Kathleen Stassen Berger
Part IV Chapter Twelve
Cognitive Development: The School Years
Building on Theory
Language
Teaching and Learning
Prepared by Madeleine Lacefield
Tattoon, M.A.
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Cognitive Development: The School Years
“School-age children are learners. as long as it is
not to abstract, they can learn almost
anything.”
”Time matters, but the depth and content of
learning reflect motivation more than
maturation—motivation guided by cultural
priorities and channeled by brain networks.
Thus, nurture and nature interact to allow each
child’s mind to develop.”
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Building on Theory
Theories of cognition in school-age
children have been used to structure
education.
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Building on Theory
• Piaget and School-Age Children
– concrete operational though
• Piaget’s term for the ability to reason
logically about direct experiences and
perceptions
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Building on Theory
– An Example: Classification
• classification
– the logical principle that things can be
organized into groups (or categories or
classes) according to some characteristic
they have in common
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Building on Theory
– The Significance of Logic
• identity
– the logical principle that certain
characteristics of an object remain the same
even if other characteristics change
• reversibility
– the logical principle that a thing that has been
changed can sometimes be returned to its
original state by reversing the process by
which it was changed
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Building on Theory
• Vygotsky and School-Age Children
– “Vygosky (1934/1999) also felt that
educators should consider the thought
processes of the child.”
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Building on Theory
• The Role of Instruction
– Vygotsky regarded instruction by others crucial
• teachers and peers provide the bridge between
the child’s developmental potential and the
necessary skill and knowledge
• in the zone of proximal development, other
people are crucial
• Cultures (tools, customs, people) teach people
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Building on Theory
• Cultural Variations
– patterns of
cognition are
apparent worldwide
• Understanding of
classification
– demands of the
situation
– learning from other
sellers
– daily experience
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Building on Theory
• Information processing
– the view of cognition as comparable to
the functioning of a computer and as
best understood by analyzing each
aspect of that functioning---sensory data
input, connections, stored memories,
and output
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Building on Theory
• Memory
– sensory memory
• the component of the information-processing
system in which current conscious mental
activity occurs--also called short-term memory
– long-term memory
• the component of the information-processing
system in which virtually limitless amounts of
information can be stored indefinitely
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Building on Theory
• Speed and knowledge
– Speed:
• of thinking increases throughout the first
two decades of life
– knowledge base
• a body of knowledge in a particular area
that makes it easier to master new
information in that area
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Building on Theory
• Control processes
– mechanisms (including selective attention,
metacogniton, and emotional regulation) that
combine memory, processing speed, and
knowledge to regulate the analysis and flow of
information within the information-processing
system
– metacognition
• “thinking about thinking,” or the ability to
evaluate a cognitive task to determine how best
to accomplish it, and then to monitor and adjust
one’s performance on that task
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Language
• language advances rapidly before middle
childhood
• by age 6 children have mastered most of
the basic vocabulary and grammar of their
first language
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Language
• school-age children can learn up to 20
new words a day
• increases in logic, flexibility, memory,
speed of thinking, metacognition, and
connections between facts enhance the
learning of first and second languages
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Language
• Vocabulary and Pragmatics
– vocabulary
• school-age children are more flexible and
logical in their knowledge and use of
vocabulary, understanding metaphors, prefixes,
suffixes, and compound words
– pragmatics
• advances markedly in middle childhood; the use
of language, including communication with
varied audiences in different contexts
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Language
• Second-Language Learning
– English-language learner (ELL)
• a child who is learning English as a second
language
– total immersion
• a strategy in which instruction in all school
subjects occurs in the second (majority)
language that a child is learning
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Language
• Second-Language Learning
– bilingual education
• a strategy in which school subjects are taught in
both the learner’s original language and the
second (majority) language
– English as a second language (ESL)
• an approach to teaching English in which all
children who do not speak English are placed
together and given an intensive course in basic
English so that they can be educated in the
same classroom as native English speakers
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Teaching and Learning
• school-age children are:
–
–
–
–
great learners
develop strategies
accumulate knowledge,
apply logic, and think quickly
• universally children are given responsibility
and instruction at about age 7
• the age when their bodies and brains are ready
• 95% of children are in school by age 7
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Teaching and Learning
• Curriculum
– everywhere children are taught to read, write,
and do arithmetic
– when, how, to whom, and whether secondlanguage instruction should occur varies form
nation to nation
– religious instruction is another major
variable—some public school teach
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Teaching and Learning
– No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
• a U.S. law passed by Congress in 2001 that
was intended to increase accountability in
education by requiring standardized tests to
measure school achievement. Many critics,
especially teacher, say the law undercuts
learning and fails to take local needs into
consideration.
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Teaching and Learning
– National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP)
• An ongoing and national representative
measure of children’s achievement in reading,
mathematics, and other subjects over time,
nicknamed “the Nation’s Report Card”
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Teaching and Learning
– Reading First
• a federal program that was established by the
No Child Left Behind Act and that provides
states with funding for early reading instruction
in public schools, aimed at ensuring that all
children learn to read well by the end of the
third grade
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Teaching and Learning
• hidden curriculum
– the unofficial, unstated, or implicit rules and
priorities that influence the academic
curriculum and ever other aspect of learning in
school
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Teaching and Learning
• the outcome:
– most parents, teachers, and political leaders
believe that children are learning what they
need
• Progress in International Reading Literacy
Study (PIRLS)
– a planned five-year cycle of international trend
studies in the reading ability of fourth grades,
inaugurated in 2001
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Teaching and Learning
Iranian girls acting out a poem they have
memorized from their third-grade textbook
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Teaching and Learning
• Education Wars and Assumptions
– adults differ in their beliefs about what children
should learn, and how
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Teaching and Learning
• Japanese Education
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Teaching and Learning
• The Reading Wars
• phonics approach
– teaching reading by first teaching the sounds
of each letter and of various letter
combinations
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Teaching and Learning
• The Math Wars
– mathematic instruction in the U.S. has become
problematic
• economic development depends on science and
technology
• many children hate math –
– Google search showed 36,100 “math phobia” hits
compared to 171 for “reading phobia”
• U.S. students are weaker in math than students
in other nations
• how to teach math does not always benefit
children
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Teaching and Learning
• Other Assumptions
– children learn from homework
• One researcher finds that homework undermines
learning instead of advancing it (Kohn, 2006)
– mixed evidence shows that smaller classrooms
size is not necessarily better (Blatchford, 2003,
Hanushek, 1999)
– raising teacher salaries improving professional
education
– extending school hours–expanding the school–
year increasing sports, music, or silent reading
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Teaching and Learning
• Culture and Education
– controversies regarding cognitive development
related to education is political more than
developmental
– there are many hidden roles of culture
– teaching styles and methods
– the understanding of the child’s culture by a
teacher of another culture
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