StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Psychology of Children's Education - Case Study Example

Cite this document
Summary
The paper "Psychology of Children's Education" states that the offered scenario should be carefully analyzed regarding participants’ ages, relationships, motivation and willingness to interact, and knowledge domain. Robbie is at the age of eight when children’s interests…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER93.5% of users find it useful
Psychology of Childrens Education
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Psychology of Children's Education"

1. The offered scenario should be carefully analyzed in terms of: participants' ages, relationship, motivation and willingness to interact, and domain of knowledge. Robbie is at the age of eight when children's interest and curiosity are at the highest level. He shows genuine intrinsic interest and motivation for knowledge acquisition. Children at this age have very little life experience and thus prior knowledge is insufficient for the building of deeply logical concepts. Therefore, what Robbie did was both motivated by his age and his affection to his baby-brother. From his words it seems that he had understood very well the gist of the conversation and its message that letting babies sleep with their milk bottles can cause ear infection. Of course his prior knowledge in the matter is very scarce or none but by initially assimilating the idea and then verbalizing it to his mother, who takes the role of the authoritative, knowledgeable person in his life, Robbie activates this passive knowledge by constructing a logical connection based on his prior knowledge of how usually milk drips into one's ear from the perspective of a child and prior experience, perhaps, that is from the mouth through the cheek to the ear, turning it into a statement of explicit knowledge. The mother, who does know the issue quite well, that is she is an expert in the specific domain of knowledge, treats Robbie's statement as a nave concept and tries to reconstruct his knowledge by direct correction of the misconcepted idea. Robbie experiences a concept conflict, which, instead of leading to a process of new knowledge constructing, due to the mothers' attitude and approach, ends in a kind of defensive position demonstrated in his determination not to give up his beliefs, resembling the kind of assimilative peer interaction known as 'stonewalling' (Chan et al., 1997). However, the strategy Robbie applies to comprehend the new information is not only assimilation, that is direct adding of new concepts, but also metacognition, because he managed to reflect on his own learning and put conscious efforts in accommodating the novel information within his personal system of knowledge.. The mother's behavior causes a concept crisis and tension arises between them. Not only her attitude, but also the use of "the Eustachian tube", a new piece of information for Robbie, which was just dropped without any further elaboration or clarification, leads to their argument. The expression must have gone beyond the ultimate level of comprehension of Robbie. Judging by his strong reaction he must have felt quite uncomfortable. Thus he does something quite typical of young learners - rejection. But later on when he spoke to his father, surprisingly enough, we see him with changed opinion and already assimilated new concept. What did actually happen How come this young boy fully comprehended such a complex issue I presume that by using the strategy of knowledge-building and self-reflection he replaced the contents of his schemas. But the final result of it led to surface structuring of his knowledge due to the application of imitation and copying practices by virtue of the little prior knowledge and caused by the more authoritative and expert individuals taking part into the learning event. We cannot say for sure that Robbie asked his father in order to validate his comprehension and reject his mother's, and only after he received a suggestive, friendly answer, he did accept the new concept; or that he had assimilated his mother's comprehension and just looked for validation from his father as the next authoritative figure in the family. For either suggestion I think Robbie failed to comprehend fully the new concept, because none of his parents did provide him with the needed details on the new issue and did facilitate his learning. 2. (1) In "Knowledge building as a mediator" (Chan et al., 1997), the authors identify two approaches of concept comprehension in unfamiliar domain applied by learners: direct assimilation and knowledge building: Direct assimilation involves fitting new information directly into existing knowledge, whereas knowledge building involves learners treating new concepts as something problematic that they need to explain (Chan et al., 1997, p. 37) In the afore-analyzed scenario Robbie applied both approaches. When he heard the two adult's conversation he directly added (direct assimilation) the new concept of "ear infection" to his background knowledge. When his mother mentioned "the Eustachian tube" to him, he reflected on the new concept and viewed it as problematic since it conflicted with his prior knowledge (knowledge-building activity). As a result he rejected it as possible because none of the adults had mentioned something like that in their conversation. This is again to prove that Robbie assimilated directly the new concept as absolutely valid and built his own interpretation of the situation with the only possible way in his opinion - outer leakage. After having his mother's explanation, which he refused to take for valid, and after interacting his father, he seemed to have reflected on it, restructured his knowledge and accepted the new concept in his 'mental lexicon', which is again a knowledge building approach: The role of knowledge-building activity in fostering science learning also seems consistent with current theories on conceptual change as involving knowledge restructuring (Chi et al., 1997, p.3) I would like to recommend to his mother to use strategies of prior knowledge activation. Instead of objecting, she should have asked Robbie why he thought so and to try to imply rather than state explicitly that there are other, more acceptable, interpretations of the concept. She could have also been more patient and guiding instead of imposing her own opinion. Another good advice would be to try to explain the new concept in scientific terms. For instance, after listening to his understanding, she could have provided the scientific explanation of the Eustachian tube by drawing it on a sheet of paper or finding a suitable picture of the organ in a 'showing concern and friendly, helping attitude'. In that way she could have evaded the crash of ideas between them and could have made the external problem solving into an internal one for her child, encouraging him to expand his prior knowledge and create funny knowledge-building activities for him like pictures, games and other supportive materials. Instead, the mother's behavior evoked confrontation, which produced "external competition" (p.32). (2) According to Alexander & Murphy (1998), Robbie can be described and profiled as a "learning-oriented" individual (p. 438). According to them, the main aspects of the learning-oriented individual are "strong interest in the content and strategic effort" (p. 439), as well as "good prior knowledge and willingness to engage in" (p. 436), which during the learning process increases essentially due to the potentials of this type of learners. It is obvious that Robbie's domain of knowledge is sensitively smaller than his opponent's in the face of his parents but his willingness to engage and interact is bigger to the extent that he willingly performs conceptual change in result of applying knowledge-building strategy. Another important factor for knowledge acquisition is motivation, which seems to be intrinsic with the case of Robbie. I would recommend to the mother to be more empathetic with her child and give him more opportunities for engagement into interactive conversations, in which he would be given the floor to experiment and build his own understanding under the guidance of an authoritative figure like her. The very fact that Robbie acts as a learning-oriented individual shows that if he receives the needed help and tutorship on time he would develop into more confident and self-assured learner. (3) According to Guthrie et al. (2004), motivation and strategy instructions (SI - cognitive; TI - traditional) shouldn't be applied separately because the learning process efficiency is reduced. The two concepts are interrelated and their combined application in the process of knowledge building (method name CORI) would lead to bigger results and greater success in motivating students and activating their background knowledge. Robbie acts like an engaged, active learner who uses social interaction and applies SI (metacognition) in order to learn. From the start Robbie proved to have good monitoring skills when observing and listening to the conversation of the adults. The information he gathered he later combined with his prior knowledge and by using the cognitive strategy of metacognition he built explicit knowledge. During the interaction with his parents he proved to be cognitively engaged and applying strategies of active learning by trying to solve the problem arisen by the incongruity of concepts. In my opinion, what would have added to the interaction and the learning process would have been improvement in the learning environment and in particular, the application of "reciprocal teaching" (p. 405), which "integrates the four strategies of predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing." But instead of creating supportive learning environment, Robbie's mother tried to correct him (TI) and thus suppressed his cognitive impulse and encouraged copying tactics instead of helping him accommodate new information into the already built schema by Robbie. Reference list: Alexander, P. A., & Murphy. P. K. (1998). Profiling the differences in students' knowledge, interest, and strategic processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 435-447. Chan, C., Burtis, J., & Bereiter, C. (1997). Knowledge building as a mediator of conflict in conceptual change. Cognition and Instruction, 15, 1-40. Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., Barbosa, P., Perencevich, K. C., Taboada, A., Davis, M., Scafiddi, N. T., & Tonks, S. (2004). Increasing reading comprehension and engagement through Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 403-423. Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Psychology of Learning Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words”, n.d.)
Psychology of Learning Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/psychology/1524662-psychology-of-learning
(Psychology of Learning Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 Words)
Psychology of Learning Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 Words. https://studentshare.org/psychology/1524662-psychology-of-learning.
“Psychology of Learning Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/psychology/1524662-psychology-of-learning.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Psychology of Children's Education

Text Messaging and the Effects on Childrens Learning to Read

Examined the effect of text messaging in terms of children's diverse mental abilities, such as trains them to be fast but inaccurate.... Presented a comprehensive study to determine “whether or not there is a relationship between children's reading ability and text-messaging behaviour....
7 Pages (1750 words) Annotated Bibliography

Is Comprehensive Education dead

Comprehensive education Name Institution Introduction Comprehensive education refers to an education that covers everything.... It could include education about general topics or specific topics.... Before the onset of Comprehensive education in the UK, there was the tripartite system of education.... Comprehensive education began because the tripartite system of education had a significant number of disadvantages....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Learning Psychology for Children with Difficulties

The parents also have an eminent role to play in ensuring that their children receive the best education experience through selecting quality childhood learning.... ehavioural Perspective Other developmental theories that impact the psychological aspects of childhood education include behavioural child developmental theories based on theorists such as Ivan Pavlov and John B.... The paper "Learning psychology for Children with Difficulties" tells that It is the responsibility of the teacher to study and classify these children depending on their behavioral tendencies and formulate ways of teaching them fairly without discrimination....
11 Pages (2750 words) Essay

Psychology of intelligence

The paper "psychology of intelligence" emphasizes on several points that relate to intelligence.... First, it is needed to mention the contribution of parental education and income that a family has to contribute in child's education and development.... Although parents' education is fairly strongly related to children's test scores, it is found that eliminating the black-white gap in parents' years of schooling would not shrink the gap in children's test scores much because black and white parents now have very similar amounts of schooling....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

Lingustics, Education, Psychology

n education and psychology, learning theories aid in understanding the process of learning which is also applicable to language development.... This paper compares various studies of typical language development which has contributed, and continues to contribute, to knowledge in this area....
11 Pages (2750 words) Essay

The Psychology of Education

From the paper "The psychology of Education" it is clear that learning could also be undermined by a poor curriculum.... 'Technology should be integrated into the early care and education curriculum as developmentally age-appropriate, as well as when used to supplement and/or enhance the curricular activity' (New Mexico Early Childhood Higher education Task Force, 2011).... The study mainly purposes to assess the importance of the core curriculum for children's learning and analyze some of the factors within the school context, which might undermine or enhance that learning....
4 Pages (1000 words) Assignment

Preschool Childrens Reading

This study aims to explore the way how and what do preschool teachers manage to create an aesthetics appropriate environment through 12-week reading activities to enhance children's reading motivation.... There are four regular activities including arranging children's aesthetics reading time.... With the professional scholars' analyzing observation, interviewing, videoing data and children's work, the results indicate that classroom reading aesthetics arrangement....
10 Pages (2500 words) Research Paper

Understanding the Child Psychology

Culture also plays a critical role in defining the education levels of the child, relationship with the parents and also the type of child care that is provided.... The current essay will in detail discuss the aspects of child psychology in social context.... psychology can be defined as the study of behavior and mind through different methods which are not necessarily scientific methods.... The less scientific methods used to study child psychology include observations, case studies or interviews....
6 Pages (1500 words) Research Paper
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us