Transcript PPT Chapter 05 - McGraw Hill Higher Education

Chapter 5
The Early Years of Childhood
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Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
5-1
What is 'childhood'?
• A period of the lifespan based as much on social
norms as biological time
• In Pacific cultures, status depends on the situation,
not just age
• Also common in European cultures:
a person may be a "child" to their parents, even when
they are at midlife
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Cultures differ in dividing the lifespan
into phases
• NZ government:
– Tamariki (0-14 years)
– Rangatahi (15-24 years)
• Many cultures distinguish between
– Infants dependent on the caregiver (first 18
months or so)
– Early childhood (18 months to school age)
– Transition to school
• Countries differ greatly in ages at which
children start school
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Big issues about childhood
• Period of life often seen as special and protected
in various cultures
• In earlier centuries in Europe children were not
seen as special or vulnerable (Aries, 1962)
• Today many children globally suffer abuse,
neglect and genocide (United Nations web pages)
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Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Childhood as a cultural construction
Some sociologists argue that cultures' views of
childhood depend on:
– Wealth of a society & views of child labour
– Life expectancy
– Boys' and girls' access to schooling
(James, Jenks & Prout, 1998)
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Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Diversity in children's lives
• There is no "typical child"
• Affluent Euro-Western children differ greatly from
children in much of the world
• Access to enough food and healthcare differs
• Low birthweight and early birth babies survive less
often in poorer countries
• Children without resources may not reach their full
potential
(Melchior et al., 2007)
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Discourses about childhood
1. Childhood is a distinctive stage
2. Childhood is about progress
3. Childhood is about independence
4. Children as the future
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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1. Childhood is a distinctive stage
• The theories of Piaget and Freud have stages to
describe childhood
• This is linked with views of biologists about
immature forms of organisms
(e.g. tadpoles turning into frogs)
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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2. Childhood is about progress
• The child is often contrasted with the adult
– As though the child is half-formed
– Progressing towards maturity
– Deficient but constantly improving
• Children do, however, have their own
competencies and are unique, valuable people in
their own right
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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3. Childhood is about independence
• Key concept used in describing children's changes
across age
• Cultures differ in definitions and views of
independence
– Affluent US mothers less likely than Mayan to let
toddlers get their own way (Rogoff, 2003)
– NZ children playing outdoors unsupervised may be
unusual
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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4. Children as the future
• Many cultures value childhood as representing the
next generation
• Special recognition given to hopes for the future
E tipu e rea mo nga ra o tou ao
(In our children lies our future)
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Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Nature and nurture
• Recap:
– Genome is a person's unique genetic description
("nature")
– Often contrasted with the environment around the person
("nurture")
– But the two are always intertwined
• Very hard to predict what a child will be like later in
life
• Famous quote from John B. Watson (1930)
against fixed nature:
“Give me a dozen healthy infants … and my own
specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to
take any one at random and train him to become any
type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist …
and, yes, even beggar-man and thief”
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Are some children doomed from the
start?
• Research has NOT found risk factors that
inevitably give a child a poor outcome in life (see
Masten & Gewirtz, 2006)
• Influences are multi-directional
– Not just poverty that affects the child's nutrition
but
– Children respond differently to different types of
food and nurturing
– In a two-way causal process
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Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Temperament in early childhood
• Is the temperament (emotional constitution) of a child
set early on?
• Parents' observations of their own children in the
Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health & Development
Study (2009) noted stability from age 3 to 9
– Some children consistently more 'approachable'
– Others more 'sluggish' or 'restless'
• But cultures differ greatly in interpreting children's
moods & behaviour
• Children do change over time
• Cultures differ in what temperaments they value or
avoid, e.g. talkativeness!
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Predictions about development
• Piaget's theory suggests that children's
development could determine their ‘readiness’ to
understand many concepts
• Recent research shows children understand many
things earlier than previously thought
• Cultural diversity means that there is NO single
universal path in child development
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Children with disabilities
• May not fit expected norms in development,
but norms (e.g. expected ages for answering the
phone or looking after siblings) differ by culture
• One in five New Zealanders will be disabled at
some time in life
www.odi.govt.nz
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Language development
• Acquiring a language
– Phonology: sounds
– Lexicon: vocabulary
– Syntax: rules of grouping
– Grammar: phonology + syntax
– Pragmatics: everyday uses of language
• Narratives bring cultural knowledge to
conversation
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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When families have more than one
language
• Many children acquire more than one language
– Language in home may differ from majority in the
country
– Bilingualism: some fluency in two languages
– Many different types of bi- and multi-lingualism
– No clear disadvantage in development
– Can enhance child's cultural understanding
• Strengthening te reo Māori in Aotearoa
– Te Kōhanga Reo
– 'Language nests' support young children & families
who speak many minority languages in NZ
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Figuring out the basics: Jean Piaget
• Pre-operational thinking
– Poor on understanding of conservation
(i.e. understanding that physical properties
remain the same despite appearances to the
contrary)
• Ages for success on Piaget's tasks are lower in
'child friendly' testing situations
• Piaget's theory still useful but has evolved into
new directions
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Understanding how others see the
world
• Egocentrism: centering on your own point of view
• Importance of play: trying out new actions &
understandings through assimilation
• Learning about others through interest in and
responding to others (Dunn, 1988, 1991)
• Learning about emotions through hearing people
talk about them
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Theory of Mind
• At some point children learn that everyone has a
unique mind or mental life
• This helps us to understand others by anticipating
what they might think or why they did something
• Pretend play can show evidence of Theory of
Mind (Kavanaugh, 2006)
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Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Cultural setting for development:
Lev Vygotsky
• Language is a much bigger part of development
in this theory compared to Piaget
• Zone of Proximal Development:
– Space between what the child can do alone in
comparison to accomplishment with others'
help
• Caregivers and older peers may 'scaffold' (provide
supporting structure) for the child on a task
• Example: tuakana (older child) / teina (younger
child) relationships
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Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Knowing oneself helps social
understanding
• Moral development : Kohlberg's theory
– Preconventional stage: Punishment defines
what is bad!
• Emotional self-regulation improves, as does
capacity of empathy for others
• Improving language skills help in social relationships
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PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
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Early Childhood Education (ECE)
• 94% of NZ children attended some kind of early
childhood service in 2006
• Cultures differ in the developmental changes
considered most important in early childhood
• In Aotearoa there is a national ECE curriculum:
– Te Whāriki
• ECE can be an important support for the child’s
development
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Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
PPTs to accompany Claiborne & Drewery, Human Development
5-24