Reflection

On the Growth Characteristics of Children

Childhood development refers to both the biological and pscyhological changes that occur in human beings between birth and the end of adolescence.  As children mature in age,  they grow from dependent children into autonomous adults.  

Insofar as the optimal development of children is considered vital to society, it is important to understand their development. Increased research and interest in the field of childhood development has resulted in new theories and strategies, with specific regard to practice that promotes development within the school system.  Educators have a professional and personal obligation to ensure that each child graduates from high school with the tools, knowledge, and resources to be productive and contributing members of society.  This will not happen, however, unless teachers (a) know how children’s minds and bodies grow and (b) how to teach according those growth characteristics.  

As a secondary school teacher, it is especially important that I know the physical, emotional, social, and cognitive characteristics of teenagers.  Adolescence is the period of life between the onset of puberty and the transition into adulthood.  The formation of personal and social identity and the discovery of moral purpose takes place during this time.  Adolescents demonstrate intelligence through the logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts and formal reasoning; for example, it is common for teenagers to get tattoos or body piercings as symbols of individuality.  Teenagers are often quite egocentric, convinced that the world revolves around them; yet at the same time they constantly wonder, "Who am I?  Why am I here? What do I want to be when I grow up?"   In order to formulate an identity, sense of self and the motivation to become autonomous, adolescents, much like toddlers, must ask questions, explore curiosities, test limits, and take risks. 

There are many theories and strategies that aim to translate the growth characteristics of children into research-based instructional strategies.  Educational psychologists such as John Dewey, William James, Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, and Lev Vygotsky have been most influential in regard to my own teaching.  The central concept of Dewey's view of education is that greater emphasis should be placed on the broadening of intellect and development of problem-solving and critical thinking skills rather than on the simple memorization of facts and lessons, a belief that carries over into my classroom, where I refuse to teach to the test and rarely reward rote memorization. Philosopher and psychologist William James, among many things, pioneered the law of associations, which posits that any thought that pops into a person’s head does so because that person associates it with the thought that was in his head before; James also wrote extensively on the importance of habit, emphasizing its especial importance to teachers.  Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, and Lev Vygotsky mostly concerned themselves with constructivist learning theory, which stated that humans construct meaning from pre-existing knowledge structure; in other words, it is essential to elicit students’ prior knowledge before teaching them anything new.  The terms “instructional scaffolding,” coined by Bruner, and Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development,” point to a gap between what the student already knows and what the teacher wants him to know; it is the teacher’s job to scaffold the child’s own, self-motivated acquisition of knowledge—that is, the teacher assesses the child and provides just the right amount of support for the child to grow. 

In short, my knowledge of the growth characteristics of children has been informed by the research of numerous experts.