Cognitive Development and Education EDS115, Gedeon Deák

• Welcome, introductions

• Syllabus; wait list

• on Thursday...

• Guiding questions:

• What should teachers know about development?

• How are children’s cognitive skills & limits reflected in work, play, talk?

• How can we fit educational practices to children’s skills & limits?

• What education institutions assume about children & learning

What should teachers know?about cognitive development?• Hard questions:

• What’s the relation between development and learning? Whatshould teachers know about the brain?

• Problem: teacher (mis)conceptions:

• science as “a bunch of facts”

• Guiding concepts:

• “developmentally appropriate” teaching

• Scaffolding; “Zone of Proximal Development”

• Goal: acquire knowledge/skills w/in capabilities

Zone of Proximal Development; ScaffoldingA

bilit

y Le

vel

Low (novice)

Intermediate

High (expert)Scaffolded level

Unassisted level

Zone ofProximal

Development

Scaffolded level

Unassisted level

Zone of ProximalDevelopment

Developmentally appropriateteaching: Fit the school to the

child?

• What do children “get” from instruction?

• How much does this depend on age?

• What can children of a given age learn?

• Complicating factor: individual differences

• How does education contribute to cognitive skills?

• Age vs. experience

What do children “get?”

“If nothing else, school has prepared mefor a lifetime of backpacking.”

What a child can learn (or not)

• Example: Learnability of syntax (Braine, 1971):

• Child (2.5 years): “Want other one spoon, daddy?”

• Dad: “You mean, you want the other spoon?”

• C: “Yes, I want other one spoon, please, Daddy.”

• D: “Can you say, ‘the other spoon’?”

• C: “other…one…spoon”

• D: “Say ‘other’” [C: “other”]

• D: “Spoon” [C: “spoon”]

• D: “Other…spoon”

• C: “Other spoon. Now give me the other one spoon.”

What behaviors can kindergartners inhibit?

data from 83 5-6-year-olds (Carlson 2005)

Do what the bearsays, not the dragon

Bear/dragon (or monkey/monster) task

Age or experience?

Pi what squared? Long John, you ought to be able to get this.”

Morrison et al: “School cutoff” studyMoral: hard to know

what is learned in vs.out of school, & howthis depends on age

(or prior experience)

Mean pictures recalled

Mean syllable segmentation score(Morrison, Smith & Dow-Ehrensberger, 1995)