Learning Psychology for Children with Difficulties - Essay Example

? Childhood Education Psychology This paper discusses the significance of understanding of psychology on management ofdifficult children by teachers. Childhood education is supposed to ensure that children mature emotionally, socially, physically, cognitively and creatively. Childhood education normally focuses on children education through play during preschool age to the actual learning in schools. Application of psychology on childhood education is centred on cognition and affect aspects. Cognition is related to skills and processes such as thinking while affect describes emotional attributes of children such as attitudes, feelings and feelings. Different psychological principles that support the above concept will also be illustrated. This is meant to confirm that psychological principles can improve the quality of early childhood education. Other tactics that can boost the impact of application of psychological knowledge to deal with difficult children will also be recommended in the paper. They include staying in contact with the children’s parents, and applying proximity to control negative behaviours among others. Table of Contents Abstract 2 Table of Contents 3 Psychology and Education 4 Development 5 Child Development Theories 6 Adaptability and Sociability 12 This can be ensured through incorporation of learning methods that allows flexibility among learners. For instance, the teacher should apply methods that exemplify concepts in the easiest way possible. 12 Motivation 12 Recommendations 14 How can an understanding of psychology assist teachers in their everyday management of difficult children in the classroom? Discuss specific psychological theories and research in your answer. Childhood Education Psychology Childhood education normally focuses on children education through play during preschool age to the actual learning in schools (Ailwood, 2003:291). Teaching is a comprehensive process that requires planning action and evaluation to determine goals, methods and content. Teaching and learning are influenced by various goals and expectations possessed by the teachers and learners. Childhood education is mainly affected by children’s age and the developmental variations among them. High quality childhood education is a universally recognized principle among all learning institutions. The achievement of this quality is dependent on the understanding of how children learn and develop by education practitioners. Learning encompasses dealing with both responsive and unresponsive children. It is the responsibility of the teacher to study and classify these children depending on their behavioural tendencies and formulate ways of teaching them fairly without discrimination. This approach requires dealing with difficult children to amend their behaviour. Psychological knowledge is thus eminent in dealing with difficult children. Psychology and Education Children construct knowledge through learning and utilize it to adopt new skills. They learn efficiently when the basic necessities are provided and the environment is safe. Most of the early childhood learners acquire knowledge through their own activities and develop while acquiring more information from social interactions with adults and other children. Their speed is dependent on their interest towards an object or their urge to know. Application of psychology on childhood education is centred on cognition and affect aspects. Cognition is related to skills and processes such as thinking while affect describes emotional attributes of children such as attitudes and feelings. All these factors come into play when dealing with difficult children. Therefore, it is eminent for teachers to understand, identify and solve these aspects when catering for the welfare of difficult children. Although some behavioural traits children exhibits are genetic, failure to provide them with adequate environment for learning makes then difficult. Children should be provided with secure attachment and emotional comfort, feeling of control and urgency, cognitive challenge and learning support from adults, and opportunities for self expression. Managing children in class requires knowledge on early childhood cognitive development and their differences in communication skills. Differences in cognitive development among children are brought about by the variation in psychological attributes. Individual differences in cognitive development among children include a number of interrelated aspects of language understanding and use, processing capacity and speed, and complex problem solving. Development Developmental perspective of childhood education psychology relates to cognitive development. The aim of education is to equip learners with knowledge and skills necessary for them to survive life conditions at different life stages. They acquire technicalities and knowledge compatible with problem solving and understanding capabilities at different learning stages. Knowledge on the student’s level of developmental sequence enables teachers to plan on the subject matter to be administered on different school grades. Knowledge on individual developmental sequence enables teachers to group learners in distinct classes that require the same treatment in terms of teaching methods. This enables them to offer teaching services fairly and uniformly. The sequencing of concepts and teaching schedule should take into account the working memory capacity and processing that characterizes different developmental sequences. Understanding of child development is eminent for teachers to exclusively appreciate the developmental domains children undergo from early childhood to early adulthood (Barnes, 1999). Developmental domains of children includes social, physical, intellectual, emotion al and creative. These are referred to as psychosocial developments. The theories of developmental psychology offer the channels of interpretation that are necessary for efficient learning and teaching practices. Child Development Theories Theorists and researchers have for a, long time proposed theories related to Psychological development of children. Such information is stipulated in Piaget’s theory of sociological development in children. He posits that children development moves from a position of egocentrism to social centrism (Psaltis and Duveen, 2007:92). He argues that children develop intellectually in a series of gradual stages and each stage must be accomplished. Therefore, a teacher should understand the stage that the child is undergoing and devise efficient mechanisms to deal with the situation. Sigmund Freud’s theory emphasised on the significance of childhood events and experiences that can help to maintain mental uprightness of difficult children. He described development process in the form of psychosexual stages that include oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital (Berk, 2009). Unsuccessful completion of one stage may expose the child to fixation that can affect their adult personality or behaviour. Teachers should assist difficult children to undergo their developmental stages in an ethical pattern through modification of their behaviour. The stage theory of development was also suggested by Erik Erikson although his idea was more extensive through out the human lifespan. He alluded that every stage signifies an attempt to overcome conflict (Cherry, 2012). Failure to overcome conflict in any stage may impact on the overall change in behavioural change. Children portraying behavioural difficulties should be handled with utmost concern as they may be experiencing one of the life stages. Behavioural Perspective Other developmental theories that impacts on the psychological aspects of childhood education in include behavioural child developmental theories based on theorists such as Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson who alludes that development is considered as a reaction towards punishment, stimuli, reinforcement and rewards (Cherry, 2012). Knowledge on behavioural theories helps teachers to decide on the best form of action towards reaction to certain behaviours portrayed by children. For instance, well behaved children may encourage others to change their tendencies in a bid to be rewarded in return. Punishment should only be applied if the behaviour is proved to be an act of negligence. Changing student behaviours requires the application of both classical and operant conditioning. Teachers can apply classical conditioning in classroom set up through creating a positive learning environment that helps the students overcome fear and anxiety. They can pair an anxiety provoking situation such as presentations; with interesting surroundings that helps the learner understand new associations (Dalli and Kibble, 2010:30). This makes them to stay calm and relaxed instead of feeling anxious and tense. Operant conditioning takes the form of rewards and punishments towards certain behaviour. This enables learners to psychologically associate certain behaviour with its consequence. However, the efficacy of rewards in changing behaviour as well as academic performance can be undermined by its negative effects on intrinsic motivation. For instance, some tangible rewards may not be considered worthy of appraisal compared to the achievement being rewarded. The teacher should be cautious of the rewards being offered to learners. They should measure up to the efforts; otherwise, they should not be given out at all. Social development theories such as attachment theory by John Bowly and social learning theory by Albert Bandura, posits that children learn new behaviours from observing other people. However, their behaviours can also be shaped by intrinsic factors like pride, satisfaction and accomplishment (Benjamin, 2003:449). Teachers should thus portray impeccable character to learners to enable them emulate and transform according to the set standards. Teachers can also draw examples from well behaved students and practically use them to challenge the difficult lot (Blatchford et al, 1993). The effect of intrinsic factors can be curbed by counselling. Constructivism Perspective Constructivism theory puts emphasis on the prior experience of the learner as well as the social-cultural determinants of learning. As an educational psychologist, the teacher can apply the constructivism perspective by offering social or cultural examples during lessons to help the learner relate academic concepts to real life. This attracts the interest of the learner, thus enhancing understanding. These aids should be withdrawn later to help the learner assimilate and digest the concepts at an academic stand point. Individual Differences Measures Cognitive Ability Analysis of cognitive ability involves the understanding of the manner in which cognitive change occurs and identification of the factors that enables the acquiring cognitive competence. Administering knowledge to learners involves the application of effective teaching methods that would propel all learners from a low learning level to higher understanding level. This should overcome the opposition tendencies of extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Difficult students normally suffer from retardation of cognitive ability. The teacher can assist learners to overcome such challenges through helping them to reflect on actual or mental actions, and provision of alternative solutions to problems (Bary et al, 2008). Based on preschoolers and twin psychology research, cognitive ability is deemed to be a heritable trait. Genetic influences on cognitive abilities increase over early and middle ages (Benjamin, 2003:450). Environmental factors normally affect children in their early childhood and disappear during middle childhood ages. Teachers should understand that the variation in developmental changes and intelligence differences that characterize children are related to these factors. However, improving cognitive performance is possible through modification and regulation of environmental factors. The most common incidences of deficits in general cognitive ability are caused by a single gene disorders and chromosomal abnormalities. Teachers should learn to differentiate the causes in action when administering a remedy for these challenges. Genetic causes require intervention of medical solutions in addition to the creation of a favourable environment necessary for proper learning. Genetic factors that affect cognitive ability have a direct impact on the psychological as well as mental pacts of a child. Development of effective environmental interventions aimed at alleviating the impacts of genetic problems requires information on the genes involved and how they function. The psychology of cognitive development defines individual differences in relation to the organization of cognitive abilities and their rate and mechanisms of change. This describes the principles of intra- individual and inter-individual differences. The information helps teachers to know how students differ in relation to various dimensions of cognitive development. Any conclusion on the analysis of a student’s behaviour should be based on conclusive facts related to cognitive development of a learner. This is because they may confuse intrinsic causes with extrinsic causes. Therefore, all corrective measures applied in such cases would not be effective. Cognitive ability affects learning dimensions such as self understanding, self regulation, processing and representational capacity. It also affects understanding domains such as scientific, mathematical and scientific. Language and Communication The effect of genetic variance in studies of cognitive and genetic variance in early childhood varies from substantial to moderate. However, shared environmental effects are more pronounced in early childhood. The effect of shared environment on language and literacy development is paramount compared to cognitive ability (Campbell and Ramey, 1995:750). Heritability plays a minor role in the advancement of language and literacy among children. Language skills are grouped in the form of expressive and receptive tendencies. Expressive skills are to be more genetically variable and always overlap with genetic factors influencing cognitive ability. However, receptive skills are more affected by environmental factors compared to expressive skills. Teachers should be able to distinguish the two forms of language skills and apply improvement measures based on their forms. According to Dale et al research confirms heritability estimates of .39 and .25 for grammatical and lexical skills respectively in two year old children (2000:640). They estimated environmental effects in two year children as .48 for lexical and .69 for grammar. Common environmental and genetic influences are thought to affect lexical and grammatical development. However, it is still unclear whether they share these influences in two year old children. However, a study on four year old children confirmed an overlap in genetic influence on verbal and non verbal skills (Colledge et al, 2001:753; Elbaum et al, 2000:615). Temperament Temperament affects learning due to its effect on child behaviour. Knowledge on psychology enables teachers to dissipate the different behavioural tendencies that portray temperamental attitudes. Temperament is a personality framework and can be modified by a combination of genetic and environmental processes. High temperament children are difficult to teach. The temperament theory by Rothbart stipulates that there are many aspects of behaviour that signify reactivity to stimuli and the regulation mechanisms of those reactions (Rothbart and Bates, 1998:140). Some of these aspects include negative affectivity, extraversion, effortful control, adaptability and sociability. Negative Affectivity This includes discomfort, sadness, anger and low response to sooth. Initiation of fights and angry reactions towards restraint are heritable. This contributes to observable differences in behavioural and attitude tendencies. The teacher should create a light learning environment that is free of temperament such as initiation of jokes or amusing situations. This releases the temperamental mood of the learner and captures his or her attention. Effortful Control This dimension includes anticipation and enjoyment due to low-intensity stimulation and improved regulation of attention, sensitivity and impulses. Learners with this trait are easy to handle and learn hastily. Extraversion This dimension includes characteristics such as lack of shyness and positive attitudes among others. These are heritable traits and are modified by environmental factors. Children possessing this characteristic are easy to handle and learn. The teacher should enhance this trait among learners through tasking them with unique roles that enables display of their character such as presentations. This encourages the shy learners to change and compete with the rest (Fendler, 2001:131; Lind, 2005:260). Adaptability and Sociability This can be ensured through incorporation of learning methods that allows flexibility among learners. For instance, the teacher should apply methods that exemplify concepts in the easiest way possible. Motivation This is an internal condition that activates, sustains and guides behaviour. The psychological aspect of research in motivation dwells on the volition or will that the learners adopt according to their interest level and the intrinsic motivation. It is also dependent on the personal goals they hold towards learning experience and belief about causes of their successes or failure. Motivation can either be intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is related to activities that act as rewards while extrinsic motivations are caused by consequences or punishments. Teachers can assist learners to improve performance and change their behaviour through analyzing the attitudes they possess towards education. For instance, some pupils may attribute failure to lack of ability that they perceive as uncontrollable. This makes them experience shame and embarrassment, decrease their effort on improvement and consequently fail. The teacher can intervene by ensuring that the learners attribute failure to lack of effort that is controllable. This makes them experience guilt and consequently input more effort to improve (Davidova and Kokina, 2002:30). Learners’ engagement in educational activities is related to the goals they possess. Those of mastery goals yearn to improve their knowledge. Those with performance approach goals purpose to improve their grades and utilize all the avenues required to demonstrate their abilities. The teacher should have the ability to identify such tendencies and encourage them. Any frustration attempt would lower the learner motivation leading to development of a negative attitude towards learning. However, the teacher should be wary of the negative outcomes that may emanate from performance approach goals. These include unwillingness to seek help and shallow analysis of concepts. Learners with performance approach goals and mastery goals should be encouraged through the provision of necessary learning environment as well as offering learning opportunities. Learners with performance avoidance goals are difficult to deal with as they are driven by fear of failure. They normally avoid a situation where abilities are being portrayed (Cooper et al, 1994; Dahlberg et al, 2007). Recommendations Psychological knowledge is necessary for teachers to deal with difficult students. However, to boost the results of these psychological tactics, synergy of other precautions is necessary (Cass, 2007:106). These include staying in contact with the children’s parents, applying proximity to control negative behaviours, cultivating a defined student expectation, choosing a convenient time for punishment and relating well with the learner. Additionally, one can utilize teaching colleagues, use other well behaved students to counsel the difficult one, establish a connection outside class work and never give up until they transform. Conclusion Understanding child development processes is eminent for teachers to exclusively appreciate the developmental domains children undergo from early childhood to early adulthood. The parents also have an eminent role to play in ensuring that that their children receive the best education experience through selecting a quality childhood learning setting for them (Epstein and Salinas, 2004:15). The setting should have sensitive and responsive interactions and interrelationships between adults and children, teacher-child ratio should be sufficient, the staff should be trained in psychological mechanisms of dealing with children, the size of the group should be reasonable and the curriculum should be well programmed. The physical environment they are exposed to should be safe and healthy, contain biculturalism and be sensitive to family values and culture. 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