Emotional, Intellectual, Physiological, And Social Domains Of Child Development - Essay Example

Running head: Developmental Stages Paper Developmental Stages Paper By ________________ Emotional, intellectual, physiological, and social domains of child development The developmental stages of the years of early childhood ranges from age 3 to 7, and are characterized by dramatic gains in cognitive skills along with broad new strides in children's abilities to understand all aspects of the biological, psychological and physical world around them. (Wellman & Inagaki, 1997) They possess better capability to grasp and learn new things around them. Armed with the sensory, motor and basic representational skills, which they acquire during infancy, toddlers address their curious minds to an active and ever-widening exploration of the objects, people and situations with which these skills bring them into contact. The acquisition of counting things along with language opens new avenues for sophisticated social and intellectual interaction, while at the same time supplying the scaffolding more sophisticated levels of reasoning about the abstract concepts and ideas that are conveyed most effectively in words or in numbers. Close interconnections exist among processes of social domains of child development. Not only do tests of children's cognition and moral reasoning take place in social settings, but the topics that exercise the growth of intelligence are social to be a very important degree. As toddlers attachment brings about special social relationships with particular people, a process that will have lasting significance for intimate relationships throughout life. During childhood, intimate bonds to parents and familiar caregivers continue to exert a major influence upon the offspring's psychological development. However, with the young child's transition out of the family into primary school, parental social influences are joined in a direct or indirect manner by social influences from the child's peer group. One reason for this might be the effective learning due to competitive significance on which the parents are counting. When peers or other children outside the family, all of about the same age associate with one another in the classroom during and after school, the child's goal in the peer's company may appear to be nothing more than sheer enjoyment. Here comes the concern of classroom environment, as this is the stage where the child feels comfortable in learning directly from their peers. Psychologically he is driven by various kinds of learning and other competitions with his peers, which escorts him towards a healthy psychological and learning development. The classroom tends to be a whole learning myriad for the child where he ethnographically aims to achieve the views and perspectives, beliefs and values of all other peers and those involved in the particular sociocultural practice or institutional context of the classroom. These broad aims are often difficult to achieve in early childhood studies in a standalone environment that are of necessity limited in terms of time and resources but the classroom environment offer opportunities and circumstances where the child feels more appropriate to learn theoretically and practically various approaches. Classroom is the best example of social interaction where the child learns, grows and develops out of nothing. From the neo-Piagetian perspective, social interaction is treated as a catalyst for autonomous cognitive development. Thus, although social interaction is considered to stimulate individual cognitive development, it is not viewed as integral to either this constructive process or to its products, increasingly sophisticated mathematical conceptions. Vygotskian perspectives, on the other hand, tend to subordinate individual cognition to interpersonal or social relations. In the case of adult-child interactions, for example, it is argued that the child learns by internalizing mental functions that are initially social and exist between people. In recent years, several attempts have been made to extend these arguments to small-group interactions between peers. It was against the background of these two competing perspectives that an approach was developed that acknowledges the importance of both cognitive and social processes without subordinating one to the other. Children from a very early age perceive and explore mathematical dimensions by touching and counting various things. "They compare quantities, find patterns, navigate in space, and grapple with real problems such as balancing a tall block building or sharing a bowl of crackers fairly with a playmate. Mathematics helps children make sense of their world outside of school and helps them construct a solid foundation for success in school. In elementary and middle school, children need mathematical understanding and skills not only in math courses but also in science, social studies, and other subjects". (Maths 2006) So, I decided maths implementation for them in the class. The task is the mathematical activity adapted from those developed by Steffe and his colleagues (Heinrich & Paul, 1995). Although an interview schedule was developed in advance, which I conducted to either skip tasks or to pose impromptu tasks on the basis of ongoing interpretations of the child's mathematical activity. The main types of interview tasks presented to the children in a classroom were: Counting tasks: I used two small felt cloths to present addition and missing addend tasks and told the child that 9 squares are hidden beneath one cloth, that there are 13 squares hidden by both cloths, and ask the child to find how many squares are hidden under the second cloth (i.e., a task corresponding to 9 +_ = 13). These tasks were originally designed by Steffe et al. (1983) to investigate the qualitatively distinct types of units of one that children could create and count. (Heinrich & Paul, 1995) Thinking Strategy tasks: Here I used plastic numerals to present the following sequence of horizontal sentences: 9 + 3 =_, 9 + 4 =_, 9 + 5 =_, and 6 + 6 =_, 7 + 5 =_, 8 + 4 =_. (Heinrich & Paul, 1995) Uncovering tasks: I first established with the child that each strip contained 10 squares. After presenting further warm-up tasks, he placed a board that was completely covered by a large cloth in front of the child and gradually pulled back the cloth to reveal a collection of strips and individual squares. Each time, I asked the child how many squares there were in all. Two tasks of this type were posed. The cumulative sums after each uncovering for the first task were: one strip (10), three squares (13), two strips (33), four squares (37), three squares (40), one strip (50), two squares (52), two strips (72). (Heinrich & Paul, 1995) The cumulative sums after each uncovering for the second task were: four squares (4), one strip (14), two strips (34), one strip and two squares (46), two strips and five squares (71). These tasks were designed to investigate the quality of the units of ten that the child could create and count. Number sentences: I used plastic numerals to present the following horizontal number sentences: 16 + 9 =_, 28 + 13 =_, 37 + 24 =_, and 39 + 53 =_. In doing so, I made a routine intervention if a child consistently attempted to count on by ones. In the case of 37 + 24 =_, for example, I first asked the child if he or she could figure out 37 + 20 =_, and then asked if this result could help the child solve the original task. My goal in doing so was to investigate whether the child could curtail his or her counting activity by conceptualizing 24 as 20 and 4 more. Like the strips-and-squares tasks, these tasks were designed to investigate both the quality of the units of ten the child could create and the sophistication of his or her computational methods. However, in contrast to the previous tasks, nothing in the presentation of the sentences encouraged the creation of imagery that might support the construction of units of ten and one. (Heinrich & Paul, 1995) The above mathematical activities not only build up visualization of the children but also created among them a sense of learning competition along with fun and play. Studies have revealed that the processes by which children and groups sustain, modify, shape, change and create their working, learning and play environments are driven by shared cultural framework. The qualitative studies that are currently being applied in early childhood education are also important in allowing new voices to be heard these are the voices of teachers, other carers, families and the children themselves. The meaningfulness of our day-to-day communications depends upon unstated cultural assumptions about what is said and why we say it. This is as true of young children as it is of adults. If we are to provide an adequate account, it is important that all the significant, unstated assumptions are identified and stated as clearly as possible. Cross-context or cross-cultural comparison can often be useful in this respect. In societies where a simplified register is not applied, children are expected to adapt to the adult world at an early age. In such societies, caregivers direct the children to notice and respond to others, and they frequently model appropriate utterances for the child to repeat to third parties. These features of caregiver speech are therefore neither universal nor necessary for language to be acquired, although this may often be assumed. References Glenda Mac Naughton, Sharne A. Rolfe & Iram Siraj Blatchford, (2001). "Doing Early Childhood Research: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice": Allen & Unwin. Place of Publication: Crows Nest, N.S.W. Heinrich Bauersfeld & Paul Cobb, (1995). "The Emergence of Mathematical Meaning: Interaction in Classroom Cultures": Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Place of Publication: Hillsdale, NJ. Publication Wellman, H., & Inagaki, K. (1997). "The Emergence of core domains of thought: Children's Reasoning about physical, psychological and biological phenomena". San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Maths 2006, accessed from Read More