Subject: Child development for Educators
Text book:Educational Psychology for Learning and Teaching
- Choose THREE (3) of the SIX (6)questionsbelow and write a short essay of 700 words for eachto demonstrate your understanding of the theories and concepts and their appropriate application in educational settings.
- You will refer explicitly to content covered in this unit. Reference the set text and at least two (2) additional sources which must be academic, peer-reviewed journal articles or other credible scholarly material.
- Use APA 7th edition to cite in-text as well as your reference list at the end of your assessment response.
- Save and submit your assessment as a Word.doc or docx with your name and student ID number in the file name (Sally Brown_71245667).
- The total word count for Assessment 2 is 2100 words (+/- 10%).This includes all text (headings, in-text citations, captions and direct quotes). It excludes the Reference List.
- Make sure that you view your Turnitin report.
Criteria:
Your work will be assessed in accordance with how well you are able to demonstrate:
- a clear understanding of the relevant developmental theory / concept bywriting in a clear, scholarly fashion, incorporating key references [30 marks]
- examples of practical, age and context appropriate, research based applications for the school or classroom environment [24 marks]
- transcriptional elements of writing (e.g., spelling, grammar, sentence structure, paragraphing) [6 marks]
Question:Educational Scenarios:
Educational scenario 1: Gender differences in development
This educational scenario highlights gender differences in height and weight around Years 5–6 (10–12 years old). Ella: During most of this year, Ella has been growing quickly. She is now the tallest student in her Year 5 class, and is very self-conscious about the changes happening to her body shape. She has stopped running around the playground at lunchtime, and stays sitting down with her coat on all the time. What is worse, she has started bleeding each month. It was a shock when it first happened, and she is still very embarrassed and upset about it. (Someone might see!) Mum sometimes lets her stay at home on those days. She has let down the hem of Ella’s school dress so often that it looks awful, but she says Ella cannot have a new uniform, because there is only one year left before high school. Ella dreams of the day when she is not the tallest girl in the class and can leave school forever.
Thomas: Thomas, 11, has always been one of the smallest students, whatever group he is in. At day-care, his best friend, Harry, was much taller than him. It didn’t seem to matter then, but now he is in Year 6, it does. Harry is now huge, while Thomas is still the smallest in the class. When he joins in with his nineyear-old brother’s soccer team, his mother cannot pick Thomas out in the crowd. Even the girls are taller than Thomas. But he has found a way to compensate: he is known as a loudmouth and a joker. Whenever there is a commotion or crisis in the classroom, Thomas is there, commenting loudly, cracking jokes and generally acting the fool. He is pleased with his role as the class ‘mouth’, but is still very worried about his small size. He is beginning to wonder if he will ever grow taller. He has started doing karate with Harry to get stronger and tougher.
1. Consider the experiences of Ella and Thomas. Are these typical experiences for 10–12-year-olds?
2. To what extent should teachers recognise and make provisions for the stresses associated with the early stages of puberty?
3. What steps could be taken to help students like Ella and Thomas? Or will they simply ‘grow out of’ their problems?
Educational scenario 2: Second-language acquisition and reading
Morteza is very shy and embarrassed during his first days at high school. He learned sufficient English to be able to talk with other students in the playground, but is still not fluent. He is having particular problems in learning to read and write in English, despite having attended EAL classes at his first school for almost two years. Morteza is a quiet boy who prefers to listen and observe rather than actively participate during lessons, but he is motivated to learn and be accepted in his new school. His English teacher is aware of Morteza’s lack of proficiency in the new language, but is willing to allow time and space for him to adjust to the classroom situation. She avoids asking him direct questions and, whenever possible, places him with a group of competent boys who encourage him to interact with them. They also model appropriate language and behaviour. When Morteza seems to lapse into daydreaming – often after a particularly demanding lesson – the teacher leaves him alone on the assumption that he is simply worn out and needs time to recover. (She remembers needing such ‘time out’ herself when she lived overseas as an exchange student, and was often exhausted by the effort required to communicate in a foreign language.) By the end of the year, Morteza is much more confident, both as an English speaker and as a member of the class. He now participates more fully in class activities, has developed close friendships with two other boys and is rarely observed daydreaming or withdrawing from class activities. He borrows regularly from the school library and has a speaking part in a play being prepared for the end-of-year concert.
Questions:
1. Identify some of the problems – linguistic, academic and cultural – that students such as Morteza face when they move to a new country and are enrolled in a new school system with an unfamiliar language and culture.
2. Would students born in this country, but from home backgrounds where English was not spoken, experience the same problems as Morteza?
3. Are the strategies used by Morteza’s teacher appropriate?
4. What else might Morteza’s teacher do to assist him?
5. How can teachers support students like Morteza most effectively?
Educational scenario 3: Concrete materials in a problem-solving task
Jake, Remy, Molly and Eliza, all in Year 4, were working on a problem from the Country Areas Program (CAP) website. The problem asked the students about making a square-based pyramid using 140 oranges. The questions were: how should the oranges be arranged; how many oranges would there be in each layer; and how many layers are there? Remy started by guessing the number of layers. He reasoned that adding a series of numbers together until the total of 140 was reached would answer the question, but was unsure where to start. The teacher asked the group how many oranges would be in the top layer of the pyramid. They looked blank until she brought out a square-based pyramid from a box of solid shapes. They then quickly realised that there would only be one orange at the top. The next question – ‘How many in the next layer?’ – was harder to answer, until the students got out a set of blocks to make a pyramid, starting from the top layer of one. They realised that each layer of the pyramid would be a square. Jake pointed out that the side of the square increased by one each time. At this stage, making the squares was still necessary to avoid errors such as assuming the next square would be just one or two oranges bigger than the one before it. Molly was writing down the number of oranges (blocks) in each square. The teacher asked whether the numbers were starting to form a pattern. They then moved to paper, and wrote down the numbers they had so far: 1, 4, 9, 16 and 25. Eliza saw that the differences between the numbers increased by two each time. (The teacher recognised that the numbers were all square numbers, but chose to leave that observation until later.) They predicted that the next square would have 36 oranges, and made it with blocks to check their prediction. The teacher reminded the group of the questions they had to answer, and asked them to review which questions they now knew the answers to, and which still had to be determined. They realised that they only had to make layers up to the total of 140. Remy wanted to continue their number pattern until it reached 140, and was puzzled when he reached 121 and 144. The teacher asked them to read the question again, and think about how many oranges they had to work with. Molly realised that they needed to add together the oranges in each layer to reach the total of 140. They did this, and realised that they didn’t have enough layers yet. They added more until the total reached 140, giving the answer to the problem. They referred to the pyramid they had made – first with blocks, then on paper – to answer the questions in the problem. The next step was to explain the strategy they had used to reach the solution, which proved difficult to remember. With the teacher’s prompting, they retraced their steps and were able to write down both the answer and the strategy they had used to reach it.
Questions:
1. How did concrete materials help the students to solve this problem?
2. What role did the teacher play?
3. Identify and describe elements of Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s theories in the children’s thinking.
Educational scenario 4:
Jo, teaching about morals and values Jo’s aim: We wanted to develop a set of values for our students. There had been some problems in the playground, and we wanted to address those as well. We felt that the students should be the ones to identify values that were important to them, and to own the process. Jo’s experience: The whole school met together over several sessions to brainstorm the values that were important to them. We grouped similar ideas, and then ranked them to identify the five most important values. We ended up with: being a good friend; honesty; care and compassion; respect and responsibility for each other; and cooperation. The next step was to identify what those values would look like in the classroom and playground, in student and teacher behaviour. Once again, students brainstormed and then grouped ideas until they had an operating definition of each value. These became the core values for our school, and they are now displayed in the entrance foyer and in each classroom. The students elected a project that would help them practise the values they had chosen, and selected a special fundraising program where they worked in teams to identify a humanitarian concern and then developed a fundraising strategy to support a humanitarian organisation. We followed up with incorporating values across our curriculum. We teachers in the arts-based disciplines thought we would have the best ideas for classes, but actually, the maths and science teachers have been really great at coming up with curly issues and problems! They’ve really helped students to think hard about some big morals- or valuesbased issues. The students are getting on so much better now. They are more likely to be thinking about the next fundraising strategy rather than ganging up against each other in the playground. The friendship groups are a bit more flexible too; they’ve learnt to work with others in teams now.
Questions:
1. What stages of moral reasoning do these students seem to be exploring?
2. Can you identify any social and emotional competencies that would assist students at these levels of moral reasoning?
3. Think about your own curriculum area (early childhood, primary or secondary). How could you support students’ moral development and values in your classroom? Provide a plan.
Educational scenario 5: An interview with a Year 6 student
Interviewer: I would like to know something about your schoolwork and how you feel about school. Can you tell me about the things you enjoy doing the most at school?
Jay: I really like doing projects. We get to study our own topic and different things about the world. People in different places and things in the past are my favourite topics.
Interviewer: Why do you like these topics so much? Jay: I just find them interesting, and I always do better on this type of stuff. Interviewer: When you say you do ‘better’, what do you mean?
Jay: My teacher gives me really good marks, but everyone always says mine is the best project. My friends really like reading my stories and it makes me want to do a better one next time. I can’t wait until the next project; I know I can do a good one!
Interviewer: How do you think you became so interested and good at these projects?
Jay: Well, my brother – he’s older than me – he is really good at projects too. I’ve seen him using the computer to find stuff out, and I thought I could give that a go too. Mum and dad are always reading newspapers and stuff, and they tell me it’s really good that I’m so interested in stuff. A sign of ‘maturity’, they say!
Interviewer: That’s great! Now can we talk about something you don’t like so much?
Jay: Errrrk (groans). Maths! I hate maths. I just don’t get it. Interviewer: What makes you say you don’t get it? Jay: Well, I flunk it all the time. My friends are heaps better. My little sister got her timetables faster than me!
Interviewer: How do you feel about that?
Jay: I just hate it! I don’t even want to do that lesson. I tell Mum I’ve got a headache or something in the morning when there is a test. Anyway, it is true: it makes me so stressed, I just know I’m gonna flunk it again. Soooo embarrassing!
Questions:
1. Consider Jay’s different feelings about ‘projects’ and maths. What do these say about Jay’s self-efficacy in each subject area?
2. Can you identify the sources of self-efficacy in Jay’s statements? Consider whether there is any evidence of enactive mastery experience, vicarious experience or verbal persuasion, or any sign of physiological or affective feedback.
3. Is Jay’s sense of self-esteem likely to be affected by these beliefs? How could the classroom teacher ensure that Jay’s self-esteem remains positive?
Educational scenario 6: Working with children who have Autistic Spectrum Disorder
‘I’ve got another autistic child in my class this term! I guess I’ll just sit them all together; at least then I can work with them on the same activities at the same time.’
Questions:
1. Critically evaluate this statement with reference to
a. the use of person-first language,
b. labelling,
c. a non-categorical view of disability.
2. Identify 3 strategies for effective inclusion in the classroom in your area of study (early childhood, primary or secondary) of a student who has ASD.
3. Would the same strategies work with all students with ASD? Why or why not?