Learning about the human development, especially of children, is key for our formation as primary teachers. We must understand for what our pupils are going through, what is normal or not according to biological and psychological aspects, what is the maximum that we can expect from them according to the psychological process where they are or their age and all that this entails.
The usefulness of this work is remarkable as it helps to interiorize the concepts done in class, reflect on them, relate them between them or in my personal experiences, and it will be a source in my hopefully teaching life in a few years.
I had some previous knowledge about some concepts worked in class as I studied psychology for a year in my secondary school, so I will be using the worked done during this year as another reference for this learning portofolio.
Before deepen into children’s development and the importance of its understanding in education, in this case especially for primary education, it is significant to contextualize the development in its general field. Psychology.
According to the Great Illustrated Encyclopedic dictionary, psychology is a science which studies phenomena emphasized in the conscious and the unconscious phenomena in order to have a better view of the human behavior. This science is closed to other sciences such as biology, as with psychology some biological aspects can be explained -for example, connecting psychology and biology we can be aware that, according to our genetics, girls have an early development of the language skills-, physics and social science -behavior is explained through psychology-. A different definition, this time taken from the new dictionary of the Catalan language, states that psychology is about the soul, its genesis, capacities and functions.
There are already some references about psychology in the Ancient Greece. Plato introduces this science in its dialogue Fedro where he considered that a human being is formed by two compounds: soul and body, but he believed the soul had a divine origin. A few years later, Aristotle proved Plato wrong when he considered the soul as a biological element, so he was saying that, unlike his master, the soul is not an independent element of the body.
In the 17th century, Descartes made a distinction between the volunteers and involuntary acts making here reference to the fact that some actions are automatic and reflexive while others are voluntary, coming from our thinking, behavior and way of acting. But it was Freud who made a great revolution in psychology introducing the term psychoanalysis, stating that humans have an unconscious part that has a big impact on us.
Psychology is divided in different branches. According to José Ignacio Alonso García, exists the general psychology, the experimental, the psychobiology, the evolutionary psychology, the social psychology, the psychology of the thinking, psychology of the learning, differential psychology, cultural psychology and psychology of the genre. Up to now, the branches are more related to the subject are the evolutionary and the psychology of the learning as we are studying the behavioral changes during the vital development and the reasons of that, as well as its influences in the learning process, which is what really interest us as future teachers.
This first paragraph includes a definition of the concept, the importance of interacting with people, Vygotsky's premises (ZPD as key element) and the developmental directions
This second paragraph shows the four different developmental approaches. The psychodynamic theory, whose most known representat is Freud and his psychosexual theory. Pavlov, Skinner and Watson's experiments contextualize the behavioral approach. Piaget and his constructivist theory are the main elements of the cognivist approach. And finally, Bronfenbenner and Vygotsky explain the contextual approach.
Finally, in this paragraph I relate development and education, highlighting the contribution of education in the development of any child. Also, differences between school and family activities are mentioned.
Development is understood as the process from which we obtain psychological functions mainly through the physical and socio-cultural context which, as development is increased according to our age and biological processes, it increases make it wider. It involves different dimensions such as the cognitive, corporal and the socio-affective.
Culture and environment have an important role in the development of any child. Culture here is not just what other people do and can be observed by someone, also implies models that children can have in order to imitate some behaviors or on the contrary avoid them, symbolic systems -language, gestures, etc.- and intentional universes. The main idea that can be extracted from this is that development is changed when interacting with people.
Vygotsky has three basic premises about the social development:
Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (inter-psychological) and then inside the child (intra – psychological) – Vygotsky, 1978.
Society is the main basis according to Vygotsky, stating that children (or maybe we should say students in this context) need interactions, participation in cultural organized activities, they must develop their creativity in order to achieve greater results. It requires the participation of someone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, and this person will lead the learner to achieve the hoped abilities.
The Zone of Proximal Development is the distance between what a learner can do with the guide of an adult -and sometimes even a peer- and the ability of the learner to do by himself something which he used to need help with. This distance is overcame with scaffoldings which is a help that requires interaction between the learner and the adult. Scaffoldings are not the same for every child. Individual capacities should be taken into account when developing scaffoldings. To make the scaffolding more effective, the kid must be conscious of this help. Education is the main aspect in this ZPD as pushes development. In a school, scaffoldings are a tool for a teacher to provide students the opportunity to expand their actual skills and knowledge. For that, the teacher must engage students’ interest, simplify tasks in order to be more manageable for them, as well as motivate students so they can achieve the established goals.
When the help comes from a peer, it can improve their relationship and students themselves can be aware of the importance of interaction among equals and the benefits of working with peers.
Here is an example of how teachers deal with the Zone of Proximal Development:
One direct from which development is being due is from the biological processes through the conscious elements of our mind and the behavior which we can self-regulate, so a previous planning about our actions is required. It is far from obvious that the biological compounds are a huge influence on our development. When we talk about biology and psychology as interrelated concepts we are making reference to the interaction between heritance, which is what has been transferred to the individual through the genes, and the common elements that every person acquires just by the mere fact of being born.
Biology can be considered as an easy conception of the development in terms of learning development because we all share the same biological patterns so every child, in general, is capable of the same things in a specific period of their life. For example, a teacher of a classroom of four year old children cannot make them write a review of a book that they have seen as they, biologically, have not developed the enough language skills to do this activity.
The second element is the dependency, also known as the personal autonomy. Children have an average reading competence at a certain age, but if a child reads regularly just because of the pleasure of it, he can improve this skill and have a better reading competence than his peers.
Environment in this content is understood as skills related to the expression as a general concept, the relation with the elements that surround us, the communication and therefore relationships, representation and explanation, which are some skills that increase progressively during the life of a human being and can be improved or can help its acquiesce through education.
Another way to learn is from the direct action with objects which involves a reflexive and experimental phase. Children have to be curious in order to develop more skills and grow, and this can be only acquired if they think about the consequences of an act, by observing their environment and experimenting. Also the role of the emotions is very important in the development as having a control and an emotional balance eases the development of a child regardless of their way of being at home and in the school, which usually tend to be a little bit different.
Psychodynamic approach is based on the natural development. This approach is formed basically by three theories. One of them is Bowlby’s attachment theory which states that humans have mechanisms that let them survive. Those mechanisms are not learned, we are born with them. One clear example of this theory is the secure attachment that takes places when looking for a bonding figure in order to feel safe and knowing that you have someone with whom trust. Erikson also contributes stating that, as we have been already observing, society has an impact on the personality and its development with the psychosocial theory. Learning from the environment is really effective so they have models, but it can provoke contradictions as well with the self way of acting. If what the child is observing an action which is extremely different from how he would react to the same action, it can evolve into a crisis. When the kid overcomes the contradictions is when he constructs his identity.
Nevertheless, the main representative of the psychodynamic approach is Freud and his psychosexual theory. One of the main elements of this theory, and the one which suggested me more curiosity when I was studying psychology are the stages from which every child goes through in order to develop the personality. Freud was really revolutionary at his time, creating controversy theories such as this one, and that may be the reason why I was so interested in his work.
This theory mainly describes the evolution and development of a child through five stages, each of them inside an age framework that is accomplished when the child has no special need or disability. When all the stages have been accomplished successfully, the child has the expected personality, but if one or more of those stages have not been completed can lead to a fixation which means that the child will be sort of obsessed of what was implied in the theory he could not fulfill. A clear example is when an individual who has a fixation on the first stage, the oral, in which the mouth is the element from which they learn and obtain pleasure, so in their adulthood they can make this up for by smoking, drinking or eating excessively.
In this table we can observe the identity traits of each stage, and what are the consequences if one stage has not been properly accomplished.
However, the psychosexual theory just not only focuses on the evolution of a kid during his childhood, but also remarks the fact that the behavior of any human being is controlled by impulses, which generates motivation, and those are unconscious which means that, at a first sight, we cannot identify its origin and are involuntary.
Behavioral Approach
Behavorist approach is based on the learning processes and the social environment. The characteristic theory of this approach is the traditional learning, developed by different intellectuals, which, like Freud’s psychosexual theory, is more concerned about the behavioral changes than the thinking processes. As general concepts, this theory states that people tend to be more motivated if the effectiveness of their actions can be seen by themselves and their good repercussions are quick and affect tem positively in their life.
These theories are based on a stimulus-response framework which allows them to confirm that learning comes from the environment, from which children take models. Social context and observation are key elements for this traditional learning theory. Bandura believes that children learn by copying.
Pavlov’s classical conditioning explains how human beings respond to different stimuli and situations. He was interested in the digestive process. He believed the salivation was a learned process, and to prove it he realized an experiment with dogs in which he first gave food to dogs to provoke salivation. Then, he created a neutral stimulus, concretely the sound of a bell, and that created no response for the dog. After that every time the dog was served food, the bell rang so the dog associated the sound of the bell with the food, and it created the unconditioned response -salivation-. Once the dog had it interiorized, the food was taken out and the only stimulus the dog received was the bell and, the dog associated the sound with the meal so salivation was produced. Therefore, the bell, which at the beginning was a neutral stimulus, became a conditioned stimulus that provoked a conditioned response, which is salivation.
Another author who contributed with a different conditioning is Skinner and this operant condition which is based on the principle that behavior is formed by our actions and their consequences. Skinner was influenced by Thorndike’s study of the known Law of Effect. Skinner’s experiment is similar to Thorndike’s, but he incorporated a reinforcement as any behavior which is reinforced is more likely to be repeated. This reinforcement is given after a desired response of the studied action. He worked with three kinds of reinforcements:
Neutral operants which are the responses from the environment that have no repercusion of a behavior being repeated.
Reinforcers which responses, coming from the environment, increase the probability of a behavior being repeated. Reinforcers can be either positive or negative.
Punishers are response from the environment that, on the contrary, decrease the likelihood of a behavior being repeated.
Skinner's experiment to prove his theory consisted in placing a hungry rat in a box which he called "Skinner box". The box was provided with a lever which knocked by the rat, it dropped food. The rat ended up learning what to do to get food. The box contained a lever in the side and as the rat moved about the box it would accidentally knock the lever. This proved that a reinforcement provokes repetition.
Now that we have seen how the rat responded to a positive reinforcement, Skinner tried to worked by a negative reinforcement with the same animal. In this case, the rat received an elecrtic current every time it moved around the box to get into the lever, so the rat quickly learned to go straight to the lever insetad of walking around.
In this video, Skinner himself explains the experiment but with pigeons instead of rats.
We can exemplify Skinner's reinforcements into a school context. For example, if a child smokes in the school and he as friends who encourage him doing it and they are glad for him for smoking, he would repeat this behavior. On the other and, if he is caught smoking by any professional of the school and he ends up being punished or suspended from the school, he would not repeat it again.
Watson, who is more extreme than Skinner, performed a constroversial experiment called Little Albert along with a graduate student called Rosalie Raynor. In this experiment, he wanted to take Pavlov's work further showing that emotional reactions could be also applied to people and not just to animals.
The subject of the experiment was a nine months old child called Albert B who was exposed to stimuli such as a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks and a burning newspapers. Watson and Raynor observed the boy's reactions coming to the conclusion that, intially, he showed no fear to any of the stimuli.
They decided to include new stimuli to the ones already shown to the kid in order to provoke a greater response. This time, when Albert was shown the rat, Watson made a loud noise making the child cry. After repeating this action several times, Albert ended up crying when the rat was shown to him. No more noise was needed for him to cry when seeing a rat.
This is was Watson and Rayner wrote about the kid's reaction to the rat: The instant the rat was shown, the baby began to cry. Almost instantly he turned sharply to the left, fell over on [his] left side, raised himself on all fours and began to crawl away so rapidly that he was caught with difficulty before reaching the edge of the table.
In this video we can see how the experiment was developed:
Cognivist Approach
Cognivist approach is based on the maturation of the learning structures. This approach is mainly represented by Piaget and his constructivist theory which is used to explain the way children's act and think at different levels of their development, according to their age. Specifically, it is about what children are interested in and capable at different ages. Children from similar ages share an understanding of the world and a coherent view of it. Piaget differentiates four different stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational.
This table explains the stages proposed by Piaget
Piaget's theory have implications in education. First of all, according to Piaget's point of view, teachig is indirect as kids do not only interiorize what the teacher is explaining to them but they also interpret and they compare it to their previous knowledge and experiences. Besides, for Piaget knowledge is not information is not something that the child has to memorize, kids learn from experiences and interaction with the world, people and things.
Contextual Approach
Socio-historic-cultural approach is based on the context and cultural influences. The bio-ecological theory, developed by Bronfenbenner, considers the environment as the main element for the development of any child, and his interaction with it. According to this theory, we can make a distinction among the systems from which the children should have a close contact. We identify the micro-system -the closest context of the kid such the family, parents, school and neighborhood-; meso-system, which involves the interaction of two micro-systems. For example, a meso-system could be when parents have a meeting with their kid’s teacher in to improve his learning process. The exo-system is the environment with which the child does not have a direct contact with but what happens in those contexts affect him somehow. The working place of the parents or the parents’ friend can be good examples of exo-systems. Finally, the micro-system is formed by the cultural and political values, the economical models, social conditions, etc of the society in which the child is immerse; and the crono-system which is the impact that time has on the previous systems, such as the changes within a family in a period of 7 years. The parents could have been divorced, a child could have been born, a family member could have been died, the families could have moved to another house, the father could have changed his job, etc.
Although Bronfenbenner theory explains perfectly this approach, Vygotsky has a different theory, which I have already talked a little bit about in the previous content of the portofolio, which is more related to the interest ambit of this project, which is education. His sociocultural theory has the main premise that social interaction is the basic element of the human development.
Even though I have already made some connections between education and development, now it is time to focus more on what really concerns us as future teachers. Knowing the link between development and the learning processes is essential to offer a proper education.
When designing an activity, a lesson or even a school year, the implicates must take into account the development of the children. First of all, it is extremely important to be aware of their innate capacities. This means that, according to an specific age, a child has skills and competences acquired because of genetic reasons. Nevertheless, culture, social status, social interactions, economical position, ethnicity and gender are other elements that can influenciate our educational level. In this subject, we focus on the influences of the environment and the social relationship in the development of a child.
The aim of education is the promotion of development. This development needs to take into account the previous development and knowledge of the child, trying to improve it to arrive to a further development. By doing this, the child will be progressively acquirin more skills and competences, that will not replace the previous one but it will complement them. Children, with development and the role of education in this growth, is to improve the capacities of a kid.
Activities elapsed at school must satisfy the needs of the kid according to his development. In order to be differentiated from other activities such as the ones done with the family, have to follow some specific patterns. Another aspect from which educational activities are differentiated from the family activities is that in school activities are evaluated and the child has to fulfill a progress in order to be performing as expected.
Educative activities must be planned, designes and developed with a clear educative intention. Most of the time, those activities take place is specific buildings created with an educative aim. A school or a faculty are evident examples of it.
School activities are realized during a specific temporal space, which normally lastes eight or nine months. Knowledge is usually decontextualized meaning that children do not learn what is happening at the moment but what had already happened such as the French Revolution or the discovery of the Americas.
There are some clear figures in charge of an educating role, and this person easily identified by the pupils. Teachers normally take this role. Their actions are working as a social mediator between the school context and the real context, recreating situations in order for kids will be able to apply the learned knowledge to the real world, and also has de roal to act as a change agent. Here we can observe another difference between school and family activities as in a the family context no one has this specific role to teach the kid. Also, at home, if the father is who normally helps the kid with his homework, this role can be changed when the father is out for a work meeting and during those days the mother has to help the child. In school, one person as a role which cannot change.
How emotions are developed, the importance of knowing how to regulate one's owns feelings, the consequences that negative states have in education, concepts of self-concept and self-esteem, importance of self-esteem in school performance.
Differentiation of gender roles, stereotypes adjusted to each gender, how emotions are expressed according to gender, influences of family and school in the reproduction of gender inequalities, and strategies to overcome gender differences in school.
Definition of friendship and their positive repercussions, explination of the evolution of friendship according to three thesis, examples of friendships, typoology of students in a school according to socialization factors, importance of friendship for children in a school.
Emotions and feelings can be commonly misunderstood and be considered as synonyms. Feelings occur when an emotion becomes conscious by the person who is feeling it. The person itself is able to identify it, classify it and evaluated it if necessary. Feelings tend to be more persistent and linger if the stimulus which provoke them remains.
Feelings are expressed by different behavioral actions and conducts of search or avoidence which can be observed. They are linked to the motivation and interests of the person whose feelings are experienced or from the situation someone is living.
According to Soldevila, A., Filella, G., Ribes, R. and Agulló, M. J., an emotion is a mental state which provokes an answer that influences our way of acting in front of a situation. Making a differentiation of emotions according to the fact that they are positive or negative makes no sense as negative emotions. There are no positive or negative emotions. What makes an emotion unpleasent are the consequences that this emotions evokes and if they persist longer than what is desired by the individual who is feeling that way.
Emotions can be classified by three main types: the basic emotions, the complex emotions and the ambiguous emotions.
Basic emotions are related to the survival. We can identify as basic emotions such as joy, anger, fear, sadness and disgust.
Complex emotions impliy an enhancement to the self and are complex emotions pride, shame, anxiety, jealousy, guilt and envy.
Depending on the success of the regulation process, ambiguous emotions can help overcome an amotion or situation. Surprise, hope and compassion are ambiguous emotions.
Having an emotional intelligence and being able to predict and comprehend emotions are fundamental for the educational life. In school, children coexist with other children, some younger, other older and the rest from their same age, and also with adults who have the responsability to provide kids with education and take care of them while they are in the school.
School must teach some content about emotional intelligence. Students start learning the basic emotions, how to express them and the identification of emotions and body reactions. Once they have acquired those elements and they are older, more complex emotions are introduced, as well as the identification of two emotions at the same time and the identification of the components of an emotional response.
This table shows the contents developed in school during four different stages, based on the classification made by Soldevila, A., Filella, G., Ribes, R. and Agulló, M. J.
