My ideas and opinions about early childhood

Think about some of the ideas you have about early childhood

Think about some of the opinions you hold about early childhood

Pair up with another person and discuss your thinking

Share with the whole group

Personal and Professional Opinions

What is a professional opinion? What is a personal opinion? It is our obligation to the children and families with

whom we work to base on decisions on professional opinion that is based on solid theory and research.

It is our obligation to leave our personal opinion at home if it is not supported by solid theory and research.

That is what makes us professionals What about other professionals?

Sensorimotor Stage: 0 – 2

Babies learn about the world by gathering information with all their senses

Curiosity is inborn and innate

Babies quickly learn concepts related to size, weight, shape, time, and space

Children in this stage are explorers!

Preoperational Stage: 2 - 7

Preschoolers begin to develop concepts more like adults, but these concepts are still incomplete

Language undergoes rapid growth

Symbolic behaviors emerge

Thinking is characterized by centration, irreversibility, and inability to conserve

Concrete Operational Stage: 7 - 11

Children are becoming conservers

Can make a mental reversal

Can handle abstract symbolic activities

The term concrete is important!

Formal Operational Stage: 11 - adulthood

Children learn to solve problems in a logical and systematic manner

Begin to understand abstract concepts; can solve abstract problems

This stage is not reached by everyone!

Lev Vygotsky

Recognized both developmental and environmental influences

Mental tools – signs Speech Writing Numbering After the age of 2, cultural influences are critical Zone of proximal development Scaffolding

Information Processing

This approach to learning theory arose in the 1960s

Mental hardware and mental software

Information based on Children by Robert V. Kail

Mental hardware

Mental and neural structures that are built-in These structures allow the mind to operate Three components

1. Sensory memory

2. Working memory

3. Long-term memory

Sensory Memory

Input (information) from the environment

Information is held in raw, unanalyzed form very briefly (no longer than a few seconds)

Working Memory

Ongoing cognitive activity

Carpenter’s workbench

Long-Term Memory

Limitless, permanent storehouse of knowledge of the world

Facts Personal events Skills Information is rarely

forgotten, although it might be hard to access

Mental software

Mental programs that are the basis for performing particular tasks

Understanding Searching Comparing Responding

Learning and Information Processing

Infants

Habituation

Classical conditioning

Operant conditioning

Imitation

Memory Preschool years

Attention

Memory

School Age Children

Strategies for remembering