INSTITUT PENDIDIKAN GURUKAMPUS IPOH

31150 HULU KINTAPERAK DARUL RIDZUAN

PROGRAM IJAZAH SARJANA MUDA PERGURUAN DENGAN KEPUJIAN (TESL) PENDIDIKAN RENDAH

SHORT COURSEWORK EVALUATION

Course : Child Development Semester : 1

Date Set : 29 JAN 2012 Date Submitted

: 25 FEB 2012

NAME : HAMDAN BIN BASRAN

I.C. NUMBER : 910921-10-5927

UNIT : K 13

LECTURER’S NAME : MDM VASUKI MUNIANDY

1.0 CONCEPT AND PRINCIPLE OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Generally development is a dynamic process of which something passes by

degrees to another more mature or advance stage that results in expanding and

improving. Child here refers to a person within the stage of birth till puberty. Hence from

here we can understand that child development is the study of process or mechanisms

that happen during the biological and psychological process of growth of person within

the age of birth till puberty. Child development is a process where changes occur during

human development. Most people think that the concept growth and development is the

same but it is totally different process. Growth and development are related with each

other even though they are different.

Woolfolk and Margaretts (2007), states the growth is the change in size and

maturity. They are many characteristic of growth such as it is quantitative in nature and

it can be seen and measured, the size and structure of the body increases, the size of

the brain and the internal organs also increases, it is influenced by genetic and

hereditary and the rate of growth differs between children and proceeds according to

stages. Santrock (2008) defines development as changes in the biological pattern, the

cognitive and social emotions of an individual from birth to the end of life. Development

is a qualitative, it a process that cannot be measured but it seen through the emergence

of new characteristic. The examples of characteristic of development are it is qualitative

and changes happen in physical, cognitive, emotional and moral aspect. The changes

of development are also stable and it is takes place gradually and systematically. The

changes take place continuously through different stages of maturation. Maturation

refers to the natural changes due to genetics. Development is also being influenced by

genetic and environment. It is also a result of maturation and learning.

There are also several changes that can be seen between growth and

development. In the physical aspect, the changes of growth are the changes in height,

increase in weight and teething. Meanwhile in the physical changes of development is

reading skill, writing, counting, creative and critical thinking. Development of children is

different between each other. There are some children that have the basic of the skill at

the early age and some children are not. In the emotions aspect, growth is the feeling of

happiness, love, anger and jealousy while the development is the skill that the children

have to manage the emotions. In the early age, children cannot manage their emotions.

As the example if their want something and they did not get it, they will do they rebellion

action such as crying to seek for their parents attentions. As they grow older, they can

manage their emotions well and be matured. Lastly in the social aspect, the growth is

having relationship with parents, family, friends, and people around them, while in the

development is having skill in social relationship and showing good behavior in

accordance to the norm of a society.

There are many basic principles of child development. Firstly, development

occurs in accordance with later abilities, skills, and knowledge building on those already

acquired. As example, the children develop the skill from only know how to crawling to

the process of learning how to walk. The process is in accordance because it is natural

process when the baby learns to crawling before they learn how to walk. The next

principle is changes in growth and development proceeds from general to specific. As

example, a child can hold an object with his hand before he learns to hold with his

fingers. Growths will occur with bigger muscles first before the fine muscles. In the

beginning children learn simple things such as 1, 2, 3 or a,b,c when they started off at

preschool. As time passes by their cognitive skill increased and started to gain more

understanding so they are taught how to add and minus and even solve problems.

Children start off with simple matter rather than complex in the process of cognitive

development and the development of motor skill.

The other principles are growth and development is a continuous process. The

example is can be seen in physical development of child where a child begins to sit then

crawl and stand. This sequence will not stop and will continue to grow as the child

grows older. These prove that growth and development is a continuous process that will

not stop until a person dies. Growth and development occurs at the different rates.

Some children are able to walk at 10 months old whereas others might start walking at

18 month of age. Lastly, development depends on the outcome of interaction between

maturity and learning. Maturity refers to the sequential characteristic of biological growth

and development. The biological changes occur in sequential order in the brain and

nervous system and give children new abilities. These changes in the brain and nervous

system help children to discover the potential in thinking and motor skills. Development

proceeds from simple to complex. As example, one can swim and develop his muscles

when he practices and imitate techniques of swimming.

2.0 FACTORS INFLUENCING CHILD COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Cognitive skills are individual’s ability to think, give opinions, comprehend, and

memorize events that occur in surrounding. It involves mental activities such as

memory, categorizing, planning, reasoning, problem solving, creating, imagining and

other. There are many factors that influencing child cognitive development that will be

discussed.

One of the factors is the biological factors. Sensory organ is the part of biological

in our body and if an individual have the problem with some of the sense organ, the

cognitive development of that individuals will be effected. That is because of the

defective sense organs collect defective stimuli and as a result wrong concepts can be

formed and the cognitive development will not be perfect. Intelligence can affect the

cognitive development. Children with low intelligence will not have the same cognitive

development with the intelligence children. Their cognitive development maybe slower

than the intelligence children because of the biological factors that influencing the

learning process. Cognitive development of children is also a hereditary from their

parents. The cognitive development of the child’s from the professional people such as

doctor and teacher maybe better than the farmer’s child because the children inherit the

biological traits from their parents.

The second factor that influences child cognitive development is the environment

factors. Learning opportunities is the environment factors that influencing child cognitive

development. The more opportunities that the children get will results the better

cognitive development because their mental capacity can be increase by the

opportunity given to them to learn and discover. Mean while, the children that do not

have the opportunity will result nothing change or added in their cognitive development

because they do not have the opportunity to learn. As example, the children in a city

maybe learn faster than the children’s in the village because their parents sent them in

school during their early age of 3 compare to the parents that live in village that sent

their children to school at the age of 6. The learning opportunity given to the children will

make them develop their cognitive skill faster than other children that do not get the

opportunity. Economic status of the family also helps in the development of cognitive

skills. By having the stable economic status, parents can provide more opportunities for

their children to get the better training for the cognitive development. Economic status of

the country also influencing the cognitive development of children. The children from

third world country such as Somalia, Africa, and Malawi maybe do not have the

opportunity to learn in the school compare to our country because of their economic

status. There are many children in the world that do not have the opportunity. Some of

them do not know how to read and write until their become adults.

Play is also one of environment factor that influencing cognitive development.

Through play activities, it will make children interacts with the environment, receives

stimuli and they will respond to them. Play can make the children develop cognitive skill

because when they are playing, they learn something new knowledge that will increase

their mental abilities. As example if a children playing chess which will make them think

about the strategy to win the game. The play will develop the understanding about the

game and will make the children gains new knowledge. Family and society is also an

environment factors influencing cognitive development. Family is very important

because it is providing the child hereditary traits, which are the of development family

also providing opportunities to learn, good encourage environment to the child if the

family provides such atmosphere to the child in which he maximum stimuli from the

environment, would be encouraged to learn and with his environment. This will make

the cognitive development of the children become more effective. Children learn from

observing from other such as family and society. From observing their family and people

around them, children learn language and habits. It is a responsible to the society

member to provide the good facilities such as school to make the children develop their

cognitive skills.

3.0 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF A CHILD.

According to Piaget, our thinking process change radically, from birth until

maturity. Piaget also identified four interacting factors that could influence the

individual’s thinking process. The four factors is maturation, individual’s interaction with

surrounding, social experiences and equilibration. Piaget also identified four stages of

Cognitive Development that are Sensorimotor Stage( from birth-2 years old),

Preoperational Stage( 2-7 years old), Concrete Operational Stage(7-11 years old) and

lastly Formal Operational Stage(11 years and above).

Piaget’s Conservation Tasks has been done to show the differentiation cognitive

development of children in the certain age. The research has been done to the two

children with the different age. The first child is 4 years old and the second child is 7

years old. The child of 4 years is called children A and the child of 7 years is called

Children B. Two tests are being done on the child to see their cognitive development.

Firstly, we do the test to evaluate the ability to transform, reverse and reason.

Two rows of shillings are put in the same length in the table. When asked whether the

number of the coins in each rows is the same, both children A and B answer ‘yes’. But

when left side of the row is lengthened, the children’s give the different answer. Children

A conclude that the left side of the row has more coins and Children B give the different

answer by said that both row contains the same amounts of shillings.

Both children give different answer because of the differentiation of thinking.

Children A is in preoperational stage while children B is at concrete operational stage.

Both are different stage. Children A cannot answer correctly because he focuses on the

differences in length of the two rows rather than more abstract ideas of numbers. While

Children B answer correctly because children at concrete operational stage are able to

think logically about concrete objects.

We can see the different type of answer because children at the Preoperational

Stage still cannot do transformation. They do not mentally represent the process of

lengthening. They see the left row as a different row rather than as the earlier one

lengthened. They also could not perform the reverse action mentally. They are not able

to mentally trace the process of lengthening the row back to its original state.

Meanwhile, the children at the Concrete Operational Stage have understood the

process of transformation, reversing and reasoning. By the test that has been done, it

can be seen that they able to conclude that the number of coins is the same even when

the left row is lengthened. According to Piaget, children at this stage are able to solve

problems relating to conversations.

From the result of the test, we can conclude that the differentiation of stage of

development influencing the ways of the thinking of the children. In the Preoperational

Stage, the children is still not able do the transformations and other, but at the Concrete

Operational Stage, the children will start to develop their cognitive skill and able to think

logically and do transformations.

4.0 IMPLICATIONS OF CHILD’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT TO THE TEACHING

AND LEARNING PROCESS

There are many implications of child’s cognitive development to the teaching and

learning process. The different stage of the cognitive needs teacher to plan the learning

and teaching process according to the age of student. As example, teacher cannot

teach 5 years old children the same way they teach 11 years old children. This is due to

the different level of cognitive development that they gone through. Children at the age

of 5 years old are considering in preoperational stage. To teach them, teacher must use

concrete teaching aids and visuals aids to make them more understand.

Teacher also needs to guide the student that have problem in the classroom.

Some children are slow in their cognitive development and need guidance from teacher

to help them. Teacher should make sure that no child left behind. If the children have

the problem, teacher should play role to motivate them. For the children that learn faster

in their cognitive development, teacher should encourage them more and give full

support to them to gain more knowledge.

The other implications is teaching and learning process become more efficient

because teacher know the level of the child and provide the correct teaching aids to

teach their student. With the correct use of the learning aids and learning content,

student will found that the teaching and learning process more interesting hence this will

increase their academic achievement in the future. Teacher need to know their student

cognitive development so that they know what is the suitable content they use to teach

their student.

5.0 CONCLUSION OR SUGGESTION IN TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS.

One of the suggestions to be included in teaching and learning process is

teacher must organizing their classroom and materials. Different stage of cognitive

development needs different kind of teaching materials. Teacher should be responsible

to organize the management of the classroom. In the classroom where the student is in

the pre operational stage, teacher should put more visual learning materials in the

classroom to increase student cognitive development. Children at that stage more likely

to learn through the visuals material rather the complicated note that they do not

understand.

Another suggestion is teacher should have the skill to planning and conducting

instruction in teaching and learning process. Teacher should require skill in planning

and conducting instruction based on the different stage of cognitive development. As

example, children at the pre operational stage find it is difficult to understand the world

from other’s point of view. Teacher must plan and explains in the easiest or simplest

way to make the children understand about the instruction given to the children.

As conclusion, teacher play vital role in the duty to teach their student. Teacher

also must give full commitment and sacrifice their energy to teach their student to

develop their cognitive development.

COLLABORATION FORM

STUDENT’S NAME : ____________________________________________________

MATRIC NOM: _____________________________________________________

UNIT : _________________________SEMESTER: __________________

SUBJECT: _____________________________________________________

LECTURER : ____________________________________________________

Date Things to Discuss Comments Signature

BibliographyBooks

EMMER, E. T. (2002). Classroom Management For Secondary Teacher. texas: Pearson Education.

Haliza Hamzah, J. N. (2008). Child Development. Kuala Lumpur: KUMPULAN BUDIMAN SDN BHD.

Kessen, William. 1990. The Rise and Fall of Development. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.

Thornton, Stephanie. Growing Minds: An Introduction to Children's Cognitive Development. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Wadsworth, Barry J. Piaget's Theory of Cognitive and Affective Development: Foundations of Constructivism, 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Allyn & Bacon, 2003.

websites

Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development, 2003. Available online at (accessed February 9, 2012).

Developmental Psychology: Cognitive Development, 2004. Available online at www.psy.pdx.edu/PsiCafe/Areas/Developmental/CogDev-Child/index.htm (accessed February 9, 2012).