition
(WISC-IV)
Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, 2nd Edition
(KABC-II)
28. Alternative Conceptions of Intelligence
Spearmans g
Cattell: fluid and crystallize intelligence
Gardner: 8 intelligences
Vygotsky: dynamic assessment
Sternberg: triarchic theory of intelligence
29. Group Differences in IQ
Previous experiences of test-takers may have a substantial
effect on their ability to answer questions
Cultural background and experience have the potential to affect
intelligence test scores
Traditional measures of intelligence are subtly biased in favor
of white, upper- and middle-class students and against groups with
different cultural experiences.
30. Racial Differences in IQ - Nature or Nurture?
Mean score of African Americans tends to be about 15 IQ points
lower than the mean score of whitesalthough the measured difference
varies a great deal depending on the particular IQ test
employed
To what degree is an individuals intelligence determined by
heredity, and to what degree by environment? The issue is important
because of its social implications.
If intelligence is primarily determined by heredity and is
therefore largely fixed at birth, attempts to alter cognitive
abilities later in life, such as schooling, will meet with limited
success.
If intelligence is largely environmentally determined,
modifying social and educational conditions is a more promising
strategy for bringing about increases in cognitive
functioning.
31. The Bell Curve Controversy
Herrnstein and Murray contend: Average 15-point IQ difference
between whites and African Americans is due primarily to
heredity
IQ difference accounts for higher rates of poverty, lower
employment, and higher use of welfare among minority groups as
compared with majority groups.
Most experts in the area of IQ were not convinced by The Bell
Curve contention that differences in group IQ scores are largely
determined by genetic factors. Still, we cannot put the issue to
rest, largely because it is impossible to design a definitive
experiment that can determine the cause of differences in IQ scores
between members of different groups. (Thinking about how such an
experiment might be designed shows the futility of the enterprise:
One cannot ethically assign children to different living conditions
to find the effects of environment, nor would one wish to
genetically control or alter intelligence levels in unborn
children.)
32. Mental Retardation - Below Intelligence Norms
Mental Retardation - (Legal definition determined by many
factors, including IQ score)
Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children
Act:
The intent of the lawan intent that has been largely
realizedwas to ensure that children with special needs received a
full education in the least restrictive environment , the setting
most similar to that of children without special needs.
This educational approach to special education, designed to end
the segregation of exceptional students as much as possible, has
come to be called mainstreaming. In mainstreaming , exceptional
children are integrated as much as possible into the traditional
educational system and are provided with a broad range of
educational alternatives.
Goal: Full inclusion
33. Benefits of Mainstreaming
Ensure that all persons, regardless of ability or disability,
have access to full range of educational opportunities, and fair
share of lifes rewards
Research that examined such factors as academic achievement,
self-concept, social adjustment, and personality development
generally failed to discern any advantages for special needs
children placed in special, as opposed to regular, education
classes.
34. Gifted - Above Intelligence Norms
Gifted - Little agreement exists among researchers on a single
definition of this rather broad category of students.
Federal government guideline (P.L. 97-35 Sec 582) - include
children who give evidence of high performance capability in areas
such as intellectual, creative, artistic, leadership capacity, or
specific academic fields, and who require services or activities
not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop
such capabilities .
Research suggests that highly intelligent people tend to be
outgoing, well adjusted, and popular
Some gifted children not well received by teachers and peers
because of unique ways in which preciosity is manifested.
35. Educating Gifted and Talented Children
Acceleration - allows gifted students to move ahead at their
own pace, even if this means skipping to higher grade levels.
Enrichment - through which students are kept at grade level but
are enrolled in special programs and given individual activities to
allow greater depth of study on a given topic.