Lecture 2
THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT
(Chapter 2)
Purpose:
Understanding of the students’ development on the Physical ，
cognition , and social-emotional development
Main Contents:
（Include Cognitive Development, Psychosocial Development and Moral
Development）
Piaget’s View of Cognitive Development
VYGOTSKY’s View of Cognitive Development
Erikson’s view of personal and social development
Kohlberg’s stages of Moral Reasoning
Recommended reading:
Textbook, Chapter 3
Part 1
Issues of Development and Piaget’s View of Cognitive Development
A Definition of Development
Creative Thinking:
1
?
Think about terms of Changing and Development. As
human beings, what kinds of changing you can see and what you
can’t see? Are they all means the development during the
lifetime?
1. 含 义 (1)The term DEVELOPMENT in its most general
psychological sense refers to certain changes that occur in
human beings between conception and death.
(2) The term is not applied to all changes, but rather to those
that appear in orderly way and remain for a reasonably long
period of time.
2.分类 Human development can be divided into a number of
different aspects. Piaget, Vygoteky, Erikson, and Kohlberg focus
on different aspects of development. Nevertheless, all are stage
theorists, because they share the belief that distinct stages of
development can be identified and described.
Physical development, deal with the changes in the body;
Personal development, means the changes in an individual’s
personality;
Social development refers to changes in the way an
individual relates to others;
Cognitive development refers to changes in thinking
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General Principles of Development
Although there is disagreement about what is involved in
development and about the way it takes place, there are a few
general principles almost all theorists would support.
1. People develop at different rates. In your own classroom, you
will have a whole range of examples of different developmental
rates. Some students will be larger, better coordinated, or more
mature in their thinking and social relationships. Others will be
much slower to mature in these areas. Except in rare cases of
very rapid or very slow development, such differences are
normal and to be expected in any large group of students.
2. Development is relatively orderly. People develop certain
abilities before others. In infancy they sit before they walk,
babble before they talk, and see the world through their own
eyes before they can begin to imagine how others see it. In school,
they will master addition before algebra（代数学）, and so on.
Theorists may disagree on exactly what comes before what, but
they all seem to find a relatively logical progression.
3. Development takes place gradually. Very rarely do changes
appear overnight. A student who cannot manipulate a pencil or
answer a hypothetical question may well develop this ability, but
the change is likely to take time.
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Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
1． Brief
Introduction ：
（P30）Jean Piaget, born in Switzerland in 1896, is the most
influential developmental psychologist in the history of
psychology (see Flavell, 1996). After receiving his doctorate in
biology, he became more interested in psychology, basing his
earliest theories on careful observation of his own three children.
Piaget thought of himself as applying biological principles and
methods to the study of human development, and many of the
terms he introduced to psychology were drawn directly from
biology.
Piaget explored both why and how mental abilities change
over time. His explanation of developmental change assumes
that the child is an active organism.
For Piaget, development depends in large part on the child's
manipulation of and active interaction with the environment. In
Piaget's view, knowledge comes from action (see Langer &
Killen, 1998; Wadsworth, 1996). Piaget's theory of cognitive
development proposes that a child's intellect, or cognitive
abilities, progresses through four distinct stages. Each stage is
characterized by the emergence of new abilities and ways of
processing information.
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2．Some very important concepts in his cognitive theory：
SCHEMES（图式）
In Piaget’s theory, schemes are the basic building blocks of
thinking. They are organized systems of actions or thought that
allow us to mentally represent or "think about" the objects and
events in our world. Piaget believed that all children are born with an
innate tendency to interact with and make sense of their
environments. He referred to the basic ways of organizing and
processing information as cognitive structures. Young children
demonstrate patterns of behavior or thinking, called schemes, that
older children and adults also use in dealing with objects in the
world.
So, in Piaget’s theory，Schemes is mental patterns that guide
behavior。
Schemes may be very small and specific, for example, the
sucking(吸吮)-through-a-straw scheme or the recognizing-a-rose
scheme. Or they may be larger and more general the drinking
scheme or the categorizing-plants scheme.
As a person's thinking processes become more organized and
new schemes develop, behavior also becomes more sophisticated
and better suited to the environment.
(see Figure 2.la p31) For example, most young infants will discover
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that one thing you can do with objects is bang them. When they do
this, the object makes a noise, and they see the object hitting a
surface. Their observations tell them something about the object.
Babies also learn about objects by biting them, sucking on them,
and throwing them. Each of these approaches to interacting with
objects is a scheme. When babies encounter a new object, how are
they to know what this object is all about?
According to Piaget, they will use the schemes they have
developed and will find out whether the object makes a loud or soft
sound when banged, what it tastes like, whether it gives milk, and
maybe whether it rolls or just goes thud when dropped.
ASSIMILATION（同化）AND ACCOMMODATION（顺应）
（These are other two essential concepts in Piaget’s theory.）
Adaptation. In addition to(除…之外) the tendency to organize their
psychological structures, people also inherit the tendency to adapt to
their environment. Two basic processes are involved in adaptation:
assimilation and accommodation.
Assimilation takes place when people use their existing
schemes to make sense of events in their world. Assimilation
involves trying to understand something new by fitting it into what
we already know. At times, we may have to distort the new
information to make it fit.
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Accommodation occurs when a person must change
existing schemes to respond to a new situation. If data cannot be
made to fit any existing schemes, then more appropriate structures
must be developed. We adjust our thinking to fit the new information,
instead of adjusting the information to fit our thinking.
People adapt to their increasingly complex environments by
using existing schemes whenever these schemes work (assimilation)
and by modifying and adding to their schemes when something new
is needed （accommodation). In fact, both processes are required
most of the time.
There are also times when neither assimilation nor
accommodation is used. If people encounter something that is too
unfamiliar they may ignore it. Experience is filtered（过滤）to fit the
kind of thinking a person is doing at a given time. For example, if
you overhear(无意中听到) a conversation in a foreign language, you
probably will not try to make sense of the exchange unless you have
some knowledge of the language.
EQUILIBRATION(平衡)
According to Piaget, organizing, assimilating, and accommodating
can be seen as a kind of complex balancing act. In his theory, the
actual changes in thinking take place through the process of
equilibration--the act of searching for a balance. Piaget assumed that
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people continually test the adequacy（适当性） of their thinking
processes in order to achieve that balance.
Briefly, the process of equilibration works like this: If we apply
a particular scheme to an event or situation and the scheme works,
then equilibrium exists. If the scheme does not produce a satisfying
result, then disequilibrium exists, and we become uncomfortable.
This motivates us to keep searching for a solution through
assimilation and accommodation, and thus our thinking changes and
moves ahead. In order to maintain a balance between our schemes
for understanding the world and the data the world provides, we
continually assimilate （吸收） new information using existing
schemes, and we accommodate our thinking whenever unsuccessful
attempts to assimilate produce disequilibrium.
3. How Cognitive Development Occurs?
Cognitive Development is gradual，orderly, changes by which
mental process become more complex and sophisticated.
The essential development of cognition is the establishment of
new schemes.
Assimilation and accommodation are both processing of the
ways of cognitive development.
The equilibration is the symbol of a new stage of the cognitive
development.
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Piaget's theory of development represents constructivism, a view
of cognitive development as a process in which children actively
build systems of meaning and understandings of reality through
their experiences and interactions (see DeVries 1997). In this
view, children actively construct knowledge by continually
assimilating and accommodating new information (Anderson,
1989). Applications of constructivist theories to education are
discussed in Chapter 8.
4. Four stages of Cognitive development
Piaget divided the cognitive development of children
and adolescents into four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational,
concrete operational, and formal operational.
He believed that all children pass through these stages in this
order and that no child can skip a stage, although different
children pass through the stages at some what different rates
(see de Ribaupierre & Rieben, 1995).
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Stage 1 sensorimotor(0-2)
Reflexes: All infants have inborn behaviors called reflexes. Touch a
newborn's lips, and the baby will begin to suck; place your finger in
the palm of an infant's hand, and the infant will grasp it. These and
other behaviors are innate and are the building blocks from which
the infant's first schemes form.
Abject permanence. Another hallmark of the sensorimotor period is
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the development of a grasp of object permanence. Piaget argued that
children must learn that objects are physically stable and exist even
when the objects are not in the child's physical presence.
By 2 years of age, children understand that objects exist even
if they cannot be seen. When children develop this notion of object
permanence, they have taken a step toward more advanced thinking.
Once they realize that things exist out of sight, they can start using
symbols to represent these things in their minds so that they can
think about them.
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Stage 2 Pre-operational (2-7)
Infants can learn about and understand the world only by
physically manipulating objects, preschoolers have greater ability to
think about things and can use symbols to mentally represent
objects.
During the preoperational stage, children's language and
concepts develop at an incredible rate . nevertheless much of their
thinking remains surprisingly primitive.
Lock of understanding of the principles of conservation（守恒）
One of Piaget's earliest and most important discoveries was that
young children lacked an understanding of the principle of
conservation(永恒).
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Irreversible Thinking （思维不可逆性）Preschoolers' thinking
can also be characterized as being irreversible. Reversibility（可逆
性） is a very important aspect of thinking, according to Piaget; it
simply means the ability to change direction in one's thinking so that
one can return to a starting point.
Egocentric（自我中心的） Thinking
Pre-operational children
are egocentric in their thinking. Children at this stage believe that
everyone sees the world exactly as they do.
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Stage 3 Concrete Operational (7-11)
Piaget coined the term concrete operations to describe this stage
of "hands on" thinking. The basic characteristics of the stage are the
recognition of the logical stability of the physical world, the
realization that elements can be changed or transformed and sti11
conserve
many
of
their
original
characteristics,
and
the
understanding that these changes can be reversed.
The child at this stage can form concepts, see relationships,
and solve problems, but only as long as they involve objects and
situations that are familiar.
Acquire the concept of reversibility.（可逆性） During the
elementary school years, children's cognitive abilities undergo
dramatic changes. Elementary school children no longer have
difficulties with conservation problems, because they have acquired
the concept of reversibility.
Respond to inferred( 推 理 的 )reality
Another fundamental
difference between preoperational and concrete operational children
is that the younger child, who is in the preoperational stage,
responds to perceived appearances, whereas the older, concrete
operational child responds to inferred reality.
Eg. （P37－2）Flavell (1986) demonstrated this concept
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by showing children a red car and then, while they were still
watching, covering it with a filter that made it appear black.
When asked what color the car was, 3-year-olds responded
"black," and 6-year-olds responded "red." The older,
concrete operational child is able to respond to inferred
reality, seeing things in the context of other meanings;
preschoolers see what they see, with little ability to infer
the meaning behind what they see.
Seriation
One important task that children learn during the
concrete operational stage is seriation, or arranging things in a
logical progression. For example, (P37-3)lining up sticks from
smallest to largest. To do this, they must be able to order or
classify objects according to some criterion or dimension, in this
case length. Once this ability is acquired, children can master a
related skill known as transitivity, the ability to infer a relationship
between two objects on the basis of knowledge of their respective
relationships with a third object. Seriation is the process of making
an orderly arrangement from large to small. This understanding of
sequential relationships permits a student to construct a logical series
in which A < B < C (A is less than B is less than C) and so on.
Unlike the preoperational child, the concrete-operational child can
grasp the notion that B can be larger than A but smaller than C.
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Classification Another important operation mastered at this
stage is classification. Classification depends on a student's abilities
to focus on a single characteristic of objects in a set and group the
objects according to that characteristic. Given 12 objects of assorted
(混合的)colors and shapes, the concrete-operational student can
invariably pick out the ones that are round.
Classification is also related to reversibility（可逆）. The ability
to reverse a process mentally now allows the concrete-operational
student to see that there is more than one way to classify a group of
objects. The student understands, for example, that buttons can be
classified by color, then reclassified by size or by the number of
holes.
Objective Thinking(客观化思维)
Children in the elementary
grades also are moving from egocentric thought to decentered or
objective thought. Decimated thought allows children to see that
others can have different perceptions than they do.
Stage 4 Formal Operational
(11 - ADULTHOOD)
Children's thinking begins to develop into the form that is
characteristic of adults. The preadolescent begins to be able to think
abstractly and to see possibilities beyond the here and now. These
abilities continue to develop into adulthood.
With the formal operational stage comes the ability to deal
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with potential or hypothetical situations; the form is now separate
from the content.
HYPOTHETICAL CONDITIONS
Another ability that
Piaget and others recognized in the young adolescent is the ability to
reason about situations and conditions that have not been
experienced.
5. Educational Implications of Piaget’s Theory
Piaget has taught us that we can learn a great deal about how
children think by listening carefully, by paying close attention to
their ways of solving problems. If we understand children's thinking,
we will be better able to match teaching methods to children's
abilities.
(1) Understanding Students' Thinking
The students in any class will vary greatly both in their level of
cognitive development and in their academic knowledge. As a
teacher, how can you determine whether students are having trouble
because they lack the necessary thinking abilities or because they
simply have not learned the basic facts? To do this, Case(1985b)
suggests you observe your students carefully as they try to solve the
problems you have presented. What kind of logic do they use? Do
they focus on only one aspect of the situation? Are they fooled by
appearances? Do they suggest solutions systematically or by
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guessing and forgetting what they have already tried?
Ask your students how they tried to solve the problem. Listen to
their strategies. What kind of thinking is behind repeated mistakes
or problems? The students are the best sources of information
about their own thinking abilities (Confrey, 1990a).
(2) Matching Strategies to Abilities
An important implication of Piaget's theory for teaching is what
Hunt years ago (1961) called "the problem of the match." Students
must be neither bored by work that is too simple nor left behind by
teaching they cannot understand. According to Hunt, disequilibrium
must be kept "just rights to encourage growth. Setting up situations
that lead to errors can help create an appropriate level of
disequilibrium. When students experience some conflict between
what they think should happen and what actually happens, they may
rethink the situation, and new knowledge may develop.
(3) Constructing Knowledge
Piaget's fundamental insight was that individuals construct their
own understanding; learning is a constructive process. At every level
of cognitive development, you will also want to see that students are
actively engaged in the learning process. They must be able to
incorporate the information you present into their own schemes. To
do this, they must act on the information in some way. Schooling
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must give the students a chance to experience the world. This active
experience, even at the earliest school levels, should not be limited
to the physical manipulation of objects. It should also include mental
manipulation of ideas that arise out of class projects or experiments
(Ginsburg 8c Opper, 1988).
(more ideas in the textbook P 41 theory into Practice)
Part 2
Vygotsky’s View of Cognitive Development
1. Brief Introduction
Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist who, though a contemporary of
Piaget, died in 1934, only 38 when he died of tuberculosis, but he had
produced over 100 books and articles. He wrote about language and
thought, the psychology of art, learning and development, and
educating students with special needs. His work was banned in
Russia for many years because he referenced Western psychologists.
But in the past 25 years, with the rediscovery of his work, Vygotsky's
ideas about language, culture, and cognitive development have
become major influences in psychology and education (John-Steiner
& Mahn, 1996).
2. Key ideas (Social-cultural theory )
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Vygotsky's work is based on the following key ideas.
(1) First, he proposed that intellectual development can be understood
only in terms of the historical and cultural contexts children experience
(Van der Veer & Valalner, 1991).
Vygotsky believed that human activities take place in cultural settings
and cannot be understood apart from the settings. One of his key ideas
was that our specific mental structures and processes can be traced to our
interactions with others. These social interactions are more than simple
influences on cognitive development--they actually create our cognitive
structures and thinking processes (Palincsar, 1998).
In contrast to Piaget, Vygotaky proposed that cognitive development
is strongly linked to input from others.
Vygotsky assumed that "every function in a child's cultural
development appears twice: first, on the social level and later on the
individual level; first between people (inter（交互的）psychological) and
then inside the child (intra(内在的)psychological)" (1978, p. 57).
In other words, higher mental processes appear first between people
as they are co-constructed during shared activities. Then the processes are
internalized by the child and become part of that child's cognitive
development.
For example,
A six-year-old has lost a toy and asks her father for help.
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The father asks her where she last saw the toy; the child says :
“I can't remember." He asks a series of questions4id you have it
in your room? Outside? Next door? To each question, the child
answers, ~no.' When he says "in the car?" she says "1 think so"
and goes to retrieve the toy. (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988, p. 14}
Who remembered? The answer is really neither the father nor the
daughter, but the two together. The remembering and problem solving
was co-constructed—between people--in the interaction. But the child
may have internalized strategies to use next time something is lost. At
some point, the child will be able to function independently to solve this
kind of problem. So, like the strategy for finding the toy, higher functions
appear first between a child and a "teacher" before they exist within the
individual child (Kozulin, 1990).
(2)Second, he believed that development depends on the sign systems
that individuals grow up with (Rather,1991): the symbols that cultures
create to help people think, communicate, and solve problems--for
example, a culture's language, writing system, or counting system.
For Vygotsky, learning involves the acquisition of signs by means of
instruction and information from others. Development involves the child's
internalizing these signs so as to be able to think and solve problems
without the help of others. This ability is called serf-regulation.
The first step in the development of self-regulation and independent
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thinking is learning that actions and sounds have a meaning. The second
step in developing internal structures and self-regulation involves practice.
The final step involves using signs to think and solve problems without
the help of others. At this point, children become self-regulating, and the
sign system has become internalized.
PRIVATE SPEECH Private speech is a mechanism that Vygotsky
emphasized for turning shared knowledge into personal knowledge.
Vygotsky proposed that children incorporate the speech of others and then
use that speech to help themselves solve problems. Private speech is easy
to see in young children, who frequently talk to themselves, especially
when faced with difficult tasks (Diaz &Berk, 1992). Later, private speech
becomes silent but is still very important.
(3) ZPD (THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT )
The most important contribution of Vygotaky's theory is an
emphasis on the sociocultural nature of learning (Vygotsky,1978; Rerpov
& Heywood, 1998). He believed that learning takes place when children
are working within their zone of proximal development, Tasks within
the zone of proximal development are ones that a child cannot yet do
alone but could do with the assistance of more competent peers or adults.
That is, the zone of proximal development describes tasks that a child has
not yet learned but is capable of learning at a given time.
(4) SCAFFOLDING
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A key idea derived from Vygotaky's notion of social learning is that
of scaffolding (Wood, gruner, & Ross, 1976): the assistance provided by
more competent peers or adults. Typically, scaffolding means providing a
child with a great deal of support during the early sages of learning and
them diminishing support and having the child take on increasing
responsibility as soon as she or he is able.
3. Difference to Piaget’s view
Creative Thinking:
What are the differences between
Piagtet’s and Vygotsky’s theores of
Egocentric and Private Speech?
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4. Application in Education
Vygotsky's theories of education have two major implications.
One is the desirability of setting up cooperative learning arrangements
among groups of students with differing levels of ability. Tutoring by
more competent peers would be most effective in promoting growth
within the zone of proximal development (Das,1995).
Second, a Vygotskian approach to instruction emphasizes scaffolding,
with students taking more and more responsibility for their own learning.
(See Figure2.5.) For example, in reciprocal(互惠的) teaching, teachers
lead small groups of students in asking questions about material they
have read and gradually turn over responsibility for leading the discussion
to the students (Palincsar, Brown, & Martin, 1987).
Tharp and GaUimore (1988) emphasize scaffolding in an approach
they eau "assisted discovery," which calls for explicitly teaching students
to use private speech to talk themselves through problem solving.
Self Learning
Part 3
How Did Erikson View Personal and Social Development?
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As children improve their cognitive skills, they are also developing
self-concept ways of interacting with others, and attitudes toward the
world. Understanding of these personal and social developments is
critical to the teacher's ability to motivating teach, and successfully
interact with students at various ages. Like cognitive development,
personal and social development is often described in terms of stages.
Erik
Homburger Erikson (1902-1994) did not start out as a
psychologiest. In pact, Erikson never graduated from high school. He
spent his early adult years studying art and traveling around Europe.
1. the basic ideas of Erikson’s Personal and Social Development
2. The stages of Personal and Social Development
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3. Implications of Erikson’s theory
Erik Erikson’s theory——Psychosocial theory
---Combines cognitive development with social aspects
---Psychosocial Crisis /conflict
Must be resolved to continue development
Here we go,
There are 8 stages
Birth- 18months : this one is the conflict between trust and mistrust
Trust vs Mistrust:
Infant has basic need: eat, relay on mother affection(love), sleep
met(move on )
2) 18month-3years
Autonomy vs Doubt
Terrible two’s 两岁儿童 say no age
They rely on self.-should allow self reliance
3) 3-6years old
Initiative vs Guilt
Children explore own world
4)6-12years old
Industry vs Inferiority
---new bigger world
---peers become important
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Successful , good feeling
Unsuccessful, bad feeling
5) 12-18years
Identity cv Role confusion
Who I am?
They want to be somebody different.
Take a break and comeback in ten min.
Danish (丹麦人)
Part 4
Kohlberg’s stages of Moral Resoning
27