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Attention is a particularly interesting topic in education as we are seeing the highest numbers of ADD and ADHD diagnoses ever. This chapter explores the different factors contributing to a child's attention as well as how it develops over time. It explains the breakdown to types of brain function and maturation in different systems.
The orienting system develops first and gives children the ability to direct their attention to intriguing objects/events.
The arousal system develops as the child ages and allows the child to maintain attention and focus while thinking. The executive control system is the last to develop/mature and lets children expand their attention to keep on track with goals, planning, and avoiding irrelevant stimuli.

https://www.parents.com/kids/development/intellectual/how-to-improve-attention-spans/

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My 5-year-old son, Walker, pays attention only when he wants to. I'm showing him how to make the letter "A" for what seems like the millionth time. I say, "Start at the top, go down, and make a line across." As I'm talking, he's looking at everything except at what he's doing. He fidgets and plays with his pencil. I keep pulling his attention back to what we're doing and my constant refrain is "Pay attention!" but I'm losing my patience. He listens when I read his favorite books, and he listens to his swim teacher when she tells him to extend his arms to improve a stroke, but this is an exercise in frustration.

Child development experts say that, on average, a 4- or 5-year-old child should be able to stay focused on a task for two to five minutes times the year of their age. So, young kids should be able to focus between 4 and 20 minutes, possibly more, depending on the task. But this rule of thumb, just like any guideline for raising children, depends on the situation. "Attention span has to be contextualized," says Neal Rojas, M.D., a developmental behavioral pediatrician at the University of California, San Francisco. "Are we talking about the first thing in the morning, the middle of day, before naptime, before bedtime? I tell [parents] that they will see a variation throughout the day. Attention span is elastic."

Give Attention to Get Attention

How much attention a child gives a task also depends on whether he is enjoying himself. Many children struggle when asked to do something they don't want to do. "The first time you introduce an activity that is more important to you than to your child, you are testing your creativity and flexibility as a parent and teacher," Dr. Rojas explains. This is where the struggle lies for many parents, because kids entering school have to do more structured, repetitive, and academic tasks, such as writing their names or sounding out letters. Walker and I certainly bump heads on this a lot. Some afternoons, I may want him to work on learning sight words but he'll want to crash his Matchbox cars together on the family room floor. Still, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. "Playing with cars is intrinsically motivating for kids," says Margret Nickels, Ph.D., a clinical psychologists and the director of the Center for Children & Families at the Erikson Institute in Chicago. "There are 5-year-olds who can play with Legos for 30 minutes but who can't sit still to write their names."

So a little creativity can go a long way in turning something dull into something fun. Instead of insisting that my son write the letter "A" with a pencil in his workbook, I can ask him to write it with chalk, shape it with Play-Doh, or even trace it with paint on a big easel, says Mary Doty, a kindergarten teacher at Waimea Country School on the Big Island of Hawaii. "Workbooks can be overwhelming for children, so make [your] own ABC book," Doty suggests. "Cut pictures out of newspapers or magazines [of things] that start with 'A' or look through magazines to see how many 'As' can be found. Use blocks to make the letter 'A.' All of this helps with fine motor skills -- and it's more interesting.' Even playing I Spy and Red Light Green Light, board games, and memory games can strengthen attention muscles. And parents should take time to notice small and interesting details in their surroundings, which shows a child how to pay attention. During a walk, parents can stop and point out the colors of flowers they see or talk about the shape and feel of the rocks they pick up.

To get a child's attention, parents must also give attention. "It's easy for a parent to get stuck in a rut. Our attention is often scattered," Dr. Rojas says. "But if our attention is scattered, and we can't bring ourselves back to the moment, we can't expect a child to be able to do so." Being in close physical proximity while giving clear and concise instructions helps children focus better on what is being said. "The best way to get them to pay attention is to be physically close to the child. Don't shout requests from the kitchen to the living room," Dr. Nickels says. "Go into the living room, stand in front of your child, make eye contact, be at eye level or touch their shoulder, and say 'I need you to do this now.' " Dr. Rojas says, "If I stop and look at my child and say, 'Hey, Alex, look at me. What do you need to be doing right now?' He'll say, 'Reading'. Then, I'll say, 'Show me you know what you need to do.' "

How to Decrease the Distractions

Parents should also be aware if something is getting in the way of a child paying attention. Is she hungry or tired? To combat hunger or fatigue, give your child a snack before she starts homework or any structured task. Make sure the snack is a healthy one, rather than one loaded with sugar and fat. According to the Mayo Clinic, some smart choices include whole-grain pretzels, raw veggies dipped in fat-free dressing or hummus, yogurt, and peanut butter spread on a banana or apple. A good night's sleep is important as well, so make sure your child is getting enough rest. And many kids need a little break when they come home from school. "Everyone needs downtime. It helps us to come back and focus. If kids don't have downtime and they're overscheduled, they may plead for downtime through their behavior," Dr. Rojas says. "They may go against the routine or demands we're making, [which tells] us they need some wiggle room for their minds to wander and relax."

If siblings distract each other, have them work in separate rooms. Betsy Hiatt, a mother of six in Olympia, Washington, knows the importance of kids paying attention. Four of her youngest children are two sets of twins, ages 6 and 8. Her 6-year-old twins have difficulty paying attention in school and at home, but one of her 8-year-olds, who used to have a short attention span, is getting better as he matures. Her strategy is to set up regimented but separate routines. While one child is practicing the piano in the living room, another child is working on homework in a room next to the kitchen, yet another is eating a snack in the kitchen, and another is reading in a nook in the kitchen. Although this strategy may seem a bit like musical chairs, it's working for Hiatt because she is able to give each child individual attention. "I have tried having everyone all in the same room, and it can work, but that tends to get chaotic and counterproductive," Hiatt says. "I figure the kids have been in a classroom setting all day and they all kind of want one-on-one [time] with mom."

Hiatt has her older twins help the younger two stay focused. She doesn't allow any of her children to watch TV or play on the computer until all of them are finished with their homework; this motivates them to help each other keep their minds on the tasks because they all want free time with the TV and computer games. "You have to keep directing them, but you also have to let kids figure things out on their own," she says. "So parents should not give up talking to their kids about the importance of paying attention. Even if though they don't seem like they are listening, they are."

Children can tune out and stop paying attention when they think a task is too hard for them. They may need instructions broken into small steps, Dr. Nickels says. For example, instead of telling a child to clean his room, it might be better to say, "First, please pick up all of your Legos and then I'll come back and tell you what you need to do next." Sometimes even illustrating a routine on paper and posting it on the wall can serve as one good visual reminder instead of constant missed verbal reminders, Dr. Rojas says. Keep in mind that that giving short reminders is more positive and works better than long-winded explanations, yelling, or guilt tripping. And remember to praise the children's efforts. "A lot of times in our culture, we praise the outcome. We say 'Great job, look what you can do.' We ? don't focus on how wonderful it is that the child put effort into something," Dr. Nickels says. "Instead of saying 'You didn't write your name quite right, or the letter 'H' goes like this, we should say 'You try so hard to hold your pen and stay within the line. That's wonderful.' "

Research has also shown that exercise can help kids pay attention. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research review from 2010 revealed that elementary school children who took breaks from classwork to be active during the day could concentrate better on schoolwork. Other studies have reported that parents who make exercise a priority in their family life will have more physically active kids; parents should help their children find a sport they like, provide outdoors toys such as balls and jump ropes, and set aside time each day for activities such as going on a walk or riding a bike together.

Is an Attention Problem the Same as ADHD?

Another way to encourage children to be more active is by limiting TV time, which can sap a young child's attention span. A 2011 study published in Pediatrics found that SpongeBob SquarePants and other fast-paced cartoons shortened the attention spans of 4-year-olds. "Overstimulation and exposure to television, computers, and video games can really hurt attention spans," Doty says. "I can't tell you how many times I have had to stand on my head to get some of my students' attention because they had been babysat by the television." The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than one to two hours per day of total high-quality screen time, including TV, videos, computers, phones, and video games. (And kids under age 2 should not be exposed to any screen time and other entertainment media.)

Instead of turning on the TV or handing over the smartphone to your children, have them focus on other activities that will help increase attention spans. Children can read, work on a puzzle, help make dinner, build forts out of blocks and chairs, and help with household chores. Just turning the TV off and having a conversation with a young child can build attention; when parents focus on their child and listen, they model how to pay attention. Recently, my husband said he would make a point of having conversations with Walker, a quiet middle child who can get lost in the shuffle because he's sandwiched between a talkative 8-year-old brother and a charming 2-year-old brother.

But sometimes, a child may have attention problems that are difficult to solve with simple strategies, and parents may need help from a teacher, pediatrician, or even a psychologist. Some red flags include a 4- or 5-year-old having consistent trouble engaging with anything for more than two or three minutes, needing constant guidance to do an activity that should be manageable, jumping from one activity to another, and being unable to control impulses. For example, a preschooler may be unable to stay seated and attentive during reading time because he sees the classroom aide setting up snacks. Instead of staying in the circle, he may get up because he wants to eat a snack. "If he wants what he wants when he wants it all the time, that could be a sign of an immature or not fully functioning attention span at 4 or 5," Dr. Rojas says.

It's important, though, that parents be careful about assuming their child has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a syndrome usually diagnosed in early childhood that is characterized by impulsivity, overactivity, inattentiveness, or a combination of all three. ADHD may not always be the root cause; there may be other influencing factors. "As adults, when we're worried about something, it's hard for us to pay attention. A lot of children we see who come in for evaluation have underlying anxieties about not being perfect or not being able to do something," Dr. Nickels says. If a child is diagnosed with ADHD, parents should work with a mental health professional to develop a plan that will help increase a child's attention span.

Mental health issues, such as depression, anger, and anxiety, can make it difficult for children to focus, and young children need help learning how to cope with these feelings. Parents should talk with their children about how they are feeling and help them put their feelings into words. For example, a parent could say, "You may be worried about Dad going away on a business trip." Once a conversation is started, the next step is to help the child do something that will make her feel better, such as drawing a picture to present as a gift for her dad's return.

Now, with my own son, I have implemented some suggested strategies. We?ve made letters using rocks, toy cars, and wooden blocks, and our schedule is more set after school: He plays a little, eats a snack, and then tackles academic work. He does his homework in a separate room with his dad, which allows my husband to give him undivided attention. After being in school for several months, Walker is able to focus better and longer, and his kindergarten teacher has noticed and praised him for it. It's still not always easy for him to pay attention, but it is easier to pull his attention back to a task when it starts to wander. He still doesn't love writing, but he has learned to write the alphabet, a few words, and even some short sentences. Time works wonders.
Copyright © 2013 Meredith Corporation.

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My 5-year-old son, Walker, pays attention only when he wants to. I'm showing him how to make the letter "A" for what seems like the millionth time. I say, "Start at the top, go down, and make a line across." As I'm talking, he's looking at everything except at what he's doing.

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Pg. 5

When discussing childhood development, characteristics are often broken down into two categories, nature and nurture. Nature refers to genetic/biological factors contributing to development. Nurture, on the other hand, refers to characteristics coming from the child's daily environment (parental interaction, home life, etc.)

Nature Vs. Nurture is a key concept to keep in mind when working with students. This concept often can show a behind-the-scenes look into a student's behavior, attitude, and performance.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-018-0023-z.pdf
This article dives deeper into nature and nurture in parents decision reflecting education.

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Late adolescence is a key developmental period as it begins the process of truly discovering their sense of self but also preparing them for life as an adult. This section also discusses ways schools can help embrace students as they go through these stages by supporting students as they explore new hobbies, ways of dressing, etc.

As a future teacher of high school aged students, the late adolescence period is particularly important to understand. While at this point, I cannot fully understand the circumstances of the earlier development. However, I can have a hand in effecting how they continue to development while they come through my classroom.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-lifespandevelopment/chapter/school-during-adolescence/
This article discusses specific issues in development that take place through high school.

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School During Adolescence | Lifespan Development

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Pg. 36

When psychologists/scientists are looking to do research in the field of child development, there are certain principles they must be sure to follow - an ethical code, the scientific method, as well as selecting children/adolescents that can provide needed information.

The Ethical Protection of Children Code is broken down into 6 main topics:
Do No Harm - no procedures can cause children stress, embarrassment or pain
Get approval from authorities  - researchers must prepare a proposal and receive approval from the appropriate school, university or organization.
Obtain consent from participants and their families - procedures of research must also be explained fully to the child and their families.
Preserve children's privacy - When singling out a child in results, researchers must use false names and withhold any other identifying information
Be Honest - Because children are often most trusting of adults, researchers are not allowed to be dishonest with children and should avoid deception as much as possible. Communicate openly - Any questions from children and their families should be answered openly and honestly. Results should also be shared, when appropriate, in an open manner.

More Information found here: https://www.srcd.org/about-us/ethical-principles-and-standards-developmental-scientists

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Ethical Principles and Standards for Developmental Scientists | Society for Research in Child Development SRCD

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Promoting equity also extends to the experience of participating in research. Both the benefits and burdens of research should be equitably distributed across individuals, families, and communities. Children and families across diverse populations should have equal access to participate in research designed to prevent developmental vulnerability and promote positive development.

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Pg. 49

This chapter gives great insight on classroom assessments from all angles. It describes both formal and informal assessments as well as best practices for each. One of the key highlights of the chapters comes on page 54 in the discussion of standardized tests. These are key, especially in today's society as education is often result-orientated, particularly with the results of standardized testing. This chapter was very helpful for future teachers, like myself, as I think and prepare for the types of assessments that will be most effective in my classroom.

More Information in Teachers, Schools, and Society: A Brief Introduction to Education - Chapter 10 "Curriculum, Standards, and Testing"

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Accommodating the Full Range of Family Structures

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Accommodating the Full Range of Family Structures

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This part of chapter 3 focuses on the varying types of families that children in our classrooms could be coming from. Many students also experience some change in their family structure at some point during their development. "Teachers can be inclusive of children and their families by welcoming everyone, reassuring children during family transitions, discouraging discriminatory remarks by children, and respecting children's privacy." (pg. 79)

This is wonderful advice and information throughout this section as we learn about the different types of families students come from but also the best way that we, as teachers, can be accommodating and inclusive to these families so that the students feel the most comfortable with us and their situations.

More Information in Teachers, Schools, and Society: A Brief Introduction to Education, Chapter 4 "Student Life in School and at Home"

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Working with Children from Low-Income Families

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Working with Children from Low-Income Families

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Pg. 109

My personal community is one where several schools are lower income populations. This section was incredibly telling on what strategies can be used to help make school an accessible place for students from low-income families. One of the sub-sections focuses on being a mentor (pg. 111). This is a factor that I am particularly passionate about with my students. I want to be a resource for students but also to help them achieve their goals beyond the walls of the school - especially coming from a higher education background where I could help these particular students find an affordable option for higher education.

https://www.lexialearning.com/blog/relationships-matter-advice-working-low-income-students

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Relationships Matter: Advice for Working with Low-Income Students

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It's no secret that poverty impacts a child's chances for success in school. Today, the majority of students in many teachers' classrooms come from families with limited economic means. In fact, in 2015, the majority of public school students in the United States (just over 50 percent) qualified for free and reduced lunch at school, according to federal income guidelines.

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The Blending of Heredity and Environment

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The Blending of Heredity and Environment

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Pg. 126

Along with Nature Vs. Nurture debate, this section highlights how the two can often blend together. Many naturally occurring things, like genetics, are complex and can show themselves with varying degrees. However, when coupled with certain environments, these nature-based factors can become more prominent. For example, a student that is pre-disposed to have successful hand-eye coordination may not recognize this ability unless his environment gives him the opportunity to use and show this skill (i.e. by joining an athletic team, etc.)

This is important to consider in the education field as it becomes even more crucial to help create environments and scenarios that can give students a highlight their natural-born skills and potential that they may not have yet had the chance to explore.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/blending-inheritance

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At this time it was generally accepted that this "blending inheritance" in which the characterization of the offspring tends to be intermediate between those of the two parents in respect of such complex qualities as strength, vigour, size, intelligence and the like, could not be accommodated by the Mendelian scheme although Udny Yule * in 1902 had shown beyond all reasonable doubt that the same mechanism could satisfy the demands both of the typical Mendelian and of the blending type of inheritance. The importance of this paper was not recognized and it was not until the later work of Nilsson-Ehle,† East,‡ Emerson§ and Fisher‖ had shown that blending inheritance was in fact essentially Mendelian and that it was controlled by multiple factors which individually lacked dominance that disputation ceased.

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History

Darwin's theory of evolution transformed biology in the mid-nineteenth century. However, Darwin had an inaccurate understanding of heredity and his belief in blending inheritance was problematic. Because blending inheritance ultimately results in homogenized populations full of intermediate genotypes, it is unable to explain how genetic variation can persist over evolutionary time ( Charlesworth and Charlesworth, 2009). It wasn't until the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics in the early twentieth century that a potential solution could be found. Importantly, Mendel treated genes as discrete units, which enabled a mathematical formulation of population genetics. Despite the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics and the pioneering work of biologists and statisticians (Castle, 1903; Pearson, 1904) there was still some confusion, and during a 1908 meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine it was claimed that dominant mutations would increase in frequency until phenotypes reached 3:1 Mendelian ratios (Provine, 2001). Something about this claim seemed wrong to R.C. Punnett, who passed on the question to his cricket-playing friend G.H. Hardy. Hardy was one of the leading mathematicians in Britain and he quickly deduced a solution. In a 1908 letter to the journal Science, Hardy began by writing "I should have expected the very simple point that I wish to make to have been familiar to biologists" before using the binomial expansion to demonstrate that genotype frequencies will reach a stable equilibrium after one generation of random mating (Hardy, 1908). Unbeknownst to Hardy, a Germany physician named Wilhelm Weinberg had published a similar paper on the same topic six months earlier. Weinberg derived a general equilibrium principle for a single locus with two segregating alleles (Weinberg, 1908).

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Rediscovery of Mendel

Bateson became aware of Gregor Mendel's work in the summer of 1900 and was quick to realize that Mendel's principles of heredity offered both a theoretical explanation of non-blending inheritance and an experimental approach for identifying hereditary patterns. Bateson and Saunders reinterpreted and published their data in the first of what became a five-part series, Reports to the Evolution Committee of the Royal Society, 1-5 (London: Harrison, 1902-1909). In the first report, Bateson and Saunders used this new understanding to explain various cases, including the work of a distinguished physician and contemporary, Archibald Garrod, who was studying a rare abnormality, alkaptonuria, in which a person produces urine that blackens on exposure to air. The condition is particularly likely to occur in the offspring of first-cousin marriages as would be predicted on Mendelian principles. Armed with this insight, Garrod developed his concept in the book Inborn Errors of Metabolism (1909) and is regarded as the founder of biochemical genetics.

Bateson and Saunders launched an ambitious Mendelian research program, drawing assistance from women studying at Newnham and Girton Colleges, who welcomed the opportunity to contribute to a promising research program at a time when women were excluded from degrees. Bateson's program soon attracted Cambridge students as well, most notably Reginald Crundall Punnett who became a long-time colleague. By 1909 Bateson's "school of genetics" had gone far to validate Mendelian principles.

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URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128096338061331

2.3.1 Mendelism

The demonstration of the particulate nature of inheritance was the contribution of Gregor Mendel (1822-84), a monk and later abbot in an Augustinian monastery (Fig. 1.1 ) in Brünn (now Brno), Moravia (now the Czech Republic). The terms dominant and recessive were his. The delay in recognition of his work has been attributed to various factors, but the most likely is poor timing; in 1865, when Mendel reported his findings and conclusions, the chromosomes had not yet been discovered. Because its physical basis, meiosis had not yet been described, Mendelism had no plausible basis to qualify it over other possible mechanisms of inheritance. such as blending inheritance, which was favored by Francis Galton (1822-1911), one of Mendel's contemporaries [151].

R.A. Fisher (1890-1962) [2] raised a question whether Mendel's results were "too good"; that is, the data agreed too closely with the conclusions (see the discussion of this matter by Novitski [3]). (Mendel's "round" [R] vs. "wrinkled" [r] trait in the garden pea has been shown to be due to a transposon insertion in the R gene for a starch-branching enzyme. The wrinkled state is due to the lack of an osmotic effect present when the normally functioning enzyme is present. The first demonstration of mutation in the human due to the insertion of a transposon was provided by the Kazazian group [4]: a movable element from chromosome 22 was inserted into the factor VIII gene causing hemophilia A.)

Human chromosomes, visualized in tumor cells in mitosis, were pictured in a paper by Walther Flemming (Fig. 1.2A), professor of anatomy in Kiel, in 1882 (Fig. 1.2B). The term chromosome was introduced by Waldeyer in 1888. Mitosis and meiosis were described in the last quarter of the 19th century. (The term meiosis was introduced in 1905 by Farmer and Moore; the process had been previously referred to as the reduction divisions. The word "miosis," usually taken to mean "reduction in size of the pupil," is from the same root. It is fortunate that the words are spelled differently in the two usages. In fact, Farmer and Moore spelled it "maiosis." They wrote as follows: "We propose to apply the terms Maiosis or Maiotic phase to cover the whole series of nuclear changes included in the two divisions that were designated as Heterotype and Homotype by Flemming.")

During the 1880s, Roux, de Vries, and Weismann developed the theory that the chromosomes carry determinants of heredity and development. The state of cytogenetics before the discovery of Mendel's work was reviewed by E.B. Wilson (Fig. 1.3) in his classic text [5]. In a discussion of the Roux-de Vries-Weismann theory (pp. 182-185), Wilson [5] wrote that "the chromatin is a congeries or colony of invisible self-propagating vital units ..., each of which has the power of determining the development of a particular quality. Weismann conceives these units ... [to be] associated in linear groups to form the ... chromosomes."

In 1900, Mendelism was rediscovered independently by Hugo de Vries (1848-1935) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Carl F.J.E. Correns (1864-1933) in Tübingen, Germany; and Erich von Tschermak (1871-1962) in Vienna, Austria. The chromosome theory of Mendelism was put forward about 1903 by Walter S. Sutton (1877-1916) (Fig. 1.4), then a graduate student at Columbia under E.B. Wilson [6,7], and by Theodor Boveri (1862-1915) of Würzburg, Germany, a leading cytologist to whom Wilson dedicated his landmark book (1896). Sutton, a Kansas farm boy, had studied meiosis in the Kansas grasshopper at Kansas University under C.E. McClung. He was in New York in 1902 when William Bateson, the leading English champion for Mendelism, lectured there on the subject. Sutton promptly recognized the behavior of Mendel's so-called factors in transmission from one generation to the next as exactly what one would expect if they were located on the chromosomes. The segregation of alleles and assortment of nonalleles were precisely what one would anticipate given the observed behavior of the chromosomes in meiosis.

William Bateson (1861-1926) had a difficult time converting biometricians to the Mendelian view of heredity. These were the disciples of Francis Galton, including Karl Pearson (1857-1936), who favored blending inheritance. They were led to this view through experiences with the study of quantitative traits that we would call multifactorial. Their recalcitrance is evident in the following statement [8]:

As we have seen in the course of this work, albinism is a graded character, and we have every reason to believe that both in man and dogs separate grades are hereditary ... Mendelism is at present the mode-no other conception of heredity can even obtain a hearing. Yet one of the present writers at least believes that a reaction will shortly set in, and that the views of Galton will again come by their own.

The views of the biometricians and Mendelists were reconciled by R.A. Fisher in a classic paper published in 1918 [9]. Fisher showed that the Mendelian behavior of multiple genes functioning together can explain the findings of the biometricians in regard to quantitative traits. (In his 1918 paper, Fisher introduced the term variance.)

Bateson made many contributions to genetics, including the introduction of the term. In a letter written in 1905, related to a projected new professorship at Oxford University (which he did not receive), Bateson wrote as follows:

If the Quick Fund were used for the foundation of a Professorship relating to Heredity and Variation the best title would, I think, be "The Quick Professorship of the Study of Heredity." No single word in common use quite gives this meaning. Such a word is badly wanted and if it were desirable to coin one "Genetics" might do. Either expression clearly includes Variation and the cognate phenomena.

Another of Bateson's accomplishments was the discovery (with Punnett) of linkage in the domestic fowl. They misinterpreted the phenomenon and assigned terms that have been perpetuated, however; coupling and repulsion signify whether the two mutant genes of particular interest are on the same chromosome or on opposite chromosomes, respectively. The true significance of linkage and the application of linkage and crossing over to chromosome mapping were contributions of Thomas Hunt Morgan et al. (1866-1945) working in the famous "fly room" at Columbia (Fig. 1.5). Alfred Sturtevant was then a college undergraduate; Calvin Bridges and Hermann Muller were junior associates of Morgan. The unit of genetic map distance, the centimorgan (cM), was named for Morgan. He obtained his PhD in 1892 from Johns Hopkins University, he was the first native-born American to be awarded the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine (1933), given for his contributions to the concept of the gene.

In 1927, Hermann J. Muller (1890-1967) demonstrated that X-irradiation produces an increase in the rate of mutation in Drosophila. For this work, he received the Nobel prize in 1946.

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Although "like begets like" must be one of the oldest observations of mankind, it was only in the 19th century that major scientific advances began. Charles Darwin put forward his theory of the origin of the species by natural selection but he lacked a credible theory of the mechanism of inheritance. He believed in blending inheritance which meant that variation would be continually removed and he was therefore compelled to introduce variation in each generation as an inherited acquired character. Gregor Mendel, working at the same time, discovered the laws of inheritance and showed how the characteristics of the organism could be accounted for by factors which specified them. Mendels' work was rediscovered in 1900 independently by Correns, de Vries and Tchermak and soon after this, Bateson coined the term "gene" for the Mendelian factors and called the science, "genetics."

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1.3 Mendel's contributions

All living organisms possess well-defined cellular architecture which is controlled by the genes that they have inherited from their parents. The branch of science dealing with heredity and variation is known as genetics. The history of genes and genetics dates back to Gregor Mendel's work on pea plants in the nineteenth century. Before Mendel's work, pangenesis and blending inheritance theories were the accepted theories in the biological world to explain inheritance in living organisms, but Mendel's work explained the inheritance based on scientific experiments. He is honoured with title 'Father of Genetics'. He observed that different traits such as height, colour of the flower, etc., are controlled by particulate matters present in the cell, which he termed factors. The factor controlling each trait is particulate in nature and the factors interact with each other when they are passed on to the progenies but they do not contaminate each other. In 1905, Mendel's work was rediscovered by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak. Subsequently, Mendel's laws of inheritance were explained.

Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-84)

Mendel was a priest and a scientist. He devised a systematic experimental set up to study inheritance. His scientific achievements were recognized only after his death. Besides pea plants, he also worked on honeybees but he could not prove inheritance in honeybees as controlled mating was not possible.

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The Origin of Evolutionary Genetics

The Argument over Variation

Darwin argued that the driving force of evolution would be a natural process of selection, acting on variations among individuals within a population and causing some individuals to leave more offspring than others. The notion of a 'natural' selection had been suggested prior to Darwin to explain the persistence of certain populations and the extinction of others through episodes of environmental change (Eiseley, 1958). In these cases, selection was posited to act on traits that were shared by all of the members of a population. Darwin's genius lay in perceiving that selection could act on the differences among individuals.

For Darwinian selection to generate evolutionary change, some of the trait variation among individuals must be inherited. Moreover, the mechanism of inheritance must preserve variation in the absence of selection. Blending inheritance, which was the mechanism postulated in Darwin's time, would quickly homogenize heritable variation among individuals. Under blending inheritance, any observable variation among individuals would be environmentally induced and Darwin's postulated mechanism would be unable to produce any lasting change.

The discovery of particulate inheritance did not immediately vindicate Darwin's ideas (Provine, 1971). In fact, it bolstered his critics because the limited genetic variation in one-locus, two-allele systems constrains how much change selection can catalyze. The rapid attainment of limits to selectively driven change in such cases suggested that mutation, and not natural selection, would be the major driving force of evolution. Further, if there were a one-to-one relationship between a gene and a single, discrete phenotypic trait, selection would require enormous periods to alter many of an organism's features because the process would be limited by the rate at which mutations for each feature appeared. In this view, Darwinian selection might explain small, occasional changes in organismal features but could not possibly be a driving force for significant evolution.

The Emergence of Evolutionary Genetics

Particulate inheritance of discrete traits has mathematical precision: crosses between individuals with different features produce progeny with a predictable statistical distribution of those features. The earliest studies of inheritance uncovered these predicted distributions in various circumstances: one locus with two alleles, two independently segregating loci each with two alleles, and, eventually, two linked loci (Edwards, 2012).

Once the statistical nature of inheritance was understood, scientists turned their attention to describing the distributions of allele frequencies in large natural populations. It quickly became apparent that with particulate inheritance, variation would not be blended away (the Hardy-Weinberg-Yule equilibrium). Moreover, it became clear that Darwinian selection would act by altering the distribution of allele frequencies over time. Among the earliest of these demonstrations was Castle's (1903) description of how deleterious recessives would be eliminated from a population and Norton's calculations of the number of generations required for selection to change allele frequencies from one set of values to another (presented in Punnett's 1915 book (Provine, 1971)).

There was still controversy. While the mathematics of inheritance was clear for discrete phenotypic traits, attempts to characterize the inheritance of continuous traits, which characterized a species and defined its distinction from other species, had produced no similarly simple mathematical rules. Without such a theory, it was unclear how natural selection could drive changes in such traits.

In a monumental paper in 1918, R. A. Fisher produced that theory (Fisher, 1918). This paper derived precise mathematical predictions for correlations among relatives of specified degrees and demonstrated that those predictions were entirely general, regardless of how many loci were involved, how many alleles segregated at each locus, and what levels of allelic dominance prevailed. Fisher's paper also defined a more sophisticated approach to genetics, a general mathematical representation of a class of problems instead of an arithmetical description of one type of problem. Evolutionary genetics had been born.

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Early Development of the Synthetic Theory: Theoretical Population Genetics

The first phase of the development of the synthetic theory came when mathematical population genetic theory united Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolutionary processes, including natural selection. Predominant among these theoreticians were the British geneticists Sir Ronald Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane, and the American geneticist Sewall Wright.

Early in his career, Fisher (1918) showed that Jenkin's objection regarding selection was groundless given Mendelian particulate inheritance; genetic variation can persist in a population under Mendelian inheritance, in contrast to blending inheritance, because the alleles are not lost in the process ( Grafen, 2003). More generally, Fisher (1918) also showed that Mendelian rules of inheritance could apply to continuous traits being studied by the biometricians, accounting for the correlations of traits seen across different relatives. In his subsequent book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, Fisher (1930) began by emphasizing the particulate nature of heredity and its consequences. In particular, Fisher emphasized the role of additive genetic variation, the proportion of the variation that is owing to the additive effects of genes. The more additive genetic variation for fitness, the faster alleles will change in frequency due to selection.

Starting in 1924, Haldane published a series of papers that presented a quantitative theory of how natural selection would operate in Mendelian populations. For instance, Haldane (1924, Figure 2) demonstrated that an autosomal dominant allele with a selective advantage of 0.001 could increase in frequency from 10% to 50% in about 2500 generations. With stronger selection, the time to change frequency would be correspondingly reduced. Quantification of the effects evolutionary processes had on changes in allele frequency, as done by Haldane (1924) and Wright (1931) among others, established theoretical population genetics as a science, and cemented the foundation for uniting Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution (Provine, 1971).

Wright (1931, 1932) emphasized that selection was not the only evolutionary process that could alter allele frequencies. Random sampling variation occurring every generation, which would become known as genetic drift, could also alter allele frequencies; the potency of this process is inversely related to population size (Hartl and Clark, 2007). Wright (1931, 1932, 1977) noted that drift could interact with selection even in large populations if those populations were subdivided.

Wright (1932) also introduced the metaphorical concept of the adaptive (or fitness) landscape, as a way to visualize the relationship between genotype and fitness (Figure 1). This heuristic enabled better understanding of how selection and other evolutionary processes could operate on populations and helped to open up theoretical population genetics to biologists with limited mathematical skill. Although Wright's own biographer, Will Provine (1986), criticized ambiguities in Wright's use of the adaptive landscape, it remains a key concept in evolutionary biology (e.g., Arnold Gavrilets, 2004). et al., 2001;

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6.5 Maintaining Genome Integrity: The Major Evolutionary Constraint

The appreciation of evolutionary constraints represents one of the biggest advances in the past half century (Futuyma, 2010). Thus, realization of the discontinuity between micro- and macroevolution is essential to explain how evolutionary constraints work and to establish the correct framework of evolution. Specifically, genome constraint provides the explanation for sluggish evolution (Gorelick and Heng, 2011).

6.5.1 Why Are Evolutionary Constraints Important?

One of the key challenges of the current evolutionary theories is solving the puzzle regarding how genetic organization can both promote and constrain organismal evolution. While it is well known that abundant genetic alterations can be observed both in the experimental and natural conditions coupled with rapid local adaptation, the actual overall evolutionary speed seems to be slow with a difficulty to adapt and has recently been referred to as "sluggish evolution" (Futuyma, 2010). Based on fossil studies, for example, species were capable of displaying abundant change over decades to centuries, yet over millennia they were basically static (Eldredge et al., 2005). A recent large-scale statistical survey of an evolutionary model in fossil lineages revealed that directional evolution is rarely observed and accounts for only 5% of cases (13 of 251) (Hunt, 2007). Note that many textbooks, however, highlight the exceptions, giving students the wrong impression that most fossil lineages display directional evolution. This is yet another example of using exceptions to describe a general rule. An even more fundamental issue is that evolutionary failure is commonplace (Bradshaw, 1991). It is difficult to explain the extinction of a vast majority of species as well as all kinds of evolutionary limitations (Futuyma, 2010), if evolution always results in successful long-term adaptation.

Ironically, Darwin's theory of natural selection has faced opposite challenges on the same issue of dynamics and constraint of genetic variants, albeit from different historical stages. Before the new synthesis, Darwinism faced challenges to find the needed variants for evolution. By 1900, " classic Darwinism, which envisioned the natural selection of minute, random, inborn variations of an essentially continuous nature, was widely dismissed as leading nowhere" (Larson, 2002 ). At that time, blending inheritance was dominant, and " even if an individual with a beneficial variation was more likely to survive, it would likely breed with a "normal" individual, and their offspring would regress toward the species norm. Over time, continuous variations would be "swamped"" (Larson, 2002). This challenge has been addressed by neo-Darwinian theory, mainly for short-term microevolution, and mainly achieved by theoretical and modeling-based analyses. Now, a new challenge is to explain the constraints of evolution and the mechanism of breaking it to form new species. This clearly represents another side of the evolutionary story: why short-term rapid adaptation often fails to lead to new species over time and how nature solves the paradox of "changes, yet does not change (still the same species), but finally changes (into a new species)."

Various factors have been analyzed to address the issue of limited evolution (or limited response to selection). Bradshaw suggests that the controlling agent limiting evolution is the supply of variation. As inheritable variation is a key component of evolution, examining genetic variation is a logical approach to understand the mechanism. Although there is evidence that genetic variation can limit evolution, it is insufficient to solve this issue. Many other mechanisms have been proposed including developmental constraint, stabilizing selection, population structure, ephemeral divergence, and system internal homeostasis (Bradshaw, 1991). One interesting trend lies in the viewpoint that the key evolutionary constraint might not be located at the genetic level but rather at the ecological level, as most genetic variations analyzed to date do not seem to account for evolutionary constraint.

6.5.2 Genome Integrity Represents the Major Evolutionary Constraint

The analyses in previous chapters will hopefully lead readers to appreciate that even though the main evolutionary constraints have not been identified at the gene level, one must not rule out the idea that genetic contribution at the genome level could be the most important evolutionary constraint. According to the genome theory, it is the genome rather than individual genes that is the unit of evolutionary selection (Heng, 2007b, 2009). Thus, the search for the main genomic contribution of evolutionary constraint should focus on the genome rather than genes. Based on this viewpoint, particularly after realizing that genome alterations drive macroevolution, it has been hypothesized that the long-ignored genome-level constraints will provide the key genetic mechanism for organismal stasis.

6.5.2.1 Why Is It Essential to Discuss Genome-Level Constraint?

Given the nature of the complexity of both the biological system and evolutionary process, it is necessary to examine the issue of multiple levels of constraint and their dynamic interactions including genes/epigenes, proteins, genetic and protein networks, the genome, the individual, populations, society, and ecology (Heng, 2009). As Futuyma provided a comprehensive summary and insightful analysis for many of these levels (Futuyma, 2010), the level of the genome will be the focus in this section, not only because it has been more or less ignored in traditional evolutionary studies but also because it represents the main level of constraint/control and defines potential interactions that may occur at various lower and higher levels. Comparatively speaking, other types of evolutionary constraints are important but are not major determining factors when compared with genome constraints. Reducing the constraints at the ecological level, for example, can increase system instability. Under such instability, there are increased levels of short-term adaptation and genome alterations which provide increased potential to form new species. However, until a new genome cluster is formed, there is no opportunity to pass on these altered genomes. A genome cluster refers to multiple individuals that share a similar genome and can mate. The appearance of genome clusters usually occurs during a transitional time when new species are appearing and becoming established.

As the importance of the genome has been discussed in previous chapters, some of the conclusions will be briefly summarized, which are directly related to this topic.

a. The genome codes for the package of an entire system.

Traditional genetic coding specifically refers to combinations of three nucleotides that determine the amino acids in proteins or RNA. 4D genomics, in contrast, emphasizes comprehensive coding as a system inheritance resulting from the genomic relationship between all genes and other structural/regulatory elements of the same system. Significantly, the genome-level information controls might not be directly stored within an individual DNA molecule but instead might exist within the topological relationship between genetic loci within the nuclei.

This explanation also makes sense and agrees with various biological observations. The basic coding to make materials is universal among species who share a common ancestor. However, similar genes (materials or tools) can build a variety of genomic architectures with specific sets of chromosomes that define different species. Each genome represents a unique interaction or assembly code that is not shared by other species except for similarities among species that belong to the same genus and/or family. "Material" coding by DNA is essentially conserved among species because of its basic level of genetic organization. In contrast, architectural coding is highly dynamic and less predictable, as this new type of information is not coded within the DNA sequence but exists at the chromosomal level and is achieved through the self-organization principle based on the genes and genomic topological relationship. Such genome-level properties are inherited for each species and ensured by genome conservation.

b. Sex safeguards genomic integrity.

Maintaining genome integrity has been a hot topic in molecular biology. Proposed mechanisms include but are not limited to various DNA repair systems, cell cycle checkpoints, programmed cell death, robustness of network, the separation between germline cells and somatic cells, and epigenetic resetting. Recently, sexual reproduction has been recognized as serving a key function in maintaining genome integrity in most sexually reproducing eukaryotes (Chapter 5).

The genome context can be preserved by maintaining both the composition of the chromosomes and the gross order of genetic loci along each chromosome. As such, sex serves as a filter to eliminate most significant alterations at the chromosome level while allowing for gene-level changes. Thus, meiosis serves two main functions: it promotes gene changes but limits genome alterations.

c. Sex-mediated genome integrity ensures long-term evolutionary stability.

Because sex can preserve the boundary of the system, it provides an ideal balance between genomic dynamics and constraint in sexually reproducing organisms. In the short term, the dynamics of genes occurring through mutation, genetic recombination, and splicing can effectively enable evolutionary adaptation by passing on the genome while ensuring over the long term that the genome maintains its framework. During each normal reproductive cycle, most accumulated genetic alterations at the genome level will be eliminated, resetting the system back to the original status. Despite some small-scale copy number variation and some retrovirus integrations that can be accumulated, for most sexually reproducing species, the genome framework is basically the same generation after generation. In contrast, asexual organisms constantly go through both micro- and macroevolution, as there are no effective mechanisms like sex to purify their genomes and preserve clear-cut genome-defined boundaries.

d. The genome-not the gene-is the macroevolutionary selection unit.

Extensive discussion has occurred on why genes or individuals should or should not be the primary object of natural selection (Mayr, 1997). It is proposed that the genome is the primary object of selection, especially at the macroevolutionary phase (Heng, 2009, 2015). The following points further support this concept. (1) The genome and gene represent different levels of genetic organization where the genome determines the system inheritance, the essential component of macroevolution (see Chapter 4). (2) There is a separation between individuals and genomes (some individuals with altered genomes can pass a normal genome on to the next generation with higher frequency because of the sexual filter (e.g., XXX, XYY, and individuals with Down syndrome). (3) There is a distinction between germline cells (genome to be passed on) and the final function of somatic cells. Note that this difference can contribute to the individual variations that occur outside the boundary of the genome. Thus, there is a difference between success of a phenotype and the genome types that get propagated (Heng, 2010).

There are two points worth discussing here. In microevolution, selective contributions from individual genes can be measured if they display relatively simple traits. However, most genes are not independent information units but rather depend on a genome-defined network within specific environmental conditions. Selection acts on the genome package rather than on specific genes. Of course, the genome defines the boundary of the genetic potential of a species, which includes large numbers of combinations of genes that are displayed by different individuals.

In macroevolution, selection at the genome level is critical during speciation as the newly formed genome must survive against competition. (The traditional concept insists that speciation is often caused by polyploidy or geographic isolation that results in large genetic drift, which do not require any selection. However, genome-level selection is obvious in cancer evolution). Once a species is stably established, the genome serves as a constraint to maintain the system where sexual reproduction prevents drastic genome-level changes in the germline, while gene/genome dynamics at the somatic cell level promotes individual survival. In short-term adaptation, the effect is that gene and epigene dynamics are high, whereas in long-term selection, where the selective forces are constantly changing, gene mutations/epigene alterations come and go. As long as the population size is healthy and different individuals display variable features (the interactive results of environment and different genetic profiles defined by the genome), a given species can be passed by passing the core genome, which also defines various potential phenotypes under different environments.

No wonder Mayr has stated:

When re-reading my analysis, I was quite surprised how rarely I had to refer to the genetic aspects responsible for the phenotype. Apparently, it does not matter very much how the genes are combined or how much the genotype has to be modified, provided the resulting phenotype is favored by selection. What counts is the adaptedness of the end product.

Mayr is partially correct because all phenotypes are products of the genotype/environment interaction. All selected individuals will also pass the core genome (the representative karyotype), which contains constantly changed gene and epigene landscapes.

6.5.2.2 Different Factors Contribute to Genome Constraint

The realization that most eukaryotes achieved evolutionary constraint by genome integrity preserved by sexual reproduction is of importance. It addresses the relationship between conservation of the genome and the dynamics of gene mutations and epigenetic alterations. It should be noted that many other factors, such as environmental and even social interactions, can either promote or reduce genome constraint. The balance between different levels' dynamics and constraints is important. For example, increased genetic diversity at the gene level is useful for individual survival, but the conservation of the genome ensures that the surviving system can be sustained over the long run without changing into a novel system. Interestingly, the higher level of system constraint will diminish the impact of lower level dynamics over the long run despite its importance to organismal adaptation in the short run. This can be explained as a new version of the Red Queen story: try everything to maintain life including gene mutations, yet do not alter your genome to change who you are. Only the existence of the genome matters in the long run.

Furthermore, how the system constrains its genomic system also defines the pattern of evolution. In eukaryotes, which all contain chromosomes, sexual filters make altering the genetic identity of a given species difficult as most of the chromosomal modifications will be eliminated by sex. However, when speciation occurs, the reorganization of the genome can produce very different genomes, and some of them may have the potential to make big leaps in evolutionary terms. In contrast, while prokaryotes can evolve both by micro- and macroevolution, their macroevolution is often less drastic compared with organisms with the capability of chromosome-based genome reorganization (e.g., the amount and degree of creating new and complex genomic information). The formation of typical chromosomes and the establishment of sex thus represent key evolutionary events that separate these two major groups. Accordingly, the evolutionary patterns are different among them. It is likely that in prokaryotes, the ecological constraint is of equivalent importance to the powerful sex-mediated genome constraint.

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Information transmission: particulate inheritance plays a key role in replication-based selection because it prevents variation in fitness being diluted at each generation (as would occur under blending inheritance [ 102]). Feedback cycle properties arise from the combined relations of components, here often both biotic and abiotic, making information transmission more complex. Information regarding the response of a biotic variable (e.g., grass) to another biotic variable (e.g., herbivores), or an abiotic one (e.g., fire), can be encoded in a recognised [36] (e.g., genetic) inheritance system. But if such links in feedback cycles are 're-produced' by unrelated organisms performing the same function [18] (i.e., breaking parent-offspring inheritance), one must look harder for continuity of information, for example, to a common gene complex encoding a particular response [34], or a reference text in the cultural case. In general, a complex interplay between such physical structures and their environmental context, serves to interpret the structures and confer on them a functional role. Information regarding the response of an abiotic variable to a biotic one (or another abiotic one) is not encoded, yet it may be conserved (e.g., because it is governed by thermodynamics). Thus at least some pertinent information transmission resides in the persistence of feedback cycle structures. Conceivably, variation in particulate heritability may be subject to selection based on its impact on system performance [103]. Niche construction theory (NCT) recognises persistent niche states as derived from genetic information within the biological entities that create them, but it does not treat whole niche-population feedback loops as units of selection.

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At this time it was generally accepted that this "blending inheritance" in which the characterization of the offspring tends to be intermediate between those of the two parents in respect of such complex qualities as strength, vigour, size, intelligence and the like, could not be accommodated by the Mendelian scheme although Udny Yule * in 1902 had shown beyond all reasonable doubt that the same mechanism could satisfy the demands both of the typical Mendelian and of the blending type of inheritance.

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This entire section focuses on helping to support new parents or prospective parents as they make this life-altering decision. One section within this area that I found particularly important for my future in education is  on page 137 - Helping pregnant adolescent girls. Being a high school teacher holds a lot of potential for dealing with pregnant students. Having some guidance as to this area would be particularly helpful as this is not something they typically hold classes or professional development on.

https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/pregnancy.pdf

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Health and well-being are hot topics in education as childhood obesity as well as other childhood diseases are on the rise. This chapter discusses each facet of health and well-being from eating habits, physical activity, rest, sleep, eating disorders, and other "health-compromising behaviors". This section becomes especially important for those like myself that will be working with late-adolescence students. The older the student, the more they have the ability to make decisions independently - which often results in choices that are not always the healthiest (eating fast food, smoking, vaping, alcohol use, etc.)

Important information to always share with families - https://www.fns.usda.gov/cn/applying-free-and-reduced-price-school-meals

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Schools send school meal applications home at the beginning of each school year. However, you may apply for school meals any time during the school year by submitting an application directly to your school or district. You may ask for an application any time during the school year. If you're earning at or below current Income Eligibility Guidelines, you are encouraged to contact your school or district to fill out a school meal application. Applications are reviewed by local school or district officials before granting free or reduced price benefits. If you receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, all of your children who attend school automatically qualify for free school meals. Participation in other federal assistance programs, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) also provides automatic eligibility. Please contact your school to determine if you need to fill out an application.

If you are eligible for unemployment compensation or The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), you may also be eligible for free or reduced price school meals. State Workforce Agency Administrators should let households seeking unemployment benefits about the availability of free and reduced price school meals. Please contact your school or district for more information.

USDA Prototype Applications

USDA offers prototypes (examples) of school meal applications, as well as sample instructional documents intended to assist state and local officials in the design and distribution of their own application materials. These application prototypes meet all legal requirements and reflect design best practices identified by USDA through focus testing and other research. They are available in both paper and web-based formats and may be adapted by state or local agencies for household use.

Paper-Based Prototype Household Application

Below is the Prototype Application for Free and Reduced Price School Meals, with accompanying instructions, letter to households, and other materials for state and local agencies. The prototype may be used by state and local agencies as an example when designing a new application packet. The current prototype design was first launched in SY 2023 and is the result of a years long project to revise the prototype to make the application process easier for households and school officials, as well as more accurate.

Thanks to helpful feedback from state and local officials, the current prototype features a number of customer service-oriented adjustments intended to improve its usefulness. Furthermore, in July 2016, USDA published foreign language translations of the prototype and its instructional materials. The translated prototype applications include all documents from the English language version in a total of 49 non-English languages. Please note that the Prototype Application for Free and Reduced Price School Meals and foreign language translations of the prototype will not be updated for SY 2018-19. States and SFAs can continue to use the current versions.

Resources for Households

Resources for State and Local Agencies

Web-Based Prototype Household Application

USDA also offers a Web-Based Prototype Application for Free and Reduced Price School Meals. With the increasing use and popularity of online applications in recent years, USDA has published its prototype web-based application design with the aim of providing timely guidance to stakeholders. Version 1.0 of the web-based prototype, released November 2016, was developed based on extensive public engagement and reflects research and data-driven design best practices. It has been structured to help ensure full and accurate household response, while maintaining an accessible and intuitive layout.

The USDA electronic prototype application is not for direct household use. If you are a parent looking to apply for school meal benefits, contact your child's school to find out where you can access their application for school meal benefits.

The electronic prototype application is intended as a model for how state and local program operators (or their designated vendors) may develop an effective and fully compliant web-based application for school meal benefits. While USDA offers both the design and code as open source publications free for all to access, these materials are not structured for direct or immediate use by households unless adapted and integrated with appropriate data management systems maintained at the state and/or local levels.

State and local program operators with questions about the Web-Based Prototype Application for Free and Reduced Price School Meals may send a message to WebApp@usda.gov.

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Applying for Free and Reduced Price School Meals

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Schools send school meal applications home at the beginning of each school year. However, you may apply for school meals any time during the school year by submitting an application directly to your school or district. You may ask for an application any time during the school year.

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Jean Piaget was a Swiss biologist turned psychologist studying child development and developed a renowned Theory of Cognitive Development. This theory is broken down into 4 stages:
Sensorimotor (0-2yo) - thought process is based mainly on behavior and perception
Preoperational (2-6yo) - symbolic thought and language appear but still rely on illogical thought
Concrete Operations (6-11yo) - logical reason abilities begin but are mostly limited to physical objects and events
Formal Operations (11+yo) - Thinking in terms of abstract or hypothetical concepts becomes possible.

These four stages explain the different cognitive abilities of children in these age ranges and how those abilities grow and adapt with the child.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html

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3. Schemas

Piaget claimed that knowledge cannot simply emerge from sensory experience; some initial structure is necessary to make sense of the world.

According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge are based.

Schemas are the basic building blocks of such cognitive models, and enable us to form a mental representation of the world.

Piaget (1952, p. 7) defined a schema as: "a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning."

In more simple terms, Piaget called the schema the basic building block of intelligent behavior - a way of organizing knowledge. Indeed, it is useful to think of schemas as "units" of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including objects, actions, and abstract (i.e., theoretical) concepts.

Wadsworth (2004) suggests that schemata (the plural of schema) be thought of as "index cards" filed in the brain, each one telling an individual how to react to incoming stimuli or information.

When Piaget talked about the development of a person's mental processes, he was referring to increases in the number and complexity of the schemata that a person had learned.

When a child's existing schemas are capable of explaining what it can perceive around it, it is said to be in a state of equilibrium, i.e., a state of cognitive (i.e., mental) balance.

Operations are more sophisticated mental structures which allow us to combine schemas in a logical (reasonable) way.

As children grow they can carry out more complex operations and begin to imagine hypothetical (imaginary) situations.

Apart from the schemas we are born with schemas and operations are learned through interaction with other people and the environment.

Piaget emphasized the importance of schemas in cognitive development and described how they were developed or acquired.

A schema can be defined as a set of linked mental representations of the world, which we use both to understand and to respond to situations. The assumption is that we store these mental representations and apply them when needed.

Examples of Schemas

A person might have a schema about buying a meal in a restaurant. The schema is a stored form of the pattern of behavior which includes looking at a menu, ordering food, eating it and paying the bill.

This is an example of a schema called a "script." Whenever they are in a restaurant, they retrieve this schema from memory and apply it to the situation.

The schemas Piaget described tend to be simpler than this - especially those used by infants. He described how - as a child gets older - his or her schemas become more numerous and elaborate.

Piaget believed that newborn babies have a small number of innate schemas - even before they have had many opportunities to experience the world. These neonatal schemas are the cognitive structures underlying innate reflexes. These reflexes are genetically programmed into us.

For example, babies have a sucking reflex, which is triggered by something touching the baby's lips. A baby will suck a nipple, a comforter (dummy), or a person's finger. Piaget, therefore, assumed that the baby has a "sucking schema."

Similarly, the grasping reflex which is elicited when something touches the palm of a baby's hand, or the rooting reflex, in which a baby will turn its head towards something which touches its cheek, are innate schemas. Shaking a rattle would be the combination of two schemas, grasping and shaking.

4. The Process of Adaptation

Piaget also believed that a child developed as a result of two different influences: maturation, and interaction with the environment. The child develops mental structures (schemata) which enables him to solve problems in the environment.

Adaptation is the process by which the child changes its mental models of the world to match more closely how the world actually is.

Adaptation is brought about by the processes of assimilation (solving new experiences using existing schemata) and accommodation (changing existing schemata in order to solve new experiences).

The importance of this viewpoint is that the child is seen as an active participant in its own development rather than a passive recipient of either biological influences (maturation) or environmental stimulation.

When our existing schemas can explain what we perceive around us, we are in a state of equilibration. However, when we meet a new situation that we cannot explain it creates disequilibrium, this is an unpleasant sensation which we try to escape, and this gives us the motivation to learn.

According to Piaget, reorganization to higher levels of thinking is not accomplished easily. The child must "rethink" his or her view of the world. An important step in the process is the experience of cognitive conflict.

In other words, the child becomes aware that he or she holds two contradictory views about a situation and they both cannot be true. This step is referred to as disequilibrium.

Jean Piaget (1952; see also Wadsworth, 2004) viewed intellectual growth as a process of adaptation (adjustment) to the world. This happens through assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration.

To get back to a state of equilibration, we need to modify our existing schemas to learn and adapt to the new situation.

This is done through the processes of accommodation and assimilation. This is how our schemas evolve and become more sophisticated. The processes of assimilation and accommodation are continuous and interactive.

5. Assimilation

Piaget defined assimilation as the cognitive process of fitting new information into existing cognitive schemas, perceptions, and understanding. Overall beliefs and understanding of the world do not change as a result of the new information.

Assimilation occurs when the new experience is not very different from previous experiences of a particular object or situation we assimilate the new situation by adding information to a previous schema.

This means that when you are faced with new information, you make sense of this information by referring to information you already have (information processed and learned previously) and trying to fit the new information into the information you already have.

Examples

1. Imagine a young child who has only ever seen small, domesticated dogs. When the child sees a cat for the first time, they might refer to it as a "dog" because it has four legs, fur, and a tail - features that fit their existing schema of a dog.

2. A person who has always believed that all birds can fly might label penguins as birds that can fly. This is because their existing schema or understanding of birds includes the ability to fly.

3. A 2-year-old child sees a man who is bald on top of his head and has long frizzy hair on the sides. To his father's horror, the toddler shouts "Clown, clown" (Siegler et al., 2003).

4. If a baby learns to pick up a rattle he or she will then use the same schema (grasping) to pick up other objects.

6. Accommodation

Accommodation: when the new experience is very different from what we have encountered before we need to change our schemas in a very radical way or create a whole new schema.

Psychologist Jean Piaget defined accommodation as the cognitive process of revising existing cognitive schemas, perceptions, and understanding so that new information can be incorporated.

This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation.

In order to make sense of some new information, you actually adjust information you already have (schemas you already have, etc.) to make room for this new information.

Examples

1. A baby tries to use the same schema for grasping to pick up a very small object. It doesn't work. The baby then changes the schema by now using the forefinger and thumb to pick up the object.

2. A child may have a schema for birds (feathers, flying, etc.) and then they see a plane, which also flies, but would not fit into their bird schema.

3. In the "clown" incident, the boy's father explained to his son that the man was not a clown and that even though his hair was like a clown's, he wasn't wearing a funny costume and wasn't doing silly things to make people laugh. With this new knowledge, the boy was able to change his schema of "clown" and make this idea fit better to a standard concept of "clown".

4. A person who grew up thinking all snakes are dangerous might move to an area where garden snakes are common and harmless. Over time, after observing and learning, they might accommodate their previous belief to understand that not all snakes are harmful.

7. Equilibration

Piaget believed that all human thought seeks order and is uncomfortable with contradictions and inconsistencies in knowledge structures. In other words, we seek "equilibrium" in our cognitive structures.

Equilibrium occurs when a child's schemas can deal with most new information through assimilation. However, an unpleasant state of disequilibrium occurs when new information cannot be fitted into existing schemas (assimilation).

Piaget believed that cognitive development did not progress at a steady rate, but rather in leaps and bounds. Equilibration is the force which drives the learning process as we do not like to be frustrated and will seek to restore balance by mastering the new challenge (accommodation).

Once the new information is acquired the process of assimilation with the new schema will continue until the next time we need to make an adjustment to it.

Equilibration is a regulatory process that maintains a balance between assimilation and accommodation to facilitate cognitive growth. Think of it this way: We can't merely assimilate all the time; if we did, we would never learn any new concepts or principles.

Everything new we encountered would just get put in the same few "slots" we already had. Neither can we accommodate all the time; if we did, everything we encountered would seem new; there would be no recurring regularities in our world. We'd be exhausted by the mental effort!

Applications to Education

Think of old black and white films that you've seen in which children sat in rows at desks, with ink wells, would learn by rote, all chanting in unison in response to questions set by an authoritarian old biddy like Matilda!

Children who were unable to keep up were seen as slacking and would be punished by variations on the theme of corporal punishment. Yes, it really did happen and in some parts of the world still does today.

Piaget is partly responsible for the change that occurred in the 1960s and for your relatively pleasurable and pain-free school days!

"Children should be able to do their own experimenting and their own research. Teachers, of course, can guide them by providing appropriate materials, but the essential thing is that in order for a child to understand something, he must construct it himself, he must re-invent it. Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand that which we allow him to discover by himself will remain with him visibly".
Piaget (1972, p. 27)

Plowden Report

Piaget (1952) did not explicitly relate his theory to education, although later researchers have explained how features of Piaget's theory can be applied to teaching and learning.

Piaget has been extremely influential in developing educational policy and teaching practice. For example, a review of primary education by the UK government in 1966 was based strongly on Piaget's theory. The result of this review led to the publication of the Plowden Report (1967).

In the 1960s the Plowden Committee investigated the deficiencies in education and decided to incorporate many of Piaget's ideas into its final report published in 1967, even though Piaget's work was not really designed for education.

The report makes three Piaget-associated recommendations:

1. Children should be given individual attention and it should be realized that they need to be treated differently.

2. Children should only be taught things that they are capable of learning

3. Children mature at different rates and the teacher needs to be aware of the stage of development of each child so teaching can be tailored to their individual needs.

"The report's recurring themes are individual learning, flexibility in the curriculum, the centrality of play in children's learning, the use of the environment, learning by discovery and the importance of the evaluation of children's progress - teachers should "not assume that only what is measurable is valuable."

Discovery learning - the idea that children learn best through doing and actively exploring - was seen as central to the transformation of the primary school curriculum.

How to teach

Within the classroom learning should be student-centered and accomplished through active discovery learning. The role of the teacher is to facilitate learning, rather than direct tuition.

Because Piaget's theory is based upon biological maturation and stages, the notion of "readiness" is important. Readiness concerns when certain information or concepts should be taught.

According to Piaget's theory, children should not be taught certain concepts until they have reached the appropriate stage of cognitive development.

According to Piaget (1958), assimilation and accommodation require an active learner, not a passive one, because problem-solving skills cannot be taught, they must be discovered.

Therefore, teachers should encourage the following within the classroom:

1. Educational programs should be designed to correspond to Piaget's stages of development. Children in the concrete operational stage should be given concrete means to learn new concepts e.g. tokens for counting.

2. Devising situations that present useful problems, and create disequilibrium in the child.

3. Focus on the process of learning, rather than the end product of it. Instead of checking if children have the right answer, the teacher should focus on the student's understanding and the processes they used to get to the answer.

4. Child-centered approach. Learning must be active (discovery learning).
Children should be encouraged to discover for themselves and to interact with the material instead of being given ready-made knowledge.

5. Accepting that children develop at different rates so arrange activities for individual children or small groups rather than assume that all the children can cope with a particular activity.

6. Using active methods that require rediscovering or reconstructing "truths."

7. Using collaborative, as well as individual activities (so children can learn from each other).

8. Evaluate the level of the child's development so suitable tasks can be set.

9. Adapt lessons to suit the needs of the individual child (i.e. differentiated teaching).

10. Be aware of the child's stage of development (testing).

11. Teach only when the child is ready. i.e. has the child reached the appropriate stage.

12. Providing support for the "spontaneous research" of the child.

13. Using collaborative, as well as individual activities.

14. Devising situations that present useful problems, and create disequilibrium in the child.

15. Educators may use Piaget's stages to design age-appropriate assessment tools and strategies.

Classroom Activities

1. Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years):
Although most kids in this age range are not in a traditional classroom setting, they can still benefit from games that stimulate their senses and motor skills.

2. Preoperational Stage (2-7 years):

Role Playing: Set up pretend play areas where children can act out different scenarios, such as a kitchen, hospital, or market.

Use of Symbols: Encourage drawing, building, and using props to represent other things.

Hands-on Activities: Children should interact physically with their environment, so provide plenty of opportunities for hands-on learning.

Egocentrism Activities: Use exercises that highlight different perspectives. For instance, having two children sit across from each other with an object in between and asking them what the other sees.

3. Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years):

Classification Tasks: Provide objects or pictures to group, based on various characteristics.

Hands-on Experiments: Introduce basic science experiments where they can observe cause and effect, like a simple volcano with baking soda and vinegar.

Logical Games: Board games, puzzles, and logic problems help develop their thinking skills.

Conservation Tasks: Use experiments to showcase that quantity doesn't change with alterations in shape, such as the classic liquid conservation task using different shaped glasses.

4. Formal Operational Stage (11 years and older):

Hypothesis Testing: Encourage students to make predictions and test them out.

Abstract Thinking: Introduce topics that require abstract reasoning, such as algebra or ethical dilemmas.

Problem Solving: Provide complex problems and have students work on solutions, integrating various subjects and concepts.

Debate and Discussion: Encourage group discussions and debates on abstract topics, highlighting the importance of logic and evidence.

Feedback and Questioning: Use open-ended questions to challenge students and promote higher-order thinking. For instance, rather than asking, "Is this the right answer?", ask, "How did you arrive at this conclusion?"

Individual Differences

While Piaget's stages offer a foundational framework, they are not universally experienced in the same way by all children.

Social identities play a critical role in shaping cognitive development, necessitating a more nuanced and culturally responsive approach to understanding child development.

Piaget's stages may manifest differently based on social identities like race, gender, and culture:

Race & Teacher Interactions: A child's race can influence teacher expectations and interactions. For example, racial biases can lead to children of color being perceived as less capable or more disruptive, influencing their cognitive challenges and supports.

Racial and Cultural Stereotypes: These can affect a child's self-perception and self-efficacy. For instance, stereotypes about which racial or cultural groups are "better" at certain subjects can influence a child's self-confidence and, subsequently, their engagement in that subject.

Gender & Peer Interactions: Children learn gender roles from their peers. Boys might be mocked for playing "girl games," and girls might be excluded from certain activities, influencing their cognitive engagements.

Language: Multilingual children might navigate the stages differently, especially if their home language differs from their school language. The way concepts are framed in different languages can influence cognitive processing. Cultural idioms and metaphors can shape a child's understanding of concepts and their ability to use symbolic representation, especially in the pre-operational stage.

Curriculum Development

According to Piaget, children's cognitive development is determined by a process of maturation which cannot be altered by tuition so education should be stage-specific.

For example, a child in the concrete operational stage should not be taught abstract concepts and should be given concrete aid such as tokens to count with.

According to Piaget children learn through the process of accommodation and assimilation so the role of the teacher should be to provide opportunities for these processes to occur such as new material and experiences that challenge the children's existing schemas.

Furthermore, according to this theory, children should be encouraged to discover for themselves and to interact with the material instead of being given ready-made knowledge.

Curricula need to be developed that take into account the age and stage of thinking of the child. For example there is no point in teaching abstract concepts such as algebra or atomic structure to children in primary school.

Curricula also need to be sufficiently flexible to allow for variations in the ability of different students of the same age. In Britain, the National Curriculum and Key Stages broadly reflect the stages that Piaget laid down.

For example, egocentrism dominates a child's thinking in the sensorimotor and preoperational stages. Piaget would therefore predict that using group activities would not be appropriate since children are not capable of understanding the views of others.

However, Smith et al. (1998), point out that some children develop earlier than Piaget predicted and that by using group work children can learn to appreciate the views of others in preparation for the concrete operational stage.

The national curriculum emphasizes the need to use concrete examples in the primary classroom.

Shayer (1997), reported that abstract thought was necessary for success in secondary school (and co-developed the CASE system of teaching science). Recently the National curriculum has been updated to encourage the teaching of some abstract concepts towards the end of primary education, in preparation for secondary courses. (DfEE, 1999).

Child-centered teaching is regarded by some as a child of the 'liberal sixties.' In the 1980s the Thatcher government introduced the National Curriculum in an attempt to move away from this and bring more central government control into the teaching of children.

So, although the British National Curriculum in some ways supports the work of Piaget, (in that it dictates the order of teaching), it can also be seen as prescriptive to the point where it counters Piaget's child-oriented approach.

However, it does still allow for flexibility in teaching methods, allowing teachers to tailor lessons to the needs of their students.

Social Media (Digital Learning)

Jean Piaget could not have anticipated the expansive digital age we now live in.

Today, knowledge dissemination and creation are democratized by the Internet, with platforms like blogs, wikis, and social media allowing for vast collaboration and shared knowledge. This development has prompted a reimagining of the future of education.

Classrooms, traditionally seen as primary sites of learning, are being overshadowed by the rise of mobile technologies and platforms like MOOCs (Passey, 2013).

The millennial generation, defined as the first to grow up with cable TV, the internet, and cell phones, relies heavily on technology.

They view it as an integral part of their identity, with most using it extensively in their daily lives, from keeping in touch with loved ones to consuming news and entertainment (Nielsen, 2014).

Social media platforms offer a dynamic environment conducive to Piaget's principles. These platforms allow for interactions that nurture knowledge evolution through cognitive processes like assimilation and accommodation.

They emphasize communal interaction and shared activity, fostering both cognitive and socio-cultural constructivism. This shared activity promotes understanding and exploration beyond individual perspectives, enhancing social-emotional learning (Gehlbach, 2010).

A standout advantage of social media in an educational context is its capacity to extend beyond traditional classroom confines. As the material indicates, these platforms can foster more inclusive learning, bridging diverse learner groups.

This inclusivity can equalize learning opportunities, potentially diminishing biases based on factors like race or socio-economic status, resonating with Kegan's (1982) concept of "recruitability."

However, there are challenges. While the potential of social media in learning is vast, its practical application necessitates intention and guidance. Cuban, Kirkpatrick, and Peck (2001) note that certain educators and students are hesitant about integrating social media into educational contexts.

This hesitancy can stem from technological complexities or potential distractions. Yet, when harnessed effectively, social media can provide a rich environment for collaborative learning and interpersonal development, fostering a deeper understanding of content.

In essence, the rise of social media aligns seamlessly with constructivist philosophies. Social media platforms act as tools for everyday cognition, merging daily social interactions with the academic world, and providing avenues for diverse, interactive, and engaging learning experiences.

Applications to Parenting

Parents can use Piaget's stages to have realistic developmental expectations of their children's behavior and cognitive capabilities.

For instance, understanding that a toddler is in the pre-operational stage can help parents be patient when the child is egocentric.

Play Activities

Recognizing the importance of play in cognitive development, many parents provide toys and games suited for their child's developmental stage.

Parents can offer activities that are slightly beyond their child's current abilities, leveraging Vygotsky's concept of the "Zone of Proximal Development," which complements Piaget's ideas.

Critical Evaluation

The influence of Piaget's ideas on developmental psychology has been enormous. He changed how people viewed the child's world and their methods of studying children.

He was an inspiration to many who came after and took up his ideas. Piaget's ideas have generated a huge amount of research which has increased our understanding of cognitive development.

Piaget (1936) was one of the first psychologists to make a systematic study of cognitive development. His contributions include a stage theory of child cognitive development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities.

His ideas have been of practical use in understanding and communicating with children, particularly in the field of education (re: Discovery Learning). Piaget's theory has been applied across education.

According to Piaget's theory, educational programs should be designed to correspond to the stages of development.

Criticisms

Are the stages real? Vygotsky and Bruner would rather not talk about stages at all, preferring to see development as a continuous process. Others have queried the age ranges of the stages. Some studies have shown that progress to the formal operational stage is not guaranteed.

For example, Keating (1979) reported that 40-60% of college students fail at formal operation tasks, and Dasen (1994) states that only one-third of adults ever reach the formal operational stage.

The fact that the formal operational stage is not reached in all cultures and not all individuals within cultures suggests that it might not be biologically based.

According to Piaget, the rate of cognitive development cannot be accelerated as it is based on biological processes however, direct tuition can speed up the development which suggests that it is not entirely based on biological factors.

Because Piaget concentrated on the universal stages of cognitive development and biological maturation, he failed to consider the effect that the social setting and culture may have on cognitive development.

Cross-cultural studies show that the stages of development (except the formal operational stage) occur in the same order in all cultures suggesting that cognitive development is a product of a biological process of maturation.

However, the age at which the stages are reached varies between cultures and individuals which suggests that social and cultural factors and individual differences influence cognitive development.

Dasen (1994) cites studies he conducted in remote parts of the central Australian desert with 8-14-year-old Indigenous Australians. He gave them conservation of liquid tasks and spatial awareness tasks. He found that the ability to conserve came later in the Aboriginal children, between ages of 10 and 13 (as opposed to between 5 and 7, with Piaget's Swiss sample).

However, he found that spatial awareness abilities developed earlier amongst the Aboriginal children than the Swiss children. Such a study demonstrates cognitive development is not purely dependent on maturation but on cultural factors too - spatial awareness is crucial for nomadic groups of people.

Vygotsky, a contemporary of Piaget, argued that social interaction is crucial for cognitive development. According to Vygotsky the child's learning always occurs in a social context in cooperation with someone more skillful (MKO). This social interaction provides language opportunities and Vygotsky considered language the foundation of thought.

Piaget's methods (observation and clinical interviews) are more open to biased interpretation than other methods. Piaget made careful, detailed naturalistic observations of children, and from these, he wrote diary descriptions charting their development. He also used clinical interviews and observations of older children who were able to understand questions and hold conversations.

Because Piaget conducted the observations alone the data collected are based on his own subjective interpretation of events. It would have been more reliable if Piaget conducted the observations with another researcher and compared the results afterward to check if they are similar (i.e., have inter-rater reliability).

Although clinical interviews allow the researcher to explore data in more depth, the interpretation of the interviewer may be biased.

For example, children may not understand the question/s, they have short attention spans, they cannot express themselves very well, and may be trying to please the experimenter. Such methods meant that Piaget may have formed inaccurate conclusions.

As several studies have shown Piaget underestimated the abilities of children because his tests were sometimes confusing or difficult to understand (e.g., Hughes, 1975).

Piaget failed to distinguish between competence (what a child is capable of doing) and performance (what a child can show when given a particular task). When tasks were altered, performance (and therefore competence) was affected. Therefore, Piaget might have underestimated children's cognitive abilities.

For example, a child might have object permanence (competence) but still not be able to search for objects (performance). When Piaget hid objects from babies he found that it wasn't till after nine months that they looked for it.

However, Piaget relied on manual search methods - whether the child was looking for the object or not.

Later, researchers such as Baillargeon and Devos (1991) reported that infants as young as four months looked longer at a moving carrot that didn't do what it expected, suggesting they had some sense of permanence, otherwise they wouldn't have had any expectation of what it should or shouldn't do.

The concept of schema is incompatible with the theories of Bruner (1966) and Vygotsky (1978). Behaviorism would also refute Piaget's schema theory because is cannot be directly observed as it is an internal process. Therefore, they would claim it cannot be objectively measured.

Piaget studied his own children and the children of his colleagues in Geneva to deduce general principles about the intellectual development of all children. His sample was very small and composed solely of European children from families of high socio-economic status. Researchers have, therefore, questioned the generalisability of his data.

For Piaget, language is considered secondary to action, i.e., thought precedes language. The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978) argues that the development of language and thought go together and that the origin of reasoning has more to do with our ability to communicate with others than with our interaction with the material world.

Piaget maintains that cognitive development stems largely from independent explorations in which children construct knowledge of their own.

Whereas Vygotsky argues that children learn through social interactions, building knowledge by learning from more knowledgeable others such as peers and adults. In other words, Vygotsky believed that culture affects cognitive development.

These factors lead to differences in the education style they recommend: Piaget would argue for the teacher to provide opportunities that challenge the children's existing schemas and for children to be encouraged to discover for themselves.

Alternatively, Vygotsky would recommend that teachers assist the child to progress through the zone of proximal development by using scaffolding.

However, both theories view children as actively constructing their own knowledge of the world; they are not seen as just passively absorbing knowledge.

They also agree that cognitive development involves qualitative changes in thinking, not only a matter of learning more things.

FAQs

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Piaget's Stages: 4 Stages of Cognitive Development & Theory

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Jean Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development outlines four stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational) in a child's cognitive development from infancy to adolescence.

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Pg. 215

Lee Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist with a background in history, philosophy, and education. With this background, Vygotsky placed a larger emphasis on the historical context and tools surrounding a child as influencers on their cognitive development. His theory is also based on the idea of scaffolding, that students should be provided building levels of guidance to accomplish increasingly complex tasks. Vygotsky places a great responsibility of this on parents as they are responsible for helping students in their cultural and social understanding and development outside of a school environment.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html

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Vygotsky's Theory

The work of Lev Vygotsky (1934, 1978) has become the foundation of much research and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades, particularly what has become known as sociocultural theory.

Vygotsky's theory comprises concepts such as culture-specific tools, private speech, and the zone of proximal development.

Vygotsky believed cognitive development is influenced by cultural and social factors. He emphasized the role of social interaction in the development of mental abilities e.g., speech and reasoning in children.

Vygotsky strongly believed that community plays a central role in the process of "making meaning."

Cognitive development is a socially mediated process in which children acquire cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society.

The more knowledgeable other (MKO) is someone who has a higher level of ability or greater understanding than the learner regarding a particular task, process, or concept.

The MKO can be a teacher, parent, coach, or even a peer who provides guidance and modeling to enable the child to learn skills within their zone of proximal development (the gap between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance).

The interactions with more knowledgeable others significantly increase not only the quantity of information and the number of skills a child develops, but also affects the development of higher-order mental functions such as formal reasoning. Vygotsky argued that higher mental abilities could only develop through interaction with more advanced others.

According to Vygotsky, adults in society foster children's cognitive development by engaging them in challenging and meaningful activities. Adults convey to children how their culture interprets and responds to the world.

They show the meaning they attach to objects, events, and experiences. They provide the child with what to think (the knowledge) and how to think (the processes, the tools to think with).

Vygotsky's theory encourages collaborative and cooperative learning between children and teachers or peers. Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are effective educational strategies based on Vygotsky's ideas.

Scaffolding involves the teacher providing support structures to help students master skills just beyond their current level. In reciprocal teaching, teachers and students take turns leading discussions using strategies like summarizing and clarifying. Both scaffolding and reciprocal teaching emphasize the shared construction of knowledge, in line with Vygotsky's views.

Vygotsky highlighted the importance of language in cognitive development. Inner speech is used for mental reasoning, and external speech is used to converse with others.

These operations occur separately. Indeed, before age two, a child employs words socially; they possess no internal language.

Once thought and language merge, however, the social language is internalized and assists the child with their reasoning. Thus, the social environment is ingrained within the child's learning.

Effects of Culture

Vygotsky emphasized the role of the social environment in the child's cognitive development.

Vygotsky claimed that infants are born with the basic abilities for intellectual development called "elementary mental functions" (Piaget focuses on motor reflexes and sensory abilities). These develop throughout the first two years of life due to direct environmental contact.

Elementary mental functions include -

Eventually, through interaction within the sociocultural environment, these are developed into more sophisticated and effective mental processes, which Vygotsky refers to as "higher mental functions."

Tools of intellectual adaptation

Each culture provides its children with tools of intellectual adaptation that allow them to use basic mental functions more effectively/adaptively.

Tools of intellectual adaptation is Vygotsky's term for methods of thinking and problem-solving strategies that children internalize through social interactions with the more knowledgeable members of society.

For example, memory in young children is limited by biological factors. However, culture determines the type of memory strategy we develop.

For example, in Western culture, children learn note-taking to aid memory, but in pre-literate societies, other strategies must be developed, such as tying knots in a string to remember, carrying pebbles, or repeating the names of ancestors until large numbers can be repeated.

Vygotsky, therefore, sees cognitive functions, even those carried out alone, as affected by the beliefs, values, and tools of intellectual adaptation of the culture in which a person develops and, therefore, socio-culturally determined.

Therefore, intellectual adaptation tools vary from culture to culture - as in the memory example.

Social Influences on Cognitive Development

Like Piaget, Vygotsky believes that young children are curious and actively involved in their own learning and discovering and developing new understandings/schema.

However, Vygotsky emphasized social contributions to the development process, whereas Piaget emphasized self-initiated discovery.

According to Vygotsky (1978), much important learning by the child occurs through social interaction with a skillful tutor. The tutor may model behaviors and/or provide verbal instructions for the child.

Vygotsky refers to this as cooperative or collaborative dialogue. The child seeks to understand the actions or instructions provided by the tutor (often the parent or teacher) and then internalizes the information, using it to guide or regulate their performance.

Shaffer (1996) gives the example of a young girl given her first jigsaw. Alone, she performs poorly in attempting to solve the puzzle. The father then sits with her and describes or demonstrates some basic strategies, such as finding all the corner/edge pieces, and provides a couple of pieces for the child to put together herself, and offers encouragement when she does so.

As the child becomes more competent, the father allows the child to work more independently. According to Vygotsky, this social interaction involving cooperative or collaborative dialogue promotes cognitive development.

To understand Vygotsky's theories on cognitive development, one must understand two of the main principles of Vygotsky's work: the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

More Knowledgeable Other

The more knowledgeable other (MKO) is somewhat self-explanatory; it refers to someone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, concerning a particular task, process, or concept.

Although the implication is that the MKO is a teacher or an older adult, this is not necessarily the case. Often, a child's peers or an adult's children may be the individuals with more knowledge or experience.

For example, who is more likely to know more about the newest teenage music groups, how to win at the most recent PlayStation game, or how to correctly perform the newest dance craze - a child or their parents?

In fact, the MKO need not be a person at all. To support employees in their learning process, some companies are now using electronic performance support systems.

Electronic tutors have also been used in educational settings to facilitate and guide students through learning. The key to MKOs is that they must have (or be programmed with) more knowledge about the topic being learned than the learner does.

Zone of Proximal Development

The concept of the more knowledgeable other relates to the second important principle of Vygotsky's work, the zone of proximal development.

This important concept relates to the difference between what a child can achieve independently and what a child can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner.

Vygotsky consequently focuses much more closely on social interaction as an aid to learning, arguing that, left alone, children will develop - but not to their full potential.

He refers to the gap between actual and potential learning as the zone of proximal development (ZPD) - and argues that it is only through collaboration with adults and other learners that this gap can be bridged.

The zone of proximal development is the gap between the level of actual development, what the child can do on his own, and the level of potential development, what a child can do with the assistance of more advanced and competent individuals.

Social interaction, therefore, supports the child's cognitive development in the ZPD, leading to a higher level of reasoning. It is generally believed that social dialogues have two important features.

The first is intersubjectivity, where two individuals who might have different understandings of a task, arrive at a shared understanding by adjusting to the perspective of the other.

The second feature is referred to as scaffolding. Adults may begin with direct instruction, but as children's mastery of a task increases, so the adult tends to withdraw their own contributions in recognition of the child's increasing success.

For example, the child could not solve the jigsaw puzzle (in the example above) by itself and would have taken a long time to do so (if at all), but was able to solve it following interaction with the father, and has developed competence at this skill that will be applied to future jigsaws.

ZPD is the zone where instruction is the most beneficial, as it is when the task is just beyond the individual's capabilities. To learn, we must be presented with tasks just out of our ability range. Challenging tasks promote maximum cognitive growth.

As a result of shared dialogues with more knowledgeable others, who provide hints, instructions, and encouragement, the child can internalize the 'how to do it' part of the task as part of their inner or private speech. The child can then use this on later occasions when they tackle a similar task on their own.

Vygotsky (1978) sees the Zone of Proximal Development as the area where the most sensitive instruction or guidance should be given - allowing the child to develop skills they will then use on their own - developing higher mental functions.

Vygotsky also views peer interaction as an effective way of developing skills and strategies. He suggests that teachers use cooperative learning exercises where less competent children develop with help from more skillful peers - within the zone of proximal development.

Evidence for Vygotsky and the ZPD

Freund (1990) conducted a study in which children had to decide which items of furniture should be placed in particular areas of a doll's house.

Some children were allowed to play with their mother in a similar situation before they attempted it alone (zone of proximal development) while others were allowed to work on this by themselves (Piaget's discovery learning).

Freund found that those who had previously worked with their mother (ZPD) showed the greatest improvement compared with their first attempt at the task.

The conclusion is that guided learning within the ZPD led to greater understanding/performance than working alone (discovery learning).

Vygotsky and Language

Vygotsky believed that language develops from social interactions for communication purposes. Vygotsky viewed language as man's greatest tool for communicating with the outside world.

According to Vygotsky (1962), language plays two critical roles in cognitive development:

1. It is the main means by which adults transmit information to children.

2. Language itself becomes a very powerful tool for intellectual adaptation.

Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three forms of language:

1. Social speech, which is external communication used to talk to others (typical from the age of two);

2. Private speech (typical from the age of three) which is directed to the self and serves an intellectual function;

3. Private speech goes underground, diminishing in audibility as it takes on a self-regulating function and is transformed into silent inner speech (typical from the age of seven).

For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age.

At this point, speech and thought become interdependent: thought becomes verbal, and speech becomes representational.

As children develop mental representation, particularly the skill of language, they start to communicate with themselves in much the same way as they would communicate with others.

When this happens, children's monologues are internalized to become inner speech. The internalization of language is important as it drives cognitive development.

"Inner speech is not the interiour aspect of external speech - it is a function in itself. It still remains speech, i.e., thought connected with words.

But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words dies as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings."
(Vygotsky, 1962: p. 149)

Private Speech

Vygotsky (1987) was the first psychologist to document the importance of private speech.

He considered private speech as the transition point between social and inner speech, the moment in development where language and thought unite to constitute verbal thinking.

Thus, in Vygotsky's view, private speech was the earliest manifestation of inner speech. Indeed, private speech is more similar (in form and function) to inner speech than social speech.

Private speech is "typically defined, in contrast to social speech, as speech addressed to the self (not to others) for the purpose of self-regulation (rather than communication)."
(Diaz, 1992, p.62)

Private speech is overt, audible, and observable, often seen in children who talk to themselves while problem-solving.

Conversely, inner speech is covert or hidden because it happens internally. It is the silent, internal dialogue that adults often engage in while thinking or problem-solving.

In contrast to Piaget's (1959) notion of private speech representing a developmental dead-end, Vygotsky (1934, 1987) viewed private speech as:

"A revolution in development which is triggered when preverbal thought and preintellectual language come together to create fundamentally new forms of mental functioning." (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005: p. 1)

In addition to disagreeing on the functional significance of private speech, Vygotsky and Piaget also offered opposing views on the developmental course of private speech and the environmental circumstances in which it occurs most often (Berk & Garvin, 1984).

Through private speech, children collaborate with themselves, in the same way a more knowledgeable other (e.g., adults) collaborate with them to achieve a given function.

Vygotsky sees "private speech" as a means for children to plan activities and strategies, aiding their development. Private speech is the use of language for self-regulation of behavior.

Therefore, language accelerates thinking/understanding ( Jerome Bruner also views language in this way). Vygotsky believed that children who engage in large amounts of private speech are more socially competent than children who do not use it extensively.

Vygotsky (1987) notes that private speech does not merely accompany a child's activity but acts as a tool the developing child uses to facilitate cognitive processes, such as overcoming task obstacles, and enhancing imagination, thinking, and conscious awareness.

Children use private speech most often during intermediate difficulty tasks because they attempt to self-regulate by verbally planning and organizing their thoughts (Winsler et al., 2007).

The frequency and content of private speech correlate with behavior or performance. For example, private speech appears functionally related to cognitive performance: It appears at times of difficulty with a task.

For example, tasks related to executive function (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005), problem-solving tasks (Behrend et al., 1992), and schoolwork in both language (Berk & Landau, 1993), and mathematics (Ostad & Sorensen, 2007).

Berk (1986) provided empirical support for the notion of private speech. She found that most private speech exhibited by children serves to describe or guide the child's actions.

Berk also discovered that children engaged in private speech more often when working alone on challenging tasks and when their teacher was not immediately available to help them.

Furthermore, Berk also found that private speech develops similarly in all children regardless of cultural background.

There is also evidence (Behrend et al., 1992) that those children who displayed the characteristic whispering and lip movements associated with private speech when faced with a difficult task were generally more attentive and successful than their 'quieter' classmates.

Vygotsky (1987) proposed that private speech is a product of an individual's social environment. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that there exist high positive correlations between rates of social interaction and private speech in children.

Children raised in cognitively and linguistically stimulating environments (situations more frequently observed in higher socioeconomic status families) start using and internalizing private speech faster than children from less privileged backgrounds.

Indeed, children raised in environments characterized by low verbal and social exchanges exhibit delays in private speech development.

Children's use of private speech diminishes as they grow older and follows a curvilinear trend. This is due to changes in ontogenetic development whereby children can internalize language (through inner speech) to self-regulate their behavior (Vygotsky, 1987).

For example, research has shown that children's private speech usually peaks at 3-4 years of age, decreases at 6-7, and gradually fades out to be mostly internalized by age 10 (Diaz, 1992).

Vygotsky proposed that private speech diminishes and disappears with age not because it becomes socialized, as Piaget suggested, but because it goes underground to constitute inner speech or verbal thought" (Frauenglass & Diaz, 1985).

Educational Implications

Vygotsky's approach to child development is a form of social constructivism, based on the idea that cognitive functions are the products of social interactions.

Social constructivism posits that knowledge is constructed and learning occurs through social interactions within a cultural and historical context.

Vygotsky emphasized the collaborative nature of learning by constructing knowledge through social negotiation. He rejected the assumption made by Piaget that it was possible to separate learning from its social context.

Vygotsky believed everything is learned on two levels. First, through interaction with others, then integrated into the individual's mental structure.

Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological).

This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.
(Vygotsky, 1978, p.57)

Teaching styles grounded in constructivism represent a deliberate shift from traditional, didactic, memory-oriented transmission models (Cannella & Reiff, 1994) to a more student-centered approach.

Traditionally, schools have failed to foster environments where students actively participate in their own and their peers' education. Vygotsky's theory, however, calls for both the teacher and students to assume non-traditional roles as they engage in collaborative learning.

Rather than having a teacher impose their understanding onto students for future recitation, the teacher should co-create meaning with students in a manner that allows learners to take ownership (Hausfather, 1996).

For instance, a student and teacher might start a task with varying levels of expertise and understanding. As they adapt to each other's perspective, the teacher must articulate their insights in a way that the student can comprehend, leading the student to a fuller understanding of the task or concept.

The student can then internalize the task's operational aspect ("how to do it") into their inner speech or private dialogue. Vygotsky referred to this reciprocal understanding and adjustment process as intersubjectivity."

ZPD

Because Vygotsky asserts that cognitive change occurs within the zone of proximal development, instruction would be designed to reach a developmental level just above the student's current developmental level.

Vygotsky proclaims, "learning which is oriented toward developmental levels that have already been reached is ineffective from the viewpoint of the child's overall development. It does not aim for a new stage of the developmental process but rather lags behind this process" (Vygotsky, 1978).

Appropriation is necessary for cognitive development within the zone of proximal development. Individuals participating in peer collaboration or guided teacher instruction must share the same focus to access the zone of proximal development.

"Joint attention and shared problem solving is needed to create a process of cognitive, social, and emotional interchange" (Hausfather,1996).

Furthermore, it is essential that the partners be on different developmental levels and the higher-level partner be aware of the lower's level. If this does not occur or one partner dominates, the interaction is less successful (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather, 1996).

Vygotsky's theories also feed into the current interest in collaborative learning, suggesting that group members should have different levels of ability so more advanced peers can help less advanced members operate within their ZPD.

Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are effective strategies to access the zone of proximal development.

Reciprocal Teaching

A contemporary educational application of Vygotsky's theory is "reciprocal teaching," used to improve students" ability to learn from text.

In this method, teachers and students collaborate in learning and practicing four key skills: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher's role in the process is reduced over time.

Reciprocal teaching allows for the creation of a dialogue between students and teachers. This two-way communication becomes an instructional strategy by encouraging students to go beyond answering questions and engage in the discourse (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather, 1996).

A study conducted by Brown and Palincsar (1989) demonstrated the Vygotskian approach with reciprocal teaching methods in their successful program to teach reading strategies.

The teacher and students alternated turns leading small group discussions on a reading. After modeling four reading strategies, students began to assume the teaching role.

The results showed significant gains over other instructional strategies (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather,1996).

Cognitively Guided Instruction is another strategy to implement Vygotsky's theory. This strategy involves the teacher and students exploring math problems and then sharing their problem-solving strategies in an open dialogue (Hausfather,1996).

Based on Vygotsky's theory, the physical classroom would provide clustered desks or tables and workspace for peer instruction, collaboration, and small-group instruction. Learning becomes a reciprocal experience for the students and teacher.

Like the environment, the instructional design of the material to be learned would be structured to promote and encourage student interaction and collaboration. Thus the classroom becomes a community of learning.

Scaffolding

Also, Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development on learners is relevant to instructional concepts such as "scaffolding" and "apprenticeship," in which a teacher or more advanced peer helps to structure or arrange a task so that a novice can work on it successfully.

A teacher's role is to identify each individual's current level of development and provide them with opportunities to cross their ZPD.

A crucial element in this process is the use of what later became known as scaffolding; the way in which the teacher provides students with frameworks and experiences which encourage them to extend their existing schemata and incorporate new skills, competencies, and understandings.

Scaffolding describes the conditions that support the child's learning, to move from what they already know to new knowledge and abilities.

Scaffolding requires the teacher to allow students to extend their current skills and knowledge.

During scaffolding, the support offered by an adult (or more knowledgeable other) gradually decreases as the child becomes more skilled in the task.

As the adult withdraws their help, the child assumes more of the strategic planning and eventually gains competence to master similar problems without a teacher's aid or a more knowledgeable peer.

It is important to note that this is more than simply instruction; learning experiences must be presented in such a way as to actively challenge existing mental structures and provide frameworks for learning.

Five ways in which an adult can "scaffold" a child's learning:

1. Engaging the child's interest

2. Maintaining the child's interest in the task e.g., avoiding distraction and providing clear instructions on how to start the task.

3. Keeping the child's frustration under control e.g., by supportive interactions, adapting instructions according to where the child is struggling.

4. Emphasizing the important features of the task

5. Demonstrating the task: showing the child how to do the task in simple, clear steps.

As the child progresses through the ZPD, the necessary scaffolding level declines from 5 to 1.

The teacher must engage students' interests, simplify tasks to be manageable, and motivate students to pursue the instructional goal.

In addition, the teacher must look for discrepancies between students" efforts and the solution, control for frustration and risk, and model an idealized version of the act (Hausfather, 1996).

Challenges to Traditional Teaching Methods

Vygotsky's social development theory challenges traditional teaching methods. Historically, schools have been organized around recitation teaching.

The teacher disseminates knowledge to be memorized by the students, who in turn recite the information to the teacher (Hausfather,1996).

However, the studies described above offer empirical evidence that learning based on the social development theory facilitates cognitive development over other instructional strategies.

The structure of our schools does not reflect the rapid changes our society is experiencing. The introduction and integration of computer technology in society has tremendously increased the opportunities for social interaction.

Therefore, the social context for learning is transforming as well. Whereas collaboration and peer instruction were once only possible in shared physical space, learning relationships can now be formed from distances through cyberspace.

Computer technology is a cultural tool that students can use to meditate and internalize their learning. Recent research suggests changing the learning contexts with technology is a powerful learning activity (Crawford, 1996).

If schools continue to resist structural change, students will be ill-prepared for the world they will live.

Critical Evaluation

Vygotsky's work has not received the same level of intense scrutiny that Piaget's has, partly due to the time-consuming process of translating Vygotsky's work from Russian.

Also, Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective does not provide as many specific hypotheses to test as Piaget's theory, making refutation difficult, if not impossible.

Perhaps the main criticism of Vygotsky's work concerns the assumption that it is relevant to all cultures. Rogoff (1990) dismisses the idea that Vygotsky's ideas are culturally universal and instead states that scaffolding- heavily dependent on verbal instruction - may not be equally useful in all cultures for all types of learning.

Indeed, in some instances, observation and practice may be more effective ways of learning certain skills.

There is much emphasis on social interaction and culture, but many other aspects of development are neglected, such as the importance of emotional factors, e.g., the joys of success and the disappointments and frustration of failure act as motivation for learning.

Vygotsky overemphasized socio-cultural factors at the expense of biological influences on cognitive development. This theory cannot explain why cross-cultural studies show that the stages of development (except the formal operational stage) occur in the same order in all cultures suggesting that cognitive development is a product of a biological process of maturation.

Vygotky's theory has been applied successfully to education. Scaffolding has been shown to be an effective way of teaching (Freund, 1990), and based on this theory, teachers are trained to guide children from what they can do to the next step in their learning through careful scaffolding.

Collaborative work is also used in the classroom, mixing children of different levels of ability to make use of reciprocal / peer teaching.

Vygotsky vs. Piaget

Unlike Piaget's notion that children's cognitive development must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky argued, "learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function" (1978, p. 90). In other words, social learning precedes (i.e., come before) development.

Vygotsky's theory differs from that of Piaget in several important ways:

Vygotsky places more emphasis on culture affecting cognitive development.

Unlike Piaget, who emphasized universal cognitive change (i.e., all children would go through the same sequence of cognitive development regardless of their cultural experiences), Vygotsky leads us to expect variable development depending on cultural diversity.

This contradicts Piaget's view of universal stages of development (Vygotsky does not refer to stages like Piaget does).

Hence, Vygotsky assumes cognitive development varies across cultures, whereas Piaget states cognitive development is mostly universal across cultures.

Vygotsky places considerably more emphasis on social factors contributing to cognitive development.

1. Vygotsky states the importance of cultural and social context for learning. Cognitive development stems from social interactions from guided learning within the zone of proximal development as children and their partners co-construct knowledge.
In contrast, Piaget maintains that cognitive development stems largely from independent explorations in which children construct knowledge.

2. For Vygotsky, the environment in which children grow up will influence how they think and what they think about.
The importance of scaffolding and language may differ for all cultures. Rogoff (1990) emphasizes the importance of observation and practice in pre-industrial societies (e.g., learning to use a canoe among Micronesian Islanders).

Vygotsky places more (and different) emphasis on the role of language in cognitive development.

According to Piaget, language depends on thought for its development (i.e., thought comes before language). For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age, producing verbal thought (inner speech).

In Piaget's theory, egocentric (or private) speech gradually disappears as children develop truly social speech, in which they monitor and adapt what they say to others.

Vygotsky disagreed with this view, arguing that as language helps children to think about and control their behavior, it is an important foundation for complex cognitive skills.

As children age, this self-directed speech becomes silent (or private) speech, referring to the inner dialogues we have with ourselves as we plan and carry out activities.

For Vygotsky, cognitive development results from an internalization of language.

According to Vygotsky, adults are an important source of cognitive development.

Adults transmit their culture's tools of intellectual adaptation that children internalize.

In contrast, Piaget emphasizes the importance of peers, as peer interaction promotes social perspective-taking.

Behrend, D.A., Rosengren, K.S., & Perlmutter, M. (1992). The relation between private speech and parental interactive style. In R.M. Diaz & L.E. Berk (Eds.), Private speech: From social interaction to self-regulation (pp. 85-100). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Berk, L. E. (1986). Relationship of elementary school children's private speech to behavioral accompaniment to task, attention, and task performance. Developmental Psychology, 22(5), 671.

Berk, L. & Garvin, R. (1984). Development of private speech among low-income Appalachian children. Developmental Psychology, 20(2), 271-286.

Berk, L. E., & Landau, S. (1993). Private speech of learning-disabled and normally achieving children in classroom academic and laboratory contexts. Child Development, 64, 556-571.

Cannella, G. S., & Reiff, J. C. (1994). Individual constructivist teacher education: Teachers as empowered learners. Teacher education quarterly, 27-38.

Crawford, K. (1996) Vygotskian approaches to human development in the information era. Educational Studies in Mathematics, (31),43-62.

Diaz, R. M., & Berk, L. E. (1992). Private speech: From social interaction to self-regulation. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Driscoll, M. P. (1994). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Needham, Ma: Allyn && Bacon.

Frauenglass, M. & Diaz, R. (1985). Self-regulatory functions of children's private speech: A critical analysis of recent challenges to Vygotsky's theory. Developmental Psychology, 21(2), 357-364.

Fernyhough, C., & Fradley, E. (2005). Private speech on an executive task: Relations with task difficulty and task performance. Cognitive Development, 20, 103-120.

Freund, L. S. (1990). Maternal regulation of children's problem-solving behavior and its impact on children's performance. Child Development, 61, 113-126.

Hausfather, S. J. (1996). Vygotsky and Schooling: Creating a Social Contest for learning. Action in Teacher Education, (18),1-10.

Ostad, S. A., & Sorensen, P. M. (2007). Private speech and strategy-use patterns: Bidirectional comparisons of children with and without mathematical difficulties in a developmental perspective. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 40, 2-14.

Piaget, J. (1959). The language and thought of the child (Vol. 5) . Psychology Press.

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. Oxford university press.

Saettler, P. (1990). The Evolution of American Educational Technology . Egnlewood, Co: Libraries Unlimited.

Schaffer, R. (1996) . Social development. Oxford: Blackwell.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R.W. Rieber & A.S. Carton (Eds.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, Volume 1: Problems of general psychology (pp. 39-285). New York: Plenum Press. (Original work published 1934.)

Winsler, A., Abar, B., Feder, M. A., Schunn, C. D., & Rubio, D. A. (2007). Private speech and executive functioning among high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 1617-1635.

Wertsch, J. V., Sohmer, R. (1995). Vygotsky on learning and development. Human Development, (38), 332-37.

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Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory Of Cognitive Development

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Lev Vygotsky's theory of child development, known as the sociocultural theory, emphasizes the importance of social interaction and cultural context in learning and cognitive development. Vygotsky proposed the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which is the gap between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance from a more knowledgeable person.

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This section focuses particularly on different strategies students use to remember information, not necessarily different strategies used for general learning or to be used in the classroom. The three main strategies it focuses on are rehearsal, organization and elaboration. Rehearsal is basic depiction of the fact or information until it has been memorized (not truly learned.) This is the  most basic and can be done from a young age though it is very often used well into adulthood. Organization is the process of remembering information by grouping or organizing the information into particular categories. Elaboration is the most complex and is used the least frequent- this is the process of using previously learned concepts and information to then apply the new concepts and learn by elaboration and association with previous topics. The book even goes as far as to say that in the classroom setting, this is most likely to be only used by your high achieving students.

These strategies are crucial to remember as a teacher as it is important to help students move away from the rehearsal stage as it does not promote long term learning but rather used for regurgitation of the facts until time for an assessment of project. Ultimately the goal should be to get students as close to the elaboration phase as possible so that they can constantly build on their knowledge and truly expand their learning.

https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/learning-strategies/

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Interview with Megan Smith and Yana Weinstein ( transcript):
What does the word "study" mean to you?
Have you ever told your students to study for a test? Have you ever actually taught them how to study?

It turns out studying can be taught. And t wo cognitive psychological scientists, Yana Weinstein and Megan Smith (whose name has changed since this post to Sumeracki), have made it their mission to teach people how to study better. On their new website, The Learning Scientists, they use infographics and videos to share strategies and other insights about how we learn.

Here we will explore six research-based learning strategies that Weinstein and Smith teach on their site. If we can work these methods into our instruction, and teach students how to use them on their own, our students stand a much better chance of actually remembering our material.

One final note before we dig in: Although performance assessments and project-based learning allow students to show what they know with more depth and authenticity, most content areas still need to measure some learning with tests. When you are teaching that kind of content, these six strategies will help your students perform better on the test AND retain that information long after the test is over.
Space out your studying over time.
Far too many students wait until the night before a test to study for it. Similarly, teachers often wait until the day before a test to review. When enough students score well on the test, it appears they have learned the material. But a few weeks later, most of that information has vanished from students' minds. For more durable learning, the studying has to take place in smaller chunks over time.

"Every time you leave a little space, you forget a bit of the information, and then you kind of relearn it," Weinstein explains. "That forgetting actually helps you to strengthen the memory. It's kind of counterintuitive, but you need to forget a little bit in order to then help yourself learn it by remembering again."

Teachers can help students apply this strategy by helping them create a studying calendar to plan out how they will review chunks of content, and by carving out small chunks of class time every day for review. In both cases, plan to include current concepts AND previously learned material: Many teachers know this as "spiraling."
Practice bringing information to mind without the help of materials.
Many people think of "studying" as simply re-reading notes, textbooks, or other materials. But having the information right in front of us doesn't force us to retrieve it from memory; instead, it allows us to trick ourselves into thinking we know something. Recalling information without supporting materials helps us learn it much more effectively.

"Put your class materials away, and then write out or maybe sketch or speak everything you know and try to be as thorough as possible, and then check your materials for accuracy," Smith advises. "You're bringing information to mind almost like you're testing yourself; though it can be a practice test, it doesn't have to be. You can just sort of go through and explain what you know, or teach a friend or a pet or even an inanimate object everything that you learned in school. By bringing that information to mind, you're changing the way that information is stored so that it's easier for you to get to later on."

Teach students how to do retrieval practice in class: Have them turn off their devices, put all their notes and books away, then ask them to write everything they know about a particular term or topic, or share their thoughts in a think-pair-share. When the practice is done, have students check their understanding by revisiting their materials and discussing misconceptions as a class. Once they learn how to do this in school, they can then apply it at home.
Explain and describe ideas with many details.
This method asks students to go beyond simple recall of information and start making connections within the content. Students should ask themselves open-ended questions about the material, answer in as much detail as possible, then check the materials to make sure their understanding is correct.

Here's how Smith and Weinstein explain elaboration:

Teachers can apply this strategy by having brief class discussions where these kinds of questions are explored and asking students to work elaboration into their own study plans.
Switch between ideas while you study.
Common knowledge tells us that to learn a skill, we should practice it over and over again. While repetition is vital, research says we will actually learn that skill more effectively if we mix our practice of it with other skills. This is known as interleaving.

"Let's say you're doing a bunch of math problems," Weinstein says. "What's fairly typical is ... five of the same problem, or 10 of the same problem. Instead of doing that, try different problems in different orders." So if students are learning to calculate the area of a triangle, instead of having them do 20 problems with triangles, have them do one of a triangle, then one of a circle, then a triangle, then a square.

"The thing about that," Weinstein notes, "is that it's actually harder. So they'll be getting more wrong, they'll be making more errors, but they'll also be learning something very important, which is how to choose a particular strategy for each problem, as opposed to just repeatedly doing the same thing."

When planning exercises for students, resist the temptation to have them repeat the exact same process multiple times in a row. Instead, have them do a few of the new process, then weave in other skills, so that the repetitive behavior is interrupted and students are forced to think more critically. Explain this strategy to students so they can apply interleaving to their own studying.
Use specific examples to understand abstract ideas.
Most teachers already use this strategy in their own teaching; it's a natural part of explaining a new concept. But what we don't necessarily do is help students extend their understanding by coming up with examples of their own. Here's how Weinstein and Smith explain this broader use of concrete examples as a study practice:

Teachers can apply this strategy by using concrete examples when teaching abstract concepts, then asking students to come up with their own, correcting any examples (or parts of examples) that aren't quite right, and looking for more. Encourage students to continue this practice when they study.
Combine words and visuals.
When information is presented to us, it is often accompanied by some kind of visual: An image, a chart or graph, or a graphic organizer. When students are studying, they should make it a habit to pay attention to those visuals and link them to the text by explaining what they mean in their own words. Then, students can create their own visuals of the concepts they are learning. This process reinforces the concepts in the brain through two different paths, making it easier to retrieve later.

"And when we say visuals," Smith explains, "we don't necessarily mean anything specific, so it depends on the types of materials. You could have an infographic, a cartoon strip, a diagram, a graphic organizer, timeline, anything that makes sense to you so long as you're sort of depicting the information both in a way with words and a way with pictures."

"This isn't just for students who are good at drawing," Weinstein adds. "It's not about the quality of the drawing. It really just needs to be a visual representation as you can depict it."

In class, regularly turn students' attention to the visuals used in textbooks, on websites, and even in your own slideshow presentations. Have students describe the visuals to each other and make connections with what you're learning. Then have students create their own visuals of the content to further reinforce it. Remind students to include diagramming, sketching, and creating graphic organizers when they study at home.

Two more pieces of advice on how to maximize these strategies for learning:

Combine them. These strategies don't necessarily work in isolation. You can space out your retrieval practice, and when doing retrieval practice, try to recall concrete examples, elaborate, or sketch out a concept. When doing retrieval practice, you can interleave between different concepts.

Make them part of your class vocabulary. If you just use these strategies in your teaching, you'll see improvement. But if you actually explain the research to students, teach them the terminology, and use that terminology when teaching-"Okay, we're going to spend a few minutes on retrieval practice"-students will not only have a clearer understanding of why you're doing what you do, but they may be more likely to carry those skills with them into future classes.

The Learning Scientists site is full of useful information about how people learn, and more is being added every week. To learn more, visit learningscientists.org, and to download this free chart and other materials about the strategies, click the image below.
Other resources mentioned on the podcast:
Learning Scientists on Twitter: @acethattest

Learning Scientists on Facebook: facebook.com/acethattest

Make It Stick, The Science of Successful Learning, by Brown, Roediger & McDaniel
Teaching How2s simpleshow.com

Learn something new every week.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll also get access to my members-only library of free downloadable resources, including my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, which has helped thousands of teachers spend less time grading!

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6 Powerful Learning Strategies You MUST Share with Students

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Studying can be taught. Learn how retrieval practice, interleaving, elaboration, and other research-based study strategies can help your students learn better.

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Pg. 306

This section focuses on engaging, supporting, and teaching gifted students. This book defines giftedness as, "unusually high ability or aptitude in one or more areas to the point where special educational services are necessary to help a youngster meet his or her full potential." Generally these students/abilities will be identified in elementary school. This, in Kentucky, is also where the most services take place. This is very important to keep in mind as a secondary teacher as these students need a certain amount of push to keep their gifts strong and to encourage them to use it as they go beyond high school.

More in Teachers, Schools, and Society: A Brief Introduction to Education - Chapter 2, Page. 44 - "Exceptional Learners"

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Pg. 309

This section focuses on the two main areas of children with intellectual disabilities: low general intelligence (I.e IQ scores) and deficits in adaptive behavior. Adaptive behavior refers to the abilities needed to be autonomous in every day life (ie responsibility, age appropriate behavior and social skills, basic intelligence, etc.)

More in Teachers, Schools, and Society: A Brief Introduction to Education - Chapter 2, Page. 44 - "Exceptional Learners"

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This section discusses the experiences of bilingual students - particularly those that are non-native English speakers or English Language Learners. These students are often at inherit disadvantages in the US school system as so many schools do not have the capacity or resources for translation. Unlike many other cultures around the world, the US does not promote learning additional languages, making it more difficult for students coming to the US for school. This chapter, like the attached link, also discuss the advantages of bilingualism. As a teacher, I would like to use this information to focus more on how to better teacher and relate to my students that may not have English as their first language. Additionally, as a bilingual person myself, I would also like to use my position to push students to pursue second languages while in school.

https://www.leadwithlanguages.org/why-learn-languages/early-childhood-elementary/

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Why Learn Languages

Early Childhood & Elementary

It's never too early to begin learning a language: it's fun, it promotes healthy development, and the many cognitive and social benefits will last a lifetime. Here are some of the reasons why learning a language puts your child at a significant advantage, and how you can help-whether or not you know another language.

Benefits

Give Them a Head Start

Children who learn another language before age five use the same part of the brain to acquire that second language that they use to learn their mother tongue. Younger learners are also uninhibited by the fear of making mistakes, which is sometimes an obstacle for older beginners.

Start Early, Stay Long!

The length of time a student is able to devote to learning a language has a direct and positive correlation to cognitive development. Longer sequences also provide the opportunity for learners to grow alongside the additional language and culture, developing a deeper connection as they mature.

Feed Their Brains

Research shows that learning a second language boosts problem-solving, critical-thinking, and listening skills, in addition to improving memory, concentration, and the ability to multitask. Children proficient in other languages also show signs of enhanced creativity and mental flexibility.

Boost Their Academic Achievement

The cognitive benefits of learning a language have a direct impact on a child's academic achievement. Compared to those without an additional language, bilingual children have improved reading, writing, and math skills, and they generally score higher on standardized tests.

Nurture Their Curiosity, Cultural Sensitivity, Empathy, and Tolerance

Children who are exposed early to other languages display more positive attitudes to the cultures associated with those languages. The experience of learning a language introduces them to the world in ways they might otherwise have not experienced.

Don't Hesitate: Go for Two... or Three

Contrary to popular belief, young children are not confused by the introduction of multiple languages at the same time. Not only do they naturally navigate multilingual environments, but acquiring a second language early in life primes the brain to learn multiple other languages, opening a world of opportunities for later on.

What You Can Do to Help Your Child

Whether you are bilingual or this is your first experience with another language, your support will make a tremendous difference to your child's success. You don't have to be fluent in the language your child is learning in order to create an encouraging and active learning environment. Provide as many opportunities for authentic experiences as you can and check out the many online tools and resources available at your fingertips.

Would you like to start a language program in your child's school? Or maybe your child is in an at-risk program in danger of being cut? Learn how you and other like-minded parent advocates can work with your school district to make a change:

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Benefits of Learning a Second Language at an Early Age | Lead with Languages

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It's never too early to begin learning a language: it's fun, it promotes healthy development, and the many cognitive and social benefits will last a lifetime. Here are some of the reasons why learning a language puts your child at a significant advantage, and how you can help-whether or not you know another language.

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Pg. 346

This section dives into the different factors affecting childhood language development. Influencers like family income, ethnicity, gender, and more play a role in not only the language students learn but also the diversification of their vocabulary and use of grammar, sentence structure, etc.
These are all very important to remember when teaching diverse populations as the language used and taught in the classroom may not reflect what they are used to hearing at home depending on the environment in which they were raised.

https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/supporting-early-language-development-for-diverse-learners

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Supporting Early Language Development for Diverse Learners - ASCD

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The development of language skills among preschool and primary school children is crucial for success in school and life, providing a foundation for literacy development (NICHD, 2010). The ability to orally segment and blend sounds predicts word reading skills, and a rich vocabulary helps children g

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Pg. 377

Writing is a key element in childhood education and development. It is a skill that can not be underlined enough as a transferrable and necessary skill into any job market or future aspirations. This section discusses ways to promote writing in children from a very young age using tools like illustration, scaffolding, writing in each subject area, and making the prompts authentic and realistic.

This is vital for teachers in each subject. It is also important to help prepare students at every age for writing at the next level. For me, it will be focusing on helping students prepare to write at the collegiate level.

https://www.instituteforchildsuccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Every-Child-is-a-Writer-Understanding-the-Importance-of-Writing-in-Early-Childhood-Writing.pdf

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Education in Social Studies and the Arts

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Education in Social Studies and the Arts

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Pg. 401

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Erikson's Theory of Psychological Development

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Erikson's Theory of Psychological Development

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Pg. 408

Erik Erikson was a "psychodynamic theories" that studied learning and development in children. His thought was that children grow and learn based on life's challenges. He developed 8 psychosocial stages from birth to old age that explain the major challenges, "crises", that people will go through in their lifetime.

1. Trust Vs. Mistrust (Infancy)
2. Autonomy Vs. Shame and Doubt (Toddler)
3. Initiative Vs. Guilt (Preschool)
4. Industry vs. Inferiority (elementary)
5. Identity Vs. Role Confusion (adolescence)
6. Intimacy Vs. Isolation (Young Adulthood)
7. Generativity Vs. Stagnation (Middle Age)
8. Integrity Vs. Despair (Retirement)

https://positivepsychology.com/erikson-stages/

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Erik Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development Explained

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Explore the 8 stages of Erikson's developmental theory, subsequent criticisms, and resources for supporting growth and strength building.

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Supporting Youngsters with Emotional and Behavioral Problems

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Supporting Youngsters with Emotional and Behavioral Problems

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Pg. 445

This section gives extremely helpful tips on working with a teaching students with emotional and behavior issues. These students can benefit tremendously from a level of care from teachers, social skill instruction, extra structure, and communication/cooperation with parents and other invested adults. This chapter also lists some warning signs for teachers to be aware of at all ages - this is especially important as serious disorders like depression and anxiety are now much more common in high-school age chidlren.

https://www.positiveaction.net/blog/teaching-strategies-for-emotional-and-behavioral-disorders

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Pg. 451

This section discusses the development of students' self-perception and self esteem. The 1st sentence of this section is incredibly powerful - "Self-Concept emerges in the arms of parents." So much of a child's self-esteem and confidence is instilled and supported by the adults in their life. While this primarily happens through parents and guardians, schools and teachers have an equally important role to play.

https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2017/10/kids-self-perception-influences-academic-achievement/

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Over the past few decades, educational and developmental psychologists have attempted to understand the link between the concept of one's self and academic achievement.

A recent study published in the Child Development journal looked specifically into students' self-concepts of ability, or a student's perception of their capacity to successfully perform on academic tasks.

Lead researcher María Inés Susperreguy of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and colleagues at the University of Michigan found that self-concept in math and reading in young children plays a significant role in predicting later math and reading achievement, regardless of performance level.

"Our study shows that youths' perceptions of their abilities in middle childhood are important in promoting their later achievement in math and reading," Susperreguy said, according to ScienceDaily.

Several factors were controlled and taken into account during the experiment, such as demographics, early academic achievements and mother's education.

Past studies have shown that reminding children of a negative self-concept in math and other subjects have had deleterious effects on subsequent test scores. However, no previous study has examined the effects of self-concept over a period of time.

Unlike previous studies, the researchers at the Pontifica Universidad de Chile and the University of Michigan explored the link between self-concept of academic achievements throughout schooling and their actual achievements through middle childhood and into adolescence.

As students transition from middle school to high school, they face important decisions such as choosing between an advanced math or English class.

During this time, self-concept of their ability influences their decision and the later outcomes. Therefore the researchers decided to examine this specific time frame on self-concepts.

According to Pamela Davis-Kean, professor of psychology and research professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, the study addresses whether or not the relationship affects students across all levels of performance, or only for those who achieve the best grades.

Some researchers have proposed that the relationship depends heavily on the academic outcomes themselves.

"When trying to understand the issues of low academic performance, we often examine what additional skills children need to succeed in school," Davis-Kean said, according to ScienceDaily.

The researchers took samples from three data sets of students aged five to 18, with 13,901 British students from Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, 1,354 American students from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development and 237 American students from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement.

Students from each dataset were tested by various self-concept measures and standardized administrative achievement tests.

For example, students were asked questions such as "How good at math are you?" and were given a seven-point scale with one being "not good at all" to seven being "very good."

According to Davis-Kean, the study tracked each student and their academic achievements for up to 10 years after the start of the study.

"Our findings, replicated across three data sets, show that it is important to understand the relation between children's perceptions of their abilities and later achievement," she said.

Contrary to views that high academic achievers are driven by the relationship between self-concept and academic achievement, Susperreguy suggests that this relationship is just as, if not more, important for low-performing students.

"This relation is not limited to students who perform at the top levels, but extends to students with different levels of achievement in math and reading," Susperreguy said. "Even the lowest-performing students who had a more positive view of their math and reading abilities had higher levels of achievement in math and reading."

While this study did not account for other factors such as the influence of teachers, parents and peers, it does identify the important role of self-concept on later achievement and suggests that teachers should be offered proper guidance to help raise students' self-concept in their abilities.

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Over the past few decades, educational and developmental psychologists have attempted to understand the link between the concept of one's self and academic achievement. A recent study published in the Child Development journal looked specifically into students' self-concepts of ability, or a student's perception of their capacity to successfully perform on academic tasks.

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Pg. 473

This section is focused on students development of empathy and "social perspective taking". Each age frame brings different levels of development in this context.  In early childhood, for example, these concepts are constructed from observing others actions and then recognizing their desires and understanding those may be different than their own. This differs from a more mature brain that comes with adolescence where this understanding relies heavily on social experiences and groups with which students are surrounded.

https://fs.blog/mindwise-nicholas-epley/

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[quote]"The main problem is that we think we understand the minds of others, and even our own mind, better than we actually do."[/quote]

Despite the fact I do it countless times a day, I'm sometimes terrible at it. Our lives are guided by our inferences about what others think, believe, feel, and want. Understanding the minds of others is one of the keys to social success. With that in mind, I read Nicholas Epley's new book Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want.

While we can understand what others think, believe, and feel, sometimes we're wrong. The book's goal is to bring "your brain's greatest ability out of the shadows and into the light of scientific inspection."

That ability is our sixth sense.

I am going to tell you about the kind of mind reading you do intuitively every day of your life, dozens of times a day, when you infer what others are thinking, feeling, wanting, or intending. The kind that enables you to build and maintain the intimate relationships that make life worth living, to maintain a desired reputation in the eyes of others, to work effectively in teams, and to outwit and outlast your competitors. The kind that forms the foundation of all social interaction, creating the web of presumptions and assumptions that enables large societies to function.

This sixth sense is always on. A great example is the feeling you get when a co-worker calls in sick, and you're confident they're lying. In this way, Epley believes we're all mind readers.

It's easy to understand why. You and I are members of one of the most social species on the planet. No human being succeeds in life alone. Getting along and getting ahead requires coordinating with others, either in cooperation as friends, spouses, teammates, and coworkers, or in competition as adversaries, opponents, or rivals.

We're so good at this sixth sense that it operates at an almost unconscious level. As philosopher Jerry Fodor has written, "Commonsense psychology works so well, it disappears." Some of us, however, are better at mind-reading and social understanding than others.

That we cannot read anyone's mind perfectly does not mean we are never accurate, of course, but our mistakes are especially interesting because they are a major source of wreckage in our relationships, careers, and lives, leading to needless conflict and misunderstanding. Our mistakes lead to ineffective solutions to some of society's biggest problems, and they can send nations into needless wars with the worst of consequences.

Our mistakes are somewhat predictable and, therefore, argues Epley, correctable. They happen in two ways:

Our mistakes come from the two most basic questions that underlie any social interaction. First, does "it" have a mind? And second, what state is that other mind in?

We can make mistakes with the first question by failing to engage our mind-reading ability when we should, thereby failing to consider the mind of another and running the risk of treating him or her like a relatively mindless animal or object. These mistakes are at the heart of dehumanization. But we can also make mistakes by engaging our ability when we shouldn't, thereby attributing a mind to something that is actually mindless.

...

Once we're trying to read the minds of others, we can make mistakes with the second question by misunderstanding others' thoughts, beliefs , attitudes, or emotions, thereby misunderstanding what state another mind is in. Our most common mistakes come from excessive egocentrism, overreliance on stereotypes, and an all-to-easy assumption that others' minds match their actions ...

All of these mistakes have the same basic consequence of leading us to think that others' minds are more simplistic than they actually are.

Let's take a closer look at when we "fail to recognize the fully human mind of another person," which is the essence of dehumanization. This can happen "any time you fail to attend to the mind of another person because this can also lead you to believe that another person has weaker mental capacities than you do: a lesser mind." In the book Epley describes how doctors used to believe that children could not feel pain, how employers often think of employees as mindless (which leads bosses to over-estimate the importance of money and underestimate the intrinsic incentives like autonomy, pride, and mastery), and how we generally lack consideration for other people in certain social settings.

Enemies think of each other as unfeeling savages. Consider the story of how Brut Champagne got its name.

When the French began making champagne for the British, the champagne makers quickly learned that the Brits preferred much drier champagne than the French did. In fact, the French found this version to be unpalatable. They named this inferior champagne brut sauvage, for who could have such unsophisticated preferences other than a savage brut? The joke was eventually on the French: brut is now the most popular variety of champagne in the world.

The Lens Problem
We have a lens problem. The lens shapes what we see. And we react to what we see. "I'm right, and you're biased."

The lens in your eye filters light onto your retina, allowing you to see the world before your eye. Likewise, our own minds serve as a lens made up of beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge through which we perceive the world. If you look at an object through two different lenses, such as a telescope versus a microscope, then the very same object will look very different.

... This is a problem because you look through a lens rather than at it directly, which can make it hard to tell that your vision is being affected by it. Similarly, research makes it very clear that people have a hard time recognizing the ways in which their own perceptions are biased by the interpretive lens of beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge that they view it through. This handicaps our ability to understand the minds of others in two ways. First, people tend to overestimate the extent to which others believe, think, and feel as they do. This kind of egocentrism is a chronic mistake. Second, when people find out that others perceive the world differently than they do, the inability to recognize one's own bias leads people to think that others are the ones who are biased. The fingerprints of the lens problem are at the center of almost any difference of opinion.

Remember Kathryn Schultz on what happens when someone disagrees with us?

Perspective Taking
Most of us are taught that we should put ourselves in the shoes of others to better understand their thoughts and feelings, but this may not be the best strategy.

Everyone from Dale Carnegie to Barack Obama has suggested that the true way to understand other people is to honestly put yourself in another person's shoes. My research, however, suggests that this does little or nothing to increase how accurately you understand the minds of others. The main problem with this solution to social misunderstanding is that it relies completely on being able to use knowledge that a person already has in his or her head to understand another's perspective. But if you have a mistaken understanding of another person to begin with, then no amount of perspective taking is going to make your judgment systematically more accurate. When we ask husbands and wives, for instance, to predict each others' attitudes, those we tell to adopt the other person's perspective as honestly as they can actually become a little less accurate than those who do not adopt the other person's perspective. In conflict, we find in our research that opposing sides tend to misunderstand each other even more when we ask them to honestly adopt the other side's perspective. Perspective taking can have many beneficial consequences in social life, but systematically making people understand each other better does not seem to be one of them.

Epley prefers "perspective getting" to increase understanding.

If you actually want to understand the mind of another person, you have to get that person's perspective as directly as you possibly can. You do that in one of two ways, either by being the other person or by having the other person tell you honestly and openly what's actually on his or her mind. Court judges understand, for instance, what waterboarding feels like when they actually experience it directly, as the journalist Christopher Hitchens did, or when they listen to another person's honest report of the experience directly, as you can by reading Christopher Hitchens' account of his experience in Vanity Fair.

The Mind is a Beautiful Thing

You've never actually seen a belief, smelled an attitude, or poked a feeling. No intention has ever walked past you on the sidewalk. You can't weigh a want. Like atoms before electron microscopes, minds are inferred rather than observed. They exist only as a theory each of us uses to explain both our own and other people's behaviour. ... But what a marvelous theory it is. Human beings have been explaining one another for millennia without ever referencing a single neuron because the sense we've evolved is of such practical value. Mental concepts like attitudes, beliefs, intentions , and preferences are so highly correlated with whatever is actually going on in the brain that we can use our theory about other people's minds to predict their behaviour.

And in part, this ability to reason about the minds of others is what makes us human. We live in groups, large or small, and key to that social relationship is to understand people's thoughts, beliefs, emotions, etc. The bigger the group, the harder this is. Not only do you have to keep track of more people, but you have to keep track of more possibilities.

Mindwise is a fascinating exploration of understanding other people.

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Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want - Farnam Street

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quote]"The main problem is that we think we understand the minds of others, and even our own mind, better than we actually do."[/quote] Despite the fact I do it countless times a day, I'm sometimes terrible at it. Our lives are guided by our inferences about what others think, believe, feel, and want.

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This section explains the course student's minds take as they explore future aspirations and choices. The text describes how much a student's choice is based on their perception of their own capabilities and potential. This make it even more vital to have supportive adults in their lives to help them realize their abilities. There are many obstacles for students in choosing careers and other goals and it is important to have appropriate services and resources available for students.
As a secondary teacher, and higher education professional, this is something of extreme importance to me as I know this will be a key component to my relationship with my students.

https://www.kuder.com/blog/career-counseling-coaching/supporting-students-career-aspirations/

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Supporting Students’ Career Aspirations | Kuder

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Career advisors best support students’ career aspirations when they listen and reflect, offer concrete career guidance, and help develop career action plans.

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PG. 516

This section explains an important point for adults and educators - motivation is not always intrinsic motivation. It is far more often than not that motivation is something that needs to be instilled and supported for students to be successful. This is defined as situated motivation. This chapter suggests using the scaffolding technique to find activities and tactics of enticing students to engage in the learning process because it can give them a sense of competence and success. Teachers are then meant to help students build on those feelings to accomplish more and more with the student.

More Info in Teachers, Schools, and Society: A Brief History of Education - Chapter 2, Pg. 38 - Motivation to Learn

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The development of morals and ethics is incredibly important to foster at a young age. Students that are going to have fully developed sense of morals must have these beliefs fostered from a young age. The book gives some suggestions on strategies for teachers to use:

"1. Ask children for input on classroom rules.
2. Explain why certain behaviors are acceptable and others are not.
3. Discuss moral dilemmas with children.
4. Identify moral issues in the curriculum.
5. Challenge children's moral reasoning with slightly more advanced reasoning.
6. Encourage children to invite excluded classmates to participate in activities.
7. Get Children actively involved in community service.
8. Foster a climate of religious tolerance.
9. Appeal to children's emotional understanding.
10. Discourage cheating."

https://www.stcathmont.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=419956&type=d&pREC_ID=917607

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In a Montessori community, we typically associate moral development with the Elementary years and beyond, when children have developed the reasoning abilities and interests to tackle moral issues. However, the foundation for moral behavior begins well before the age of 6 and is part of the everyday experience of St.

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Pg. 546

Aggression is a particularly difficult topic as there are many instances where the most important stage for curbing aggression has passed before students' reach school age. This chapter highlights that this aggression should peak around 2 years old. It is up to parents and other caregivers to redirect and curb this aggression to appropriate emotional responses. For students that continue this aggressive behavior, there is much intervention that must take place to prevent further issues, especially in the classroom.

https://www.child-encyclopedia.com/aggression/according-experts/development-physical-aggression-early-childhood-adulthood

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Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development

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Preschoolers who have not successfully developed age-appropriate strategies for regulating aggressive behaviour are at high risk for engaging in chronic aggressive and antisocial behaviour. Aggression co-occurs with several common problems in early childhood including impulsivity, emotion dysregulation and language delays. Exactly how these other problems interact with aggression is still under investigation. Aggression may be worsened by these co-occurring problems in some children. In other children, deficits in these other areas of functioning may have preceded the difficulties with aggression.
Subject
Major developments in cognitive and social-emotional domains occur during early childhood. Regarding cognitive development, the emergence of increasingly sophisticated verbal skills, self-awareness and goal-directed behaviour contribute to a strong push for independence on the part of the child. Simultaneously, parents begin to impose rules and limits, both in response to the child's newfound autonomy and as a natural part of the socialization process. Clashes between the child's self-assertions and a parent setting limits lead to more frequent episodes of frustration and upset. Thus, some aggressive behaviour in response to frustration is fairly common early in life. Emerging skills appear to influence the trajectory of early aggression. For example, a child's increasing ability to regulate attention and negative emotions, inhibit impulsive responding, and draw on social communication to resolve conflict or express needs provide a foundation for utilizing behaviours other than aggression in response to frustration, anger, fear, etc. Assessing a child's developmental skill set is important for determining whether delays in other areas of functioning should be addressed.
Problems
Defining atypical aggression during the preschool years has been controversial. ¹ This is in part because of the fear of using labels or concepts that are developmentally inappropriate. Aggression has been broadly defined in the developmental and abnormal psychology literature, ² resulting in a set of behaviours that range from typical and adaptive to atypical and maladaptive. We now know that young children who are manifesting high levels of aggression are at high risk for continued problem behaviour and are in need of services. Aggressive behaviour, however, can reflect deficits in a number of areas and can be exacerbated by co-occurring problems. For example, delays in language development may impede communication of needs, impair the socialization of empathy and emotion regulation, and negatively impact peer relations. In fact, reducing problems with aggression in the context of a developmental delay would require interventions targeted at the delay, not simply at reducing the aggressive behaviour.
Key Research Questions
Aggressive behaviour emerges early, ³ and even these early forms can persist and become problematic. ² Moreover, high levels of aggression occurring as early as the toddler period, is predictive of later disruptive behaviour disorders. ⁴ As a result of these findings, a greater appreciation has been developed for the capacity of studies of chronic aggression in young children to inform research on the causes of serious aggression. The first five years of life is a period during which deficits emerge that may be critical to establishing a foundation for persistent aggressive behaviour. ⁵ Multiple domains of functioning likely influence the course of aggressive behaviour including dysregulated emotion, inattention, impulsivity and other developmental delays, particularly in the domain of social communication. Characterization of problems that co-occur with aggression is a key research agenda.
Recent Research Results
Recently data have been accumulating that demonstrate longitudinal associations between early aggression and deficits in emotion regulation, impulsivity and hyperactivity, and language development.

Emotion dysregulation can be assessed as early as the first year of life via observations or questionnaires. In a small longitudinal study, maternal reports of infant distress on a temperament measure at 6 months were associated with ratings of aggressive behaviour at age 2½ years. ⁶

Dysregulated emotion assessed during the toddler period was independently associated with aggression during preschool. ⁷ Moreover, the combination of these characteristics accounted for stability of toddler to preschool aggression: a significant relation existed between toddler aggression and preschool-age aggression only for those toddlers who were least able to regulate their emotions.

Deficits in impulse control and problems with overactivity also can be measured relatively early in life. Often, however, the impact of such behaviours on young children's functioning is not fully realized until they are in a school environment. Ostrov and Godleski ⁸ asked teachers to rate impulsivity and hyperactivity and conducted observations of aggression in a sample of preschool girls and boys. They found that teacher ratings of impulsivity and hyperactivity in the beginning of the school year were associated with observed physical aggression four months later, even after controlling for the level of aggression observed earlier in the school year. Therefore, problems with impulsivity and hyperactivity appear to increase the likelihood that aggressive behaviour will continue.

Finally, language development had been examined as both a consequence and a predictor of aggressive behaviour. Seguin and colleagues ⁹ found that children who engaged in high levels of aggression from 17-41 months were more likely to have language delays as preschoolers than their peers. An observational study of preschool boys with and without language impairments demonstrated that boys with language problems were more likely to engage in aggression during conflicts and had more difficulty re-engaging in play after an aggressive conflict. ¹⁰
Research Gaps
Two areas of research are still in early stages of development. The first is the understanding sex differences in early aggression. Numerous studies demonstrate sex differences in the continuity of early aggression. ¹¹ Research on sex differences in the characterization of co-occurring problems with aggression will contribute to the ability to propose causal models of chronic aggression across development. One example of such a study is by Hill and colleagues ¹² of more than 400 preschool girls and boys from ages 2-5 years. Poor emotion regulation and inattention at age 2 were important predictors of chronic and clinically significant levels of aggression and defiance for girls, whereas inattention was a predictor for boys.

The second area is identifying subgroups of aggressive children who demonstrate specific patterns of co-occurring behaviours and corresponding alterations in biological systems. For example, heart rate and skin conductance have been used to differentiate subtypes of aggression that demonstrate different patterns of co-occurring problems in older children. ¹³ Testing such hypotheses in younger children may help disentangle whether the autonomic arousal is a cause or an effect of aggression.
Conclusions
Aggression develops early in life and in most cases demonstrates a gradual decline over the first five years of life. Most children learn to inhibit aggressive behaviours, by drawing on other skills that emerge during that time. Some young children engage in aggression that is pervasive, frequent and severe. Aggression that emerges and persists during the first five years of life is impairing and associated with later mental disorders, poor social outcomes, and accumulation of deficits. Other areas of problem functioning are more likely to occur in the context of persistent and high aggressive behaviour including language problems, impulsivity, hyperactivity, poorly regulated negative emotions and defiance. Although the direction of effect (i.e., which problem came first) isn't yet known, the co-occurrence argues for a comprehensive assessment of developmental functioning when concerns about early aggressive behaviour arise.
Implications
Although the first five years of life is a period of risk for the development of persistent problems with aggression, this same period can be viewed as the optimal opportunity for supporting the development of emotional and behavioural regulation and communication to increase the probability of healthy social development. Developmental progression along cognitive, emotional, behavioural and social domains should be assessed systematically and regularly throughout the first five years of life. Because of the interrelatedness of each of these domains on the acquisition of prosocial skills, delays in one dimension could affect development in others, resulting in an accumulation of deficits. The encouragement of use perspective taking, emotion and behavioural regulation, delay of gratification, and effortful control are associated with declines in aggression. Therefore, significant delays or deficits in the basic psychological processes that support these areas of growth will impede the normal decline in aggression observed over the first five years of life. Any effective intervention for aggression will require an assessment of deficits across domains, and additional supports to address such deficits.
References

1. Campbell, S. B. (1995). Behavior problems in preschool children: A review of recent research. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 36, 113-149.

2. Tremblay, R. E., Japel, C., Perusse, D., Boivin, M., Zoccolillo, M., Montplaisir, J. & McDuff, P. (1999). The search for age of "onset" of physical aggression: Rousseau and Bandura revisited. Criminal Behavior and Mental Health, 9, 8-23.

3. Landry, S. & Peters, R.D. (1992). Toward an understanding of a developmental paradigm for aggressive conduct problmes during the preschool years. In R.D. Peters, R.J. McMahon & V.L. Quinsey (Eds.), Aggression and violence throughout the life span (pp. 1-30). Newbury Park: Sage Publications.

4. Keenan, K., Shaw, D.S., Delliquadri, E., Giovannelli, J. & Walsh, B. (1998). Evidence for the continuity of early problem behaviors: Application of a developmental model. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 26, 443-454.

5. Keenan, K. (2001). Uncovering preschool precursors to problem behavior. In R. Loeber & D.P. Farrington (Eds.), Child delinquents, (pp 117-136), Newberry Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

6. Crockenberg SC, Leerkes EM, Bárrig Jó PS. (2008). Predicting aggressive behavior in the third year from infant reactivity and regulation as moderated by maternal behavior. Development and Psychopathology, 20, 37-54.

7. Rubin, K.H., Burgess, K.B., Dwyer, K.M. & Hastings, P.D. (2003). Predicting preschoolers' externalizing behaviors from toddler temperament, conflict, and maternal negativity. Developmental Psychology, 39, 164-76.

8. Ostrov, J.M. & Godleski, S.A. (2009). Impulsivity-hyperactivity and subtypes of aggression in early childhood: An observational and short-term longitudinal study. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 18, 477-83.

9. Séguin JR, Parent S, Tremblay RE, Zelazo PD. (2009). Different neurocognitive functions regulating physical aggression and hyperactivity in early childhood. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 50, 679-87.

10. Horowitz L, Westlund K, Ljungberg T. (2007). Aggression and withdrawal related behavior within conflict management progression in preschool boys with language impairment. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 38, 237-53.

11. Keenan, K. & Shaw, D. (1997). Developmental and social influences on young girls' early problem behavior. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 95-113.

12. Hill, A.L., Degnan, K.A., Calkins, S.D. & Keane, S.P. (2006). Profiles of externalizing behavior problems for boys and girls across preschool: The roles of emotion regulation and inattention. Developmental Psychology, 42, 913-28.

13. Scarpa, A., Haden, S.C. & Tanaka, A. (2010). Being hot-tempered: autonomic, emotional, and behavioral distinctions between childhood reactive and proactive aggression. Biological Psychology, 84, 488-96.

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Development of Physical Aggression from Early Childhood to Adulthood | Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development

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Preschoolers who have not successfully developed age-appropriate strategies for regulating aggressive behaviour are at high risk for engaging in chronic aggressive and antisocial behaviour. Aggression co-occurs with several common problems in early childhood including impulsivity, emotion dysregulation and language delays. Exactly how these other problems interact with aggression is still under investigation.

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Pg. 581

School and other educational settings are a vital piece in helping students to develop appropriate and productive relationships with their peers. This is a task that teachers must take to heart in their classroom to help students develop properly, especially at a young age. However, it is also important to continue this as children enter early and late adolescence as this is the time when students are more likely to have more troublesome relationships with their peers or being to fold to peer pressure in negative ways. Being an observant teacher, and helping communicate and collaborate with parents can help students in a major way to foster mutually beneficial relationships amongst students.

https://transformingeducation.org/resources/fostering-positive-peer-relationships/

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Fostering Positive Peer Relationships - Transforming Education

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The second brief in the Fostering Strong Relationships series focuses on ways teachers can support positive peer interactions in the classroom, through intentional relationship-building and social perspective-taking strategies.
In it, we discuss the research on the importance of strong peer relation…

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Pg. 595

Beyond the classroom, the way student's spend their time outside of school is crucial to their development. Whether it be childcare for younger students or after school programming/extracurricular activities for older students, it is vital to get students involved in productive activities beyond the hours they are in school. It is important, as teachers, to help to encourage students to participate in these if feasible. Many students, though, find this challenging as things outside of school hours require transportation and, often times, extra money. Schools or communities that can help create opportunities should do so as the mental, emotional, and social benefits for students far outweighs the costs that would be eaten by the organizers.

https://youth.gov/youth-topics/afterschool-programs/benefits-youth-families-and-communities

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Effective afterschool programs bring a wide range of benefits to youth, families and communities. Afterschool programs can boost academic performance, reduce risky behaviors, promote physical health, and provide a safe, structured environment for the children of working parents.