Kathleen Stassen Berger

Part IV

Middle Childhood: Cognitive Development

Chapter Twelve

Building on TheoryLanguageTeaching and Learning

Building on Theory

• Theories of cognition in school-age children have been used to structure education.

Piaget and School-Age Children

• Concrete operational thought:– Piaget’s term for the

ability to reason logically about direct experiences and perceptions.

The Significance of Logic

• Identity– Certain characteristics of an object remain the

same even if other characteristics change.

• Reversibility– A thing that has been changed can sometimes

be returned to its original state by reversing the process by which it was changed.

• Vygotsky and School-Age Children– Educators should consider thought

processes of the child.

– Improvement over the meaningless acquisition curriculum that dominated education in his day.

• The Role of Instruction– Vygotsky regarded instruction by others as

crucial.• Teachers and peers provide bridge between the

child’s developmental potential and the necessary skill and knowledge.

• In the zone of proximal development, other people are crucial.

• Cultures (tools, customs, people) teach people.

• Information-processing-theory– cognition as the functioning of a computer

• Memory– sensory memory: component of the

information-processing system in which current conscious mental activity occurs.

– long-term memory: component of the information-processing system in which limitless amounts of information can be stored indefinitely.

• Speed and knowledge– Speed of thinking increases

throughout the first two decades of life.

– Knowledge base:• A body of knowledge in a

particular area that makes it easier to master new information in that area.

• Control processes– mechanisms that combine:

• selective attention• metacognition• emotional regulation

Language

• Language advances rapidly before middle childhood.

• By age 6 children have mastered most of the basic vocabulary and grammar of their first language.

• School-age children can learn up to 20 new words a day.

• Language acquisition is helped by increases in: – logic– flexibility – memory– speed of thinking

• Vocabulary and Pragmatics– vocabulary

• School-age children are more flexible and logical in their knowledge and use of vocabulary, understanding metaphors, prefixes, suffixes, and compound words.

– pragmatics• Advances markedly in middle childhood; the

use of language, including communication with varied audiences in different contexts.

• Second-Language Learning– English-language learner (ELL)

• A child who is learning English as a second language.

– Total immersion• A strategy in which instruction in all school

subjects occurs in the second (majority) language that a child is learning.

• Second-Language Learning– Bilingual education

• Taught in both original language and the second (majority) language.

– English as a second language (ESL)• All children who do not speak English

are placed together and given an intensive course in basic English so that they can be educated in the same classroom as native English speakers.

Teaching and Learning

• School-age children:– great learners– develop strategies– accumulate knowledge– apply logic, and think quickly

• No Child Left Behind Act of 2001– 2001 U.S. law intended to increase

accountability in education

• National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)– Nation’s Report Card– Ongoing measure of children’s achievement in:

• reading• mathematics

• Hidden curriculum– Unofficial, unstated, or implicit rules and

priorities that influence the academic curriculum.

• The outcome:– Most parents, teachers, and political leaders

believe that children are learning what they need.

• Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)– planned five-year cycle of international trend

studies in the reading ability of fourth grades– inaugurated in 2001

Iranian girls acting out a poem they have memorized from their third-grade textbook

• Education Wars and Assumptions– Adults differ in their beliefs about what children

should learn, and how.

• The Reading Wars

• phonics approach– Teaching reading by first teaching the sounds

of each letter and of various letter combinations.

Math Wars• Mathematic instruction in the U.S. has

become problematic.– Economic development depends on science

and technology-math is crucial here.– N. American and W. European students are

weaker in math than other areas, especially E. Asia

– Many children hate math and feel intimidated by it.• 2008 Google search showed 81,600 “math

phobia” hits.

• Other Assumptions in the educational landscape. – Children learn from homework.

– Smaller classrooms size is not necessarily better (Blatchford, 2003, Hanushek, 1999).

– Raising teacher salaries improves professional education.

– Extending school hours.

• Culture and Education– Controversies regarding cognitive

development related to education is political more than developmental.

– There are many hidden roles of culture.– The understanding of the child’s culture by a

teacher of another culture.