ECE 124 Final Exam

Authoritarian Parenting

• Children are expected to follow the strict rules established by the parents

• Failure to follow such rules usually results in punishment

• Parents fail to explain the reasoning behind the rules

• If asked to explain the rules, the parents might simply reply, “Because I said so”

Authoratative Parenting

• Establish rules and guidelines that their children are expected to follow democratically

• Parents are responsive to their children and willing to listen to questions

• When children fail to meet expectations, parents are more nurturing and forgiving rather than punishing

• Disciplinary methods are supportive, rather than punitive

Permissive Parenting

• Sometimes referred to as indulgent parents, have very few demands to make of their children

• Parents rarely discipline their children because they have relatively low expectations of maturity and self-control

• Parents are generally nurturing and communicative with their children, often taking the status of a friend more than that of a parent

Uninvolved Parenting

• Characterized by few demands, low responsiveness and little communication

• Parents fulfill the child’s basic needs but are generally detached from their child’s life

• In extreme cases, parents may even reject or neglect the needs of their children

Canadian Parenting Styles

• Canadian parents are relatively lenient and emotionally warm with their children

• Exert less behaviour control are more likely to use permissive disciplinary strategies and a more tolerant of friend-related activities while continuing emotional bonds

4 Aspects of Family Functioning

1. Warmth or nurturance

2. Clarity and consistency of rules

3. Level of expectations (maturity demands)

4. Communication between parent and child

Social Cognition

• Learning is enhanced by relatively natural and informal interactions in venues such as zoos and community centers that harness children’s social skills

• Face-to-face individual tutoring is a particularly effective way of teaching, even as it has time and cost constraints

Personal and Environmental Factors

Interactions between the person and the environment involve beliefs and cognitive competencies developed and modified by social influences

Environmental and Behavioural Factors

The interaction between the environment and their behaviour involves the person’s behaviour determining their environment, which in sum, affects their behaviour

Behavioural and Personal Factors

The interaction between the person and their behaviour influenced by their thoughts and actions

Learning By Observing

• Emphasized the roles of thinking and of learning by observation in human behaviour

• Observation learning: learning that results from seeing a model reinforced or punished for a behaviour

• What an observer learns is influenced by their own goals, expectations and judgement of their own performance

Indigenous Worldviews on Attachment

• Parenting responsibilities in modern society are similar to their ancestors

• Parents continue to care for their children by providing them with love, role modelling, cultural stories and providing all their basic needs

• In the past, parents raised their children with community support

• In modern days, mothers are the primary caregivers

Dads and Attachment

• More involved in raising their children

• The style of paternal involvement varies a great deal

• Key factors affecting Fathers’ involvement

• For divorced fathers, parental involvement may be limited

Bowlby’s Ethological Theory of Attachment

• Begins with innate signals that keep parents nearby; over time, affectionate bonds form

  • Pre-attachment

  • Attachment-in-the-making

  • Clear-cut attachment, separation anxiety

  • Formation of reciprocal relationship

• Internal working model: expectations about the availability of attachment figures

Secure Attachment

• Mother: quick, sensitive, consistent

• Child: secure, exploring, happy

• Believes and trusts that their needs will be met

Avoidant Attachment

• Mother: distant, disengaged

• Child: not very explorative, emotionally distant

• Subconsciously believe that their needs probably won’t be met

Ambivalent Attachment

• Mother: inconsistent, sometimes sensitive, sometimes neglectful

• Child: anxious, insecure, angry

• Cannot rely on their needs to be met

Disorganized Attachment

• Mother: extreme, frightened, frightening, passive

• Child: depressed, passive, angry, non-responsive

• Severely confused with no strategy to have their needs met

Impacts on Social Growth and Development

• Family impact (caregivers and guardianship)

• Interdependence of domains of development

Impacts on Emotional Development

• Individual characteristics

• Genetics: temperament and personality

• Contextual factors

• Relationship with the members of their close social circle

• Parenting styles

• Experiences in early learning and care settings

• Communication and language 

• Stages of play

Kohlberg’s Model for Moral Development (Level 1)

• Level 1: Preconvention Morality: right and wrong determined by punishment and rewards

  • Stage 1 Punishment/Obedience: whatever leads to punishment is wrong

  • Stage 2 Rewards: the right way to behave is the way that is rewarded

Kohlberg’s Model for Moral Development (Level 2)

• Level 2: Conventional morality: views of others matter. Avoidance of blame and seeking approval

  • Stage 3 Good Intentions: behaving in ways that conform to “good behaviour”

  • Stage 4 Obedience to authority: the importance of “doing one’s duty”

Kohlberg’s Model for Moral Development (Level 3)

• Level 3: Post-conventional morality: abstract notions of justice. The rights of others can override obedience to laws and rules

  • Stage 5: the difference between moral and legal rights. Recognition that rules should sometimes be broken

  • Stage 6: Individual principles of conscience. Takes account of the likely views of everyone affected by a moral decision

Framework for Moral Development

• Many theorists suggest that as the child develops the capacity to view a situation from another person’s perspective, the more advanced they are in moral reasoning

• It is central to consider the cognitive capacity and social environments that provide opportunities for the child to have meaningful reciprocal conversations about moral issues (pro-social behaviour)

Cultural Worldviews On Moral Development

• The ethics of autonomy: within the cultural development approach, moral reasoning pertains to an individual’s rights, interests and well-being

• Ethics of community: within the cultural development approach, moral reasoning pertains to the duties to others, and promoting the interest and welfare of groups

• Research findings suggest that children in North America fall in the ethics of autonomy definition while in other cultures, the ethics of community is practiced

Moral Reasoning

• Moral reasoning is the process of making judgements about the rightness or wrongness of specific acts

  • Children learn to discriminate between intentional and unintentional acts between 2 and 6

Gender

• Evolutionary psychological view

• Human adaptation from reproduction roles

• Social learning approaches

  • Children learn gender-related behaviours by observing others

  • Adaptation due to social experiences

  • Social role theory: cultural definition of social hierarchy, gender differences in power, nurture and status

• Peer Influences

  • Gender composition of children’s groups

  • Group size

  • Interactions in same-sex groups

Gender Identity

• Male and female characteristics

  • Gender identity: sense of own gender, appears around 2 ½ years old

  • Gender roles: a set of expectations for females and males

  • Gender typing: acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role

• Biological influences

  • Chromosomes, hormones, evolution

Literacy Development

• Literacy typically includes the two areas of reading and writing

• Refers to the on-going development of skills needed to successfully communicate through written communication

Emergent Literacy

• Vocabulary

• Story comprehension

• Inference

• Print and alphabet knowledge

• Sound awareness

• Letter-sound knowledge

Fast Mapping

• The average 2 ½-year-old knows about 600 words, but the average 5-6-year-old knows around 15,000 words (an increase of 10 words per day)

• Fast mapping refers to the ability to categorically link new words to real-world references

  • Children hypothesize a new word meaning based on their prior knowledge of word categories and the context in which the word is used in

Phonological Awareness

• Refers to a child’s sensitivity to the sound patterns that are specific to the language being acquired

• Also includes the child’s knowledge of that particular language’s system for representing sounds with letters

• Preschoolers with good phonological awareness skills often use a strategy called invented spelling when attempting to write

Child’s View of Self

• Self-concept is one’s identity or set of beliefs about what one is like as an individual

• High self-esteem refers to the accurate perception of the self

• Consequences for children receiving praise for poor performance

• Self-regulation, the child's capacity to regulate their  behaviour, emotions and thinking process increases social competence and achievement

The Self and Morality

• Children learning the concept of right and wrong

• Developmentalists have considered moral development in terms of children’s reasoning of morality, attitudes toward moral development and behavioural responses when dealing with an issue

• Conscience emerges: regulating their initiative and imagination

• Guided by the concept of “right” and “wrong”, most influenced by parent’s teaching

• If their parent’s expectations are unrealistic or discipline their child’s mistakes, then the child may develop an oppressive burden of guilt

• Adults need to demonstrate to the child that their ideas are valuable and the adult has faith in their abilities

Resilience

• the result of a highly interactive process between individual characteristics in the person and the environment

• counterbalancing of difficult things that may happen in a child’s life

• the ability or set of capacities for positive adaptation after an adverse event

Construcatvist Theory: Piaget

• Believed that intelligence was not random, but a set of organized cognitive structures that the child actively constructed

  • Occurs through the adaptation to the environment

• developed 4 stages of development

Sensorimotor

• 0-2 years

• Children learn entirely through the movements they make and the sensations that result

• They learn that they exist separately from the objects and people around them

• They can cause things to happen and that thing continue to exist even when they can’t see them

Preoperational

• 2-7 years

• Once children acquire language, they are able to use symbols to represent object

• Their thinking is still very egocentric

• They are able to understand concepts like counting, classifying according to similarity, and past-present-future,

  • Generally are focused primarily on the present and on concrete rather than abstract

Concrete Operational

• 7-11 years

• Children are able to see things from different points of view and to imagine events that occur outside their own lives

• Some orginized, logical thought processes are now evident

• Thinking still tends to be tied to concrete reality

Formal Operational

• 11+ years

• Children are able to reason in much more abstract ways and to test hypotheses using systamtaic logic

• Much greater focus on the possibilities and on ideological issues

Information Process Theory

• Age differences a function of changes in children’s cognitive development as short-term memory advances

• Operational efficiency refers to the maximum number of schemes that can be processed in working memory at one time

• Children’s ability to make use of their memory system influences their performance on problem solving tasks and a prediction of school success

Socio-Cultural Theory- Lev Vygotsky

• Emphasizes the influence of community and culture, the role of language, the importance of play and mixed age groupings

• Viewed cognitive development as the product of social interactions

  • Focused his theory on the social aspects of development and learning

• Children gradually grow intellectually and begin to function on their own because of the assistance that adults and peer partners provide

Private Speech

• Interpreted as the critical transitional process between speaking with others and thinking for oneself

• Speech that is self-directed and used for the purpose of emotional, psychological and behavioural regulation

• Private speech is externally voiced until around 8, after which it becomes internalized

• People continue to use private speech as a means of self-regulation

Emotional Intelligence

• The emotional intelligence construct can be divided into two categories: personal and social attributes

• Person attributes are self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation, with the social attribute is social skills

• Self-awareness is recognizing and understanding one’s own emotions and those of others.

  • Refers to monitoring and identifying weaknesses, strengths, individual needs, and one’s own emotions

• Self-regulation directs and controls emotions positively and allows individuals to withhold decisions until sufficient information is collected

• Students with greater emotional intelligence are more self-confident in managing academic challenges

3 Components of Emotional Intelligence

1. awareness of one’s own emotions

2. the ability to express one’s emotions appropriately

3. the capacity to channel emotions into the pursuit of worthwhile goals

Seven Key Roles

1. Nurturer

2. Facilitator, guide and instructor

3. Role model

4. Program and curriculum organizer

5. Observer and evaluator

6. Learner and researcher

7. Colleague and professional

Supporting the Unique Needs of Children in the Classroom

• The ECE must provide a comprehensive, inclusive approach based on beliefs and values, profession experience and research that is:

  • Family centered

  • Recognizes and appreciates differences

  • Accommodates the developmental needs of all children

Creating an environment to foster the development of the “whole child”

1. High quality and inclusive ECE programs are accessible to all children and their families

2. Are designed and carried out with consideration for the unique needs of each child

3. Include ongoing evaluation of programs to ensure full participation

Gender Stereotypes

• 2-year-olds already associate certain activities and possessions with men and women

  • Depending on the adult activities they are most often and consistently exposed to at home

• By age 3-4, children can assign stereotypical occupations, toys and activities to each gender

• By age 5, children begin to associate certain personality traits with males or females

• 5-to-6-year-olds have figured out that gender is permanent and are searching for a reliable rule about how boys and girls should behave

Reducing Gender Stereotypes

• Avoid rigid gender schemas that restrict children’s behaviour and learning opportunities

• Adults can reduce and limit traditional gender roles in their own behaviour and provide children with non-traditional gender alternatives

• Teachers can ensure that all children spend time in mixed-gender play activities and unstructured pursuits

• Avoid using language that conveys gender stereotypes

  • A key skill to develop to avoid the influence of media and TV traditional roles influence

Erikson’s Theory: Initiative vs. Guilt

• Psychological conflict of the preschool years

• Initiative

  • New sense of purpose

  • Eagerness to try new tasks, join activities with peers

  • Play allows to build new skills and cooperation

  • Strides in consciences development

• Guilt

  • Overly strict superego (conscience) causes feelings of guilt

  • Related to parental threats criticism and punishment

Psychosocial Development

• Changes both in individual’s understanding of themselves and their understanding of others’ behaviours

• Society and culture present the person with challenges which shift as people mature

Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory

• Developed 8 stages of personality development in which inner instincts interact without cultural and social demands to shape personality

• 3-6-year-olds begin to develop a sense of social initiative and need opportunities to interact with peers