C973 Chs 2 and 3

Adult explanation

"Generativity ... is primarily the concern of establishing and guiding the next generation." Erikson's use of the term generativity is purposely broad. It refers, of course, to having children and raising them. In addition, it refers to the productive and creative efforts in which adults take part (e.g., teaching) that have a positive effect on younger generations. Those unable or unwilling to "establish" and "guide" the next generation become victims of stagnation and self-absorption.

Researchers who study self-perceptions distinguish among the concepts of self-description, self-esteem, and self-concept:

-A self-description is simply the way in which people describe themselves to others. Self-descriptive statements are largely, but not entirely, free of evaluative judgments. Examples of self-descriptions are "I am eleven years old," "I am tall for my age," and "I am an outgoing person." -Self-esteem (or self-worth, as it is sometimes called) refers to the overall or global evaluation people make of themselves. It is indicated by such statements as "I believe that I am a worthwhile person" and "I am pretty happy with myself." -Self-concept refers to the evaluative judgments people make of themselves in specific domains, such as academic performance, social interactions, athletic performance, and physical appearance. It is indicated by such statements as "I have a good head for math," "I have a hard time making friends," and "My big nose makes me look ugly."

Conventional all about rules

-Good boy nice girl orientation -Law and order orientation

After analyzing interview records with these two criteria in mind, Marcia established identity statuses, described in Table 2-1, which vary in their degree of crisis and commitment:

-Identity diffusion -Foreclosure -Moratorium -Identity achievement

In one study, most middle school students (grades six through eight) characterized their classroom activities as less interesting and enjoyable and as providing fewer opportunities for choice than did students in grades three through five.

-Instead of providing students with opportunities to make decisions about such things as classroom rules, seating arrangements, homework assignments, and time spent on various tasks, teachers impose most of the requirements and limit the choices students can make.

Studies of young children rated as highly competent show that to encourage preschoolers to make the most of their abilities, adults should:

-Interact with the child often and in a variety of ways. -Show interest in what the child does and says. -Provide opportunities for the child to investigate and experience many things. -Permit and encourage the child to do many things. -Urge the child to try to achieve mature and skilled types of behavior. -Establish firm and consistent limits regarding unacceptable forms of behavior, explain the reasons for these as soon as the child is able to understand, listen to complaints if the child feels the restrictions are too confining, and give additional reasons if the limits are still to be maintained as originally stated. -Show that the child's achievements are admired and appreciated. -Communicate love in a warm and sincere way.

This emphasis on rote learning and recall has unfortunately been intensified in recent years by the growth of statewide learning standards, standardized testing, and accountability. We say "unfortunately" because this type of testing and these approaches to accountability discourage teachers from using instructional methods that foster meaningful learning.

-Many classroom tasks in middle school or junior high involve low-level seatwork, verbatim recall of information, and little opportunity for discussion or group work. In one study of 11 junior high school science classes, the most frequent activity was copying information from the board or textbook onto worksheets.

Mark Tappan has proposed the following four-component model that teachers can use to optimize the effects of their scaffolding efforts and help students move through their ZPD:

-Model desired academic behaviors. Children can imitate many behaviors that they do not have the capability to exhibit independently, and such experiences stimulate them to act this way on their own. -Create a dialogue with the student. A child's understanding of concepts, procedures, and principles becomes more systematic and organized as a result of the exchange of questions, explanations, and feedback between teacher and child within the child's ZPD. As with modeling, the effectiveness of this dialogue is determined, at least in part, by the extent to which the teacher and student are committed to creating and maintaining a relationship in which each makes an honest effort to satisfy the needs of the other.

Preconventional

-Punishment obedience orientation -Instrumental relativist orientation

A three-year study of more than 200 preschool children (average age 4.25 years) found the following play preferences:

-Same-sex play occurred more often than mixed-sex play. -Girls were more likely than boys to play in pairs rather than groups, and boys were more likely than girls to play in groups rather than pairs. When girls did play in groups, they were more likely than boys to play in a group in which they were not the only member of their sex. -When boys played with each other, whether in pairs or groups, they were more likely than girls who played with each other to engage in active-forceful play. This tendency was less apparent when a boy played in a group that was otherwise made up of all girls. But when a girl played in a group whose other members were boys, her level of active-forceful play tended to increase.

-Competition and social comparisons among students increase as a result of such practices as whole-class instruction, ability grouping, normative grading (also called grading on the curve, a practice we discuss in Chapter 14, "Assessment of Classroom Learning"), and public evaluations of one's work. Small-group instruction is infrequent, and individualized instruction almost never occurs. This stressful atmosphere does not go unnoticed by students. Compared with adolescents from 11 other countries, middle school students in the United States were more critical of their school's climate and felt more socially isolated.

-Students perceive their relationships with their teachers as being less friendly, supportive, and caring than those in earlier grades.

Adolescents who engage in substance abuse (tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs) not only jeopardize their physical and emotional health but also increase their risk of doing poorly in school or of dropping out of school. A 2007 survey of high school students found that:

-Twenty percent reported smoking on one or more of the 30 days before the survey, and about 8 percent reported smoking on 20 or more of the previous 30 days. -Almost 45 percent of high school students reported drinking in the previous 30 days. Twenty-four percent of female students and 27.8 percent of male students engaged in episodic heavy drinking (commonly known as binge drinking). -Thirty-eight percent had used marijuana at least once during their lifetimes, and 19.7 percent had used marijuana one or more times in the preceding 30 days. -A little more than 7 percent reported using some form of cocaine at least once during their lifetimes, and 4.33 percent reported using cocaine in the preceding 30 days. -About 4.5 percent of students reported using methamphetamine at least once during their lifetimes.

The analysis of the interview responses showed no significant gender differences in the understanding of political concepts and no significant differences attributable to intelligence and social class, although brighter students were better able to deal with abstract ideas, and upper-class students were less likely to be authoritarian. The most striking and consistent finding was the degree to which the political thinking of the adolescent changed in the years between ages twelve and sixteen. Adelson concluded that the most significant changes were

-an increase in the ability to deal with such abstractions as freedom of speech, equal justice under law, and the concept of community; -a decline in authoritarian views; -an increase in the ability to imagine the consequences of current actions; and -an increase in political knowledge.

Preoperational age

2-7 years

Elementary explanation

A child entering school is at a point in development when behavior is dominated by intellectual curiosity and performance. "He now learns to win recognition by producing things...He develops a sense of industry." If children at this stage are encouraged to make and do things well, helped to persevere, allowed to finish tasks, and praised for trying, industry results. If the children's efforts are unsuccessful or if they are derided or treated as bothersome, feelings of inferiority result. Children who feel inferior may never learn to enjoy intellectual work and take pride in doing at least one kind of thing really well. At worst, they may believe they will never excel at anything.

Middle school general factors to keep in mind

A growth spurt and puberty influence many aspects of behavior. An abrupt switch occurs (for sixth graders) from being the oldest, biggest, most sophisticated students in elementary school to being the youngest, smallest, least knowledgeable students in middle school. Acceptance by peers is extremely important. Students who do poor schoolwork begin to feel bitter, resentful, and restless. Awareness grows of a need to make personal value decisions regarding dress, premarital sex, and code of ethics.

Adaptation occurs through the processes of assimilation (fitting an experience into an existing scheme) and accommodation (changing a scheme or creating a new one to incorporate a new experience).

A scheme is an organized and generalizable pattern of behavior or thought that guides what we see, think, and do.

The point here is that technology can support social interaction of many students in the same virtual environment.

A second way technology connects people is through online mentoring relationships, typically called telementoring.

Moral character is a disposition to do both what is good and what is right.

A student who tells her teacher that she inadvertently saw a copy of the test that the teacher plans to give tomorrow is also demonstrating moral character.

Vygotsky referred to the difference between what a child can do on his own and what can be accomplished with some assistance as the zone of proximal development (ZPD) .

According to Vygotsky, students with wider zones are likely to experience greater cognitive development when instruction is pitched just above the lower limit of their ZPD than will students with narrower zones because the former are in a better position to capitalize on the instruction.

High school general factors to keep in mind

Achievement of sexual maturity has a profound effect on many aspects of behavior. Peer group and reactions of friends are extremely important. There is concern about what will happen after graduation, particularly for students who do not intend to continue their education. Awareness grows of the significance of academic ability and importance of grades for certain career patterns. There is a need to make personal value decisions regarding use of drugs, premarital sex, and code of ethics.

Adolescents move into the identity achievement status gradually and in relatively small numbers.

Adolescents who had reached the identity achievement status by actively exploring various occupations, beliefs, and value systems, and then making a commitment, were better adjusted and happier than their peers.

If class discussions become unrealistically theoretical and hypothetical, call attention to facts and practical difficulties. If students are contemptuous of unsuccessful attempts by adults to solve school, local, national, and international problems, point out the complexity of many situations involving conflicts of interest, perhaps by having students develop arguments for both sides.

Allow for the possibility that younger adolescents may go through a period of egocentrism that will cause them to act as if they are always on stage and to be extremely concerned about the reactions of peers.

Although the foreclosure status is the historical norm for adolescents in Western societies, things can and do change.

Also, more recent evidence indicates that adolescents are now more likely to be in a moratorium status or an identity achievement status, or in transition between these two statuses, than in the foreclosure status common to earlier generations.

Since the 1970s, however, a number of psychologists have questioned whether turmoil is universal during the emerging adolescent (and later) years. Current evidence suggests two things: first, that adolescents experience more intense positive and negative emotions than do adults, and, second, even though many adolescents experience social and emotional problems from time to time and experiment with risky behavior, most do not develop significant social, emotional, or behavioral difficulties. For example, although most adolescents will have been drunk at least once before high school graduation, relatively few will develop drinking problems or allow alcohol to adversely affect their academic or social lives. Those adolescents who do exhibit a consistent pattern of delinquency, substance abuse, and depression are likely to have exhibited these behaviors as children. In other words, problems displayed during adolescence are not necessarily problems of adolescence.

Although emotional turmoil during adolescence is not universal, some students do find this to be a difficult time and suffer from feelings of anxiety, low self-esteem, and depression. A major contributor to these debilitating emotions is the transition from the elementary to the middle school grades. Among the concerns that some students have as they make this shift are having several teachers who vary in their demands and teaching styles, getting lost in an unfamiliar building, having to make new friends, being picked on by older students, having more assignments that are also more difficult, and getting low grades. One key to being able to cope with these demands is a strong sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy. In the next section ("Cognitive Characteristics: Middle School") we describe what teachers can do to promote these self-perceptions by helping students meet academic demands.

Because intellectual growth occurs when individuals attempt to eliminate a disequilibrium, instructional lessons and materials that introduce new concepts should provoke interest and curiosity and be moderately challenging to maximize assimilation and accommodation.

Although information (facts, concepts, procedures) can be efficiently transmitted from teacher to student through direct instruction, knowledge (rules and hypotheses) is best created by each student through the mental and physical manipulation of information.

Try not to require too much reading at one stretch. Be on the alert for children rubbing their eyes or blinking, signs of eye fatigue. When you are preparing class handouts, be sure to print in large letters or use a large-size computer font. Until the lens of the eye can be easily focused, young children have trouble looking back and forth from near to far objects.

Although many children at this age have had extensive exposure to computer games and video games and therefore have begun to develop greater eye-hand coordination with images on screen, it's still appropriate to select software programs that incorporate easy-to-see graphics and easy-to-click buttons to avoid frustration.

Although anxiety, worry, and concern about self-esteem, physical appearance, academic success, and acceptance by peers are prominent emotions among many adolescents, some cope with these emotions better than others.

Although middle schools are doing a better job of meeting the social and emotional needs of early adolescents than they did in the past, the intellectual needs of these youngsters are still largely unmet.

Occasional fights are to be expected. If certain children, especially the same pair, seem to be involved in one long battle, you should probably try to effect a truce. But when you can, give children a chance to work out their own solutions to disagreements; social conflict is effective in spurring cognitive growth.

Although occasional quarrels and minor physical aggression will likely have only temporary effects on students, you should keep an eye out for students who are frequent targets of insults, threats, physical aggression, and exclusion from the peer group. Research has shown that third and fourth graders who were frequently victimized by classmates had lower scores on standardized achievement tests, lower grades, and higher levels of depression than their nonvictimized peers both at the time the incidents occurred and a year later.

Because nine- and ten-year-olds have more control over their eating habits than younger children do, there is a greater tendency for them to overeat, particularly junk food. When this eating pattern is coupled with a relatively low level of physical activity (mainly because of television watching, computer use, and playing video games) and a genetic predisposition toward obesity, children become mildly to severely overweight. Between 1976 and 1980, 6.5 percent of children from six to eleven years of age were judged to be overweight. By 2004 that percentage increased more than two and a half times to 17.5 percent. Not only do overweight children put themselves at risk for cardiovascular problems and type 2 diabetes later in life, but they also become targets for ridicule and ostracism in the present from peers.

Although small in magnitude, gender differences in motor skill performance are apparent.

These findings illustrate the pressing need for sex education during the high school years. In particular, adolescents need to understand the distinction between sex and mature love. A major characteristic of mature love is that "the well-being of the other person is just a little bit more important than the well-being of the self".

Although the birthrate for unmarried adolescents has fallen in recent years, it remains unacceptably high, as is the rate of sexually transmitted diseases.

Adolescent egocentrism...accounts, in part, for the power of the peer group during this period. The adolescent is so concerned with the reactions of others toward him, particularly his peers, that he is willing to do many things which are opposed to all of his previous training and to his own best interests. At the same time, this egocentric impression that he is always on stage may help to account for the many and varied adolescent attention-getting maneuvers.

Although the concept of adolescent egocentrism is widely accepted among researchers, ascribing its cause to formal operational thinking gets mixed support.

Stage 2 "You shouldn't steal something from a store, and the store owner shouldn't steal things that belong to you." Obedience to laws should involve an even exchange.

An action is judged to be right if it is instrumental in satisfying one's own needs or involves an even exchange. Obeying rules should bring some sort of benefit in return.

By age four, children are skilled language users and are aware of their own mental activity and the fact that others may think about the world differently. Although they are not particularly adept at judging how well they perform various tasks, they can be helped to overcome this limitation by being given opportunities to compare their performances with those of more accomplished peers.

An authoritative approach by parents and teachers is more likely to produce competent preschoolers than are authoritarian, permissive, or rejecting-neglecting approaches.

Research on early and later maturation shows that differences in physical maturation are likely to produce specific differences in later behavior. Because of their more adult-like appearance, early-maturing boys are likely to be more popular with peers, have more positive self-concepts, and have more friends among older peers. But friendships with older adolescents put early-maturing boys at greater risk for delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy, and increased sexual activity. In addition, recent studies suggest that early-maturing boys may be more susceptible to depression.

As adults, early maturers were more likely to be responsible, cooperative, self-controlled, conforming, and conventional. Late-maturing boys, by contrast, are likely to have relatively lower self-esteem and stronger feelings of inadequacy. Like their early-maturing counterparts, they may also be more susceptible to depression than their on-time peers. But later in adolescence, they show higher levels of intellectual curiosity, exploratory behavior, and social initiative. As adults, late-maturing boys are more impulsive, assertive, insightful, and inventive.

An important cognitive development milestone, object permanence, occurs between the fourth and eighth months.

As object permanence develops, children's intentional search behaviors become increasingly apparent.

The ZPD, then, encompasses those abilities, attitudes, and patterns of thinking that are in the process of maturing and can be refined only with assistance.

As students approach the upper limit of their ZPD, their behavior becomes smoother, more internalized, and more automatized.

Self-efficacy becomes an important influence on intellectual and social behavior.

As we mentioned in point 1 under "Social Characteristics: Middle School," middle school children become capable of analyzing both their own views of an interpersonal interaction and those of the other person. This newfound analytic ability is also turned inward, resulting in evaluations of one's intellectual and social capabilities. Albert Bandura, a learning theorist we will discuss later in the book, coined the term self-efficacy to refer to how capable people believe they are at dealing with one type of task or another. Thus a student may have a very strong sense of self-efficacy for math ("I know I can solve most any algebraic equation"), a moderate degree of self-efficacy for certain athletic activities ("I think I play baseball and basketball about as well as most other kids my age"), and a low sense of self-efficacy for interpersonal relationships ("I'm just not good at making friends").

According to Baumrind, "... the kind of power that characterizes authoritative parents is confrontive (reasoned, negotiable, outcome-oriented, and concerning with regulating behaviors)". Because these parents are also warm and affectionate, children value their positive responses as rewards for mature behavior.

Authoritative parents tend to raise competent children. Authoritative parents have confidence in their abilities as parents and therefore provide a model of competence for their children to imitate. When they establish limits and explain reasons for restrictions, they encourage their children to set standards for themselves and to think about why certain procedures should be followed.

Toddlers stage

Autonomy Versus Shame and Doubt

Preschoolers' large muscles are more developed than those that control fingers and hands. Therefore, preschoolers may be quite clumsy at, or physically incapable of, such skills as tying shoes and buttoning coats.

Avoid too many small-motor activities, such as pasting paper chains. Provide big brushes, crayons, and tools.

Although children's bodies are flexible and resilient, the bones that protect the brain are still soft.

Be extremely wary of blows to the head in games or fights between children. If you notice an activity involving such a blow, intervene immediately; warn the class that this is dangerous and explain why.

Early adolescents find it reassuring to dress and behave like others, and they are likely to alter their own opinions to coincide with those of a group. When you encourage student participation in class discussions, you may need to be alert to the tendency for students at these grade levels to be reluctant to voice minority opinions. If you want them to think about controversial issues, it may be preferable to invite them to write their opinions anonymously rather than voice them in front of the class.

Because early adolescents are often so concerned with receiving social approval from their peers, they may adapt their explanations of school performance to suit this purpose. This tendency was demonstrated by Jaana Juvonen in a study of fourth, sixth, and eighth graders. These students were asked to imagine that they had received a low score on an important exam and then to indicate how they would explain their performance to teachers and peers. The results may surprise you. The fourth and sixth graders were willing to explain their poor performance to both teachers and peers as being due to low ability rather than to low effort, whereas the eighth graders were much more likely to offer that explanation to their peers than to their teacher. This seems counterintuitive. Why would adolescents want to portray themselves to their peers as being dumb (to put it crudely)? The answer is that ability is seen by many adolescents as something beyond their control (see our account of Carol Dweck's work along this line in Chapter 11, "Motivation and Perceptions of Self"). They therefore conclude that ascribing poor performance to low ability rather than to low effort will result in expressions of sympathy rather than contempt ("It wasn't Matthew's fault that he got a low grade on the last math exam; he just doesn't have a head for numbers").

As a result of the continued influence of egocentric thought, middle school students are typically self-conscious and self-centered.

Because emerging adolescents are acutely aware of the physical and emotional changes that are taking place within them, they assume that everyone else is just as interested in, and is constantly evaluating, their appearance, feelings, and behavior. Consequently, they are deeply concerned about such matters as what type of clothing to wear for special occasions, with whom they should and should not be seen in public (they should never be seen with their parents at the mall, for example), and how they greet and talk with various people.

Formal operational-stage children (grades seven through high school) can be given activities that require hypothetical-deductive reasoning, reflective thinking, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Because individuals differ in their rates of intellectual growth, gear instructional materials and activities to each student's developmental level.

Accordingly, lesson plans should include opportunities for activity, manipulation, exploration, discussion, and application of information. Small-group science projects are one example of how to implement this goal.

Because students' schemes at any given time are an outgrowth of earlier schemes, point out to them how new ideas relate to their old ideas and extend their understanding. Memorization of information for its own sake should be avoided.

Gerald Patterson, Barbara DeBaryshe, and Elizabeth Ramsey marshal a wide array of evidence to support their belief that delinquent behavior is the result of a causal chain of events that originates with dysfunctional parent-child relationships. In their view, poor parent-child relationships lead to behavior problems, which lead to peer rejection and academic failure, which lead to identification with a deviant peer group, which results in delinquent behavior. Parents of such children administer harsh and inconsistent punishment, provide little positive reinforcement, and do little monitoring and supervising of each child's activities.

Because these children have not learned to follow adult rules and regulations but have learned how to satisfy their needs through coercive behavior, they are rejected by their peers, are easily distracted when doing schoolwork, show little interest in the subjects they study, and do not master many of the basic academic skills necessary for subsequent achievement. Attempts at short-circuiting this chain of events stand a greater chance of success if they begin early and are multifaceted. In addition to counseling and parent training, mastery of basic academic skills is important.

Middle School And Secondary Grades

Become well acquainted with the nature of concrete operational thinking and formal thought so that you can recognize when your students are resorting to either type of thinking or a combination of the two.

Believes punishment should stress atonement and does not need to "fit the crime."

Believes peer aggression should be punished by an external authority.

Believes punishment should involve either restitution or suffering the same fate as one's victim.

Believes peer aggression should be punished by retaliatory behavior on the part of the victim.

Is aware of different viewpoints regarding rules.

Believes rules are flexible.

Sensorimotor age

Birth-2 years

Boys tend to outperform girls on tasks that involve kicking, throwing, catching, running, broad jumping, and batting. Girls surpass boys on tasks that require muscular flexibility, balance, and rhythmic movements. These differences may be due in part to gender-role stereotyping. That is, because of socialization differences, girls are more likely to play hopscotch and jump rope, whereas boys are more likely to play baseball and basketball.

Both boys and girls attain mastery over large and small muscles; one benefit of this is a relatively orderly classroom. Fourth and fifth graders can sit quietly for extended periods and concentrate on whatever intellectual task is at hand. Another benefit is that children enjoy arts and crafts and musical activities.

As its name implies, private speech is not intended to communicate a message to someone else, nor does it always take the form of complete sentences. One important purpose of private speech, which may consist of single words or phrases, is to help children clarify their thinking and solve difficult problems, such as those that arise in the course of doing math problems or reading unfamiliar material. For example, a child may count on her fingers out loud while working on a math problem and then say, "The answer's ten."

Both boys and girls become leaner and stronger.

Eating disorders are much more common in females than in males. Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by a preoccupation with body weight and food, behavior directed toward losing weight, peculiar patterns of handling food, weight loss, intense fear of gaining weight, and a distorted perception of one's body. This disorder occurs predominantly in females (more than 90 percent of the cases) and usually appears between the ages of fourteen and seventeen.

Bulimia nervosa is a disorder in which binge eating (uncontrolled rapid eating of large quantities of food over a short period of time), followed by self-induced vomiting, is the predominant behavior. Binges are typically followed by feelings of guilt, depression, self-disgust, and fasting. As with anorexia, more than 90 percent of individuals with bulimia are female.

Try to spread your attention around as equitably as possible, and when you praise particular children, do it in a private or casual way. If one child is given lavish public recognition, it is only natural for the other children to feel resentful. Think back to how you felt about teachers' pets during your own school years.

By age four, many children begin to develop a theory of mind.

Awareness of gender roles and gender typing is evident.

By the time children enter kindergarten, most of them have developed an awareness of gender differences and of masculine and feminine roles. This awareness of gender roles shows up very clearly in the toys and activities that boys and girls prefer. Boys are more likely than girls to play outdoors, to engage in rough-and-tumble play, and to behave aggressively. Boys play with toy vehicles and construction toys, and they engage in action games (such as football). Girls prefer art activities, doll play, and dancing. By age six, some children associate job titles that are considered to be gender neutral, such as doctor, librarian, and flight attendant, with either males (in the case of doctors) or females (in the case of librarians and waiters).

During the late preschool years, children demonstrate what one researcher called "one of the most impressive intellectual accomplishments of human development". This accomplishment, which is called theory of mind, concerns the ability of children around the age of four to be aware of the difference between thinking about something and experiencing it. They also begin to understand that it is sometimes possible to predict the thoughts of others. These capacities are critical to understanding such aspects of social life as surprises, secrets, tricks, mistakes, and lies.

By three years of age, most children realize the difference between thinking about something and actually experiencing that same something. But a significant change occurs around age four when children begin to realize that thoughts may be false. In one study described by Janet Astington, a box that children knew normally contained candy was filled instead with pencils. When three-year-olds opened the box and discovered the pencils, they were asked what a friend would think was in the box before it was opened. They replied that the friend would know (just as they now did) that there were pencils inside. When they were asked later what they thought was in the box before it was opened, they replied "pencils" rather than "candy," indicating an inability to recall that their belief had changed. But four-year-olds understood that the friend would be misled by the fact that pencils had replaced the candy. The four-year-olds also remembered that they themselves had expected the box to contain candy. So, beginning at age four, children start to realize that the actions of people are based on how they think the world is.

Macromoral issues are broad social issues such as civil rights, free speech, the women's movement, and wilderness preservation. Micromoral issues concern personal interactions in everyday situations, such as courtesy, helpfulness, loyalty, dedication, and caring.

Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings are pioneering educational scholars: they charted a new course in thinking about moral development and moral education.

We look first at Gilligan's objections to Erickson's and Kohlberg's theories and then at Noddings's care theory.

Carol Gilligan argues that Erikson's view of identity development and Kohlberg's view of moral development more accurately describe what occurs with adolescent males than with adolescent females.

But, Gilligan argues, many adolescent females have a different primary concern.

Carol Gilligan believes that Erikson's theory of identity of development and Kohlberg's theory of moral development do not accurately describe the course of identity formation and moral reasoning in females.

Character development, which includes intellectual character, moral character, civic character, and performance character, is increasingly being adopted by schools as a basic goal.

Character education programs are often based on assumptions that are not supported by research on learning.

Commitment weak. Has not achieved satisfactory answers.

Characteristic anxious, dissatisfied with school; changes major often, daydreams, engages in intense but short-lived relationships; may temporarily reject parental and societal values.

This occurs when high school students use their emerging formal operational capabilities to think about themselves and the thinking of others.

Characteristics able to deal with abstractions, form hypotheses, solve problems systematically, engage in mental manipulations.

Commitment strong. Has accepted and endorsed the values of his or her parents.

Characteristics close-minded, authoritarian, low in anxiety; has difficulty solving problems under stress; feels superior to peers; more dependent on parents and other authority figures for guidance and approval than in other statuses.

Commitment strong. Has made self-chosen commitments to at least some aspects of identity.

Characteristics introspective; more planful, rational, and logical in decision making than in other identity statuses; high self-esteem; works effectively under stress; likely to form close interpersonal relationships. Usually the last identity status to emerge.

Commitment weak. Ideas about occupation, gender roles, values are easily changed as a result of positive and negative feedback.

Characteristics not self-directed; disorganized, impulsive, low self-esteem, alienated from parents; avoids getting involved in schoolwork and interpersonal relationships.

Preschool and kindergarten General factors to keep in mind

Children are having their first experiences with school routine and interactions with more than a few peers and are preparing for initial academic experiences in group settings. They need to learn to follow directions and get along with others.

The characteristics noted here are typical of both primary and elementary grade students and underlie the elementary-level characteristics described in the next section.

Children become somewhat more selective in their choice of friends and are likely to have a more or less permanent best friend.

As we noted in the previous chapter, Piaget believed that children's ability to think beyond their own perspective is greatly facilitated by peer interaction because such interactions involve other points of view that must be comprehended and accommodated. During the school day, these types of interactions occur most frequently during such unstructured activities as recess. A second theoretical perspective, called the cognitive immaturity hypothesis, maintains that giving young students unstructured breaks reduces cognitive interference from preceding instruction and increases attention to subsequent instruction.

Children still need rest periods; they become fatigued easily as a result of physical and mental exertion.

Eating disorders, substance abuse, schizophrenia, depression, and suicide are prominent emotional disorders among adolescents. Depression is the most common emotional disorder during adolescence. Depression coupled with an unstable family situation places adolescents at risk for suicide.

Cognitively, high school students become increasingly capable of formal operational thought, although they may function at the concrete operational level a good deal of the time. The influence of formal operational reasoning can be seen in political thinking, which becomes more abstract and knowledgeable.

Their argument is based on an analysis of the psychological needs of early adolescence and the kinds of changes that take place in classroom organization, instruction, and climate as one moves from the last of the elementary grades to the first of the middle school or junior high grades. Although the typical middle school classroom is much improved in meeting students' needs for a sense of community, acceptance, and belonging, the environment continues to be largely incompatible with students' intellectual needs.

Common problems include these:

The most common forms of depression, from least to most serious, are depressed mood, depressive syndrome, and clinical depression. Depressed mood is primarily characterized by feelings of sadness or unhappiness, although emotions such as anxiety, fear, guilt, anger, and contempt are frequently present, as well. In 2007, 35.8 percent of high school females and 21.2 percent of high school males reported feeling so sad and hopeless almost every day for two or more weeks in a row that they stopped engaging in some usual activities. The percentages of White, Black, and Latino students who gave this response were 26.2, 29.2, and 36.3, respectively. As you can see from these data, more girls than boys report having emotional responses indicative of depression, as do students of color, particularly those of Latino origin. In the case of female adolescents, increases in sex hormones, specifically testosterone and estradiol, have been linked to depression.

Common symptoms of depression include feelings of worthlessness and lack of control over one's life, crying spells, and suicidal thoughts, threats, and attempts. Additional symptoms include moodiness, social isolation, fatigue, hypochondria, and difficulty concentrating. Depression in adolescents precedes substance abuse. High school students who experience such symptoms typically try to ward off their depression through restless activity or flight to or from others. They may also engage in problem behavior or delinquent acts carried out in ways that make it clear they are appealing for help. (A depressed fifteen-year-old boy may carry out an act of vandalism, for instance, at a time when a school authority or police officer is sure to observe the incident.)

Despite this limitation in self-assessed competence, research suggests that under the right conditions even some four-year-olds can draw accurate conclusions about how well or poorly they have completed a task. In one study, children between the ages of four and five were asked to do a simple maze-type task (tracing a winding path between an illustrated child and a house) under one of two conditions: either in the presence of another child's work or in comparison with their own earlier attempt at the same task. About 40 percent of those who had another child's work available were able to use that to accurately assess their own performance. Most of the rest of this group could gauge their own performance by using the goal as a basis for comparison ("I only got halfway to the house"). Children in the second group, however, were unable to use their prior performance on the maze to judge whether their current performance was any better or worse, even when shown both attempts. Self-assessment of competence under this condition does not typically appear until somewhere between seven and eight years of age.

Competence is encouraged by interaction, interest, opportunities, urging, limits, admiration, and signs of affection.

From ages eleven through thirteen, most girls develop sparse pubic and underarm hair and exhibit breast enlargement. In boys, the testes and scrotum begin to grow, and lightly pigmented pubic hair appears.

Concern and curiosity about sex are almost universal, especially among girls.

The nature of the concrete operational stage can be illustrated by the child's mastery of different kinds of conservation.

Concrete operational age

This implication must be interpreted carefully, as recent research has shown that children at the preoperational and concrete operational levels can do more than Piaget believed. In general, however, it is safe to say that because preoperational-stage children (preschoolers, kindergartners, most first and some second graders) can use language and other symbols to stand for objects, they should be given many opportunities to describe and explain things through the use of speech, artwork, body movement, role play, and musical performance. Although you can introduce the concepts of conservation, seriation, class inclusion, time, space, and number, attempts at mastering them should probably be postponed until children are in the concrete operational stage.

Concrete operational stage children (grades three through six) can be given opportunities to master such mental processes as ordering, seriating, classifying, reversing, multiplying, dividing, subtracting, and adding by manipulating concrete objects or symbols. Although a few fifth and sixth graders may be capable of dealing with abstractions, most exercises that involve theorizing, hypothesizing, or generalizing should be done with concrete objects or symbols.

Keep in mind the possibility that students may be influenced by egocentric speech and thought.

Consider the possibility that each child may assume that everyone else has the same conception of a word that he or she has. If confusion becomes apparent or if a child becomes impatient about failure to communicate, request an explanation in different terms. Or ask several children to explain their conception of an object or a situation.

Identity status identity achievement

Crisis fully experienced. Has considered and explored alternative positions regarding occupation, gender roles, values.

With respect to political beliefs, males are more likely to exhibit a foreclosure process and females a diffusion process.

Crisis not experienced. May never suffer doubts about identity issues.

Adolescents in the foreclosure status were more likely to engage in romantic relationships than their identity diffusion peers and were less likely to feel anxious about such relationships as compared to peers in the moratorium and identity achievement statuses.

Crisis not yet experienced. Little serious thought given to occupation, gender roles, values.

Grading on the curve limits the top rewards to a relatively small number of students regardless of each student's actual level of performance. If the quality of instruction is good and students learn most of what has been assigned, the range of scores will be relatively small. Consider the impact to your sense of industry if you respond correctly to 85 percent of the questions on an exam but earn only a grade of C. The same problem exists when, for whatever reasons, all students perform poorly. How much pride can you have in a grade of A or B when you know it is based on a low success rate? The senior author of this book endured a college chemistry class in which the top grade on an exam went to a student who answered only 48 percent of the questions correctly.

Curve grading also guarantees that some students have to receive failing grades regardless of their actual level of performance. Students who are forced into this unhealthy type of competition (there are acceptable forms of competition, which we describe in Chapter 13) may develop a sense of inadequacy and inferiority that will hamper them for the rest of their school career.

Considers the wrongdoers' intentions when evaluating guilt.

Defines moral wrongness in terms of violation of spirit of cooperation.

A child's self-image (the combination of self-descriptions, self-concept, and self-esteem) becomes more stable and generalized during the elementary grades. As a result of the decline of egocentric thought and the competitive nature of American society, self-image is based primarily on comparisons with peers.

Delinquency occurs more frequently among elementary grade children than at earlier ages and is associated with dysfunctional parent-child relationships and academic failure.

Primary grade children recognize that fact-based explanations are superior to theory-based explanations and are beginning to realize that their cognitive processes are under their control. They learn best when tasks are relatively short and when less cognitively demanding tasks occasionally follow more cognitively demanding tasks.

Describe one or more aspects of the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development of elementary grade students.

Self-efficacy beliefs, or how competent one feels at carrying out a particular task, begin to stabilize during the middle school years and influence the willingness of students to take on and persist at various academic and social tasks.

Describe one or more aspects of the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development of high school students.

The thinking of elementary grade children, although more logical, can be wildly inconsistent and is constrained by the limitations of Piaget's concrete operational stage.

Describe one or more aspects of the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development of middle school students.

Believes rules are unchangeable.

Determines extent of guilt by amount of damage.

Try to take the perspective of students, and stimulate their perspective-taking abilities.

Develop an awareness of moral issues by discussing a variety of real and hypothetical moral dilemmas and by using daily opportunities in the classroom to heighten moral awareness. (Moral education should be an integral part of the curriculum; it should not take place during a "moral education period.")

The children of authoritative parents tend to be self-motivated. They stand up for what they believe, yet are able to work productively with others.

Diana Baumrind's research, spanning over four decades has identified four types of child-rearing approaches and how they contribute to competence in children. As we have seen in this and the previous chapter, the kinds social interactions children experience shape them. Parents have tremendous power over the kinds of social interactions and experiences that their children have. Baumrind and her colleagues have found that the ways in which parental power is—or is not—exercised have profound effects on their children.

Gender differences in physical development and motor skill proficiency are usually not noticeable until kindergarten and are fairly small.

Differences that do manifest themselves are due in part to biological endowment and in part to differences in socialization. Consequently, you may want to encourage all children to participate in tasks that emphasize gross motor skills and tasks that emphasize fine motor skills. A brief summary of the types of behavior stressed by the theorists discussed in the preceding chapter is found in Table 3-1.

In other words, when people encounter something that is inconsistent with or contradicts what they already know or believe, this experience produces a disequilibrium that they are driven to eliminate (assuming they are sufficiently interested in the new experience to begin with).

Disequilibrium can occur spontaneously within an individual through maturation and experience, or it can be stimulated by someone else (such as a teacher).

Because major developmental changes usually do not occur during the elementary grades, a child's self-image will remain fairly stable for a few years if there are no major changes in the child's home or social environment. But as you will see later in this chapter, the developmental changes that typically occur during the middle school and high school grades often produce dramatic changes in the sense of self.

Disruptive family relationships, social rejection, and school failure may lead to delinquent behavior.

To become aware of the type of thinking that individual students use, ask them to explain how they arrived at solutions to problems.

Do this as part of your classroom curriculum or in response to experimental situations similar to those that Piaget devised.

Talking aloud to oneself reaches a peak between the ages of six and seven and then rapidly declines.

Don't be surprised or concerned if you observe students talking to themselves, either when they are by themselves or when they are with classmates. This is a well-documented phenomenon that Vygotsky called private speech. Vygotsky described private speech as a transition between speaking with others and thinking to oneself. Private speech is first noticeable around age three and may constitute anywhere from 20 to 60 percent of a child's utterances between the ages of six and seven. By age eight, however, it all but disappears and is replaced by silent, or inner, speech.

During childhood, schemes are cognitive but concrete (a ball is a round object of various sizes, colors, and materials that can be bounced, thrown, hit, etc.).

During adolescence, schemes become more internal and abstract (imagining the structure of human DNA as a double helix).

Also, in Chapter 13, we describe several instructional approaches that will likely have a beneficial impact on students' sense of industry because they all promote learning and a sense of accomplishment.

During the elementary and middle school years, help children experience a sense of industry by presenting tasks that they can complete successfully.

In the concrete operational stage, the child is capable of logical thinking, but only with ideas with which he has had firsthand experience.

During the formal operational stage, the individual is capable of hypothetical reasoning, dealing with abstractions, and engaging in mental manipulations. Although some adolescents are capable of formal operational reasoning, adolescent egocentrism restricts its range and power.

Physical growth tends to be both rapid and uneven.

During the middle school years, the average child will grow 2 to 4 inches per year and gain 8 to 10 pounds per year. But some parts of the body, particularly the hands and feet, grow faster than others. Consequently, middle school children tend to look gangly and clumsy. Because girls mature more rapidly than boys, their growth spurt begins at about age eleven, reaches a peak at about age fourteen, and is generally complete by age fifteen. The growth spurt for boys begins on average at about age thirteen, peaks at about age seventeen, and is generally complete by age eighteen. The result of this timing difference in the growth spurt is that many middle school girls look considerably older than boys of the same age. After the growth spurt, however, the muscles in the average boy's body are larger, as are the heart and lungs. A brief summary of the types of behavior stressed by the theorists discussed in the preceding chapter is found in Table 3-4.

In describing some of the characteristics of preschool and kindergarten children earlier in the chapter, we noted the importance of play activities to several areas of development. Play is no less important at this age level. The benefits that elementary grade children reap when allowed to play their own games include refining the skills of self-direction and self-control, learning how to join the play activities of others, and fostering the development of such cognitive skills as planning and using symbols. So despite the accountability pressures that are so characteristic of education today (we discuss this at length in Chapter 15), efforts should be made to include opportunities for free play during the school day.

During this period, children develop a more global, integrated, and complex self-image.

Because of the psychological demands of early adolescence, middle school students need a classroom environment that is open, supportive, and intellectually stimulating.

Early adolescence is an unsettling time for students because of changes in their physical development, social roles, cognitive development, and sexuality. As we noted in the previous section, another source of stress is coping with the transition from the elementary grades to a middle school (which often begins in sixth grade) or junior high (which typically begins in seventh grade). Partly because of these personal and environmental stresses, the self-concept, academic motivation, and achievement levels of adolescents decline, sometimes drastically. Are schools at all to blame for these problems? Perhaps they are. Several researchers provide persuasive evidence that these negative changes are due in part, perhaps in large part, to the fact that the typical school environment does not meet the needs of developing adolescents.

The major difference between the egocentrism of childhood and that of adolescence is summed up in Elkind's observation: "The child is egocentric in the sense that he is unable to take another person's point of view. The adolescent, on the other hand, takes the other person's point of view to an extreme degree".

Elkind believes that adolescent egocentrism also explains why the peer group becomes such a potent force in high school:

Plan learning experiences to take into account the level of thinking attained by an individual or group.

Encourage children to classify things on the basis of a single attribute before you expose them to problems that involve relationships among two or more attributes. Ask many questions, and give your students many opportunities to explain their interpretations of experiences so that you can remain aware of their level of thinking.

Erikson's theory of psychosocial development is notable because it covers the life span, describes people as playing an active role in their own psychological development as opposed to passively responding to external forces, and emphasizes the role of cultural norms and goals.

Erikson's theory describes eight stages, from birth through old age. The stages that deal with the personality development of school-age children are initiative versus guilt (four to five years), industry versus inferiority (six to eleven years), and identity versus role confusion (twelve to eighteen years).

Erikson's observations about identity were extended by James Marcia, who described four identity statuses: identity diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and identity achievement. Each status reflects the extent to which individuals have explored and committed themselves to a set of values on such critical issues as occupation, religion, sex role, and politics.

Erikson's theory has been criticized for its heavy reliance on his personal experience, its lack of applicability to other cultures, and its inaccuracies in terms of female personality development.

-Use personal and naturalistic examples.

Example: Invite students to put themselves in the position of individuals who are confronted by moral dilemmas described in newspapers or depicted on television.

Piaget's theory has been criticized for underestimating children's abilities, for overestimating the capability of adolescents to engage in formal operational thinking, for vague explanations of how individuals move from stage to stage, and for not addressing cultural differences.

Explain how Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of cognitive development connects social interaction in classrooms to the cognitive capacities of learners.

-Highlight the moral issue to be discussed. Example: Describe a specific real or hypothetical moral dilemma. -Ask "why?" questions. Example: After asking students what they would do if they were faced with the moral dilemma under discussion, ask them to explain why they would act that way. -Complicate the circumstances. Example: After students have responded to the original dilemma, mention a factor that might complicate matters—for example, the involvement of a best friend in the dilemma.

Explain how social interactions influence the development of one's personality, especially with regard to one's personal sense of industry and identity.

Girls seem to experience greater anxiety about friendships than boys do.

Factors that cause girls to become concerned about the reactions of others were summarized in the preceding chapter. Adolescent girls tend to seek intimacy in friendships. Boys, in contrast, often stress skills and interests when they form friendships, and their tendencies to be competitive and self-reliant may work against the formation of close relationships with male companions. Because adolescent girls often wish to form an intimate relationship with another girl, they are more likely than boys to experience anxiety, jealousy, and conflicts regarding friendships with same-sex peers. You should not be surprised, therefore, if secondary school girls are much more preoccupied with positive and negative aspects of friendships than boys are.

Suggestions for Teaching Applying Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

Focus on what children at each stage can do, and avoid what they cannot meaningfully understand.

Vygotsky believed that cognitive development is shaped by both the interactions children have with others, particularly adults, and historical cultural forces. Parents and teachers help children acquire those psychological tools (such as language skills, concepts, and procedures) that their culture has come to value.

For Vygotsky, social interactions between children and more intellectually advanced individuals, such as peers, older siblings, and adults, are primarily responsible for advances in cognitive development, provided those interactions are based on mediation of external behaviors into internal signs.

Many high school students are employed after school.

For any number of reasons, a fair percentage of high school students have part-time jobs during the school year. In 2010, 16 percent of sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds worked after school. These percentages have declined considerably since 2000, when they averaged about 34 percent.

11 years and older

For example, the formal operational thinker can read the analogies "5 is to 15 as 1 is to 3" and "penny is to dollar as year is to century" and realize that, despite the different content, the form of the two problems is identical (both analogies are based on ratios).

But Lev Vygotsky believed that children learn more from the instructional interactions they have with those who are more intellectually advanced, particularly if the instruction is designed to fall within the child's zone of proximal development.

For social interactions to produce advances in cognitive development, Vygotsky argued, they have to contain a process called mediation.

As children interact with their environment, parents, teachers, and age-mates, they form organized, generalizable patterns of behavior or thought known as schemes , and these become the basis for understanding and adapting to the world in which they live.

For the first two years or so schemes are largely sensory and motor (infants and toddlers learn about objects by putting them in their mouth, grasping them, and throwing them).

Characteristics capable of operations but solves problems by generalizing from concrete experiences. Not able to manipulate conditions mentally unless they have been experienced.

Formal operational age

During the early school years, parents and teachers set standards of conduct, and most children try to live up to them. But by grades 4 and 5, children are more interested in getting along with one another without adult supervision. Consequently, children come to realize that the rules for behavior within the peer group are not quite the same as the rules for behavior within the family or the classroom. Because children of this age are increasingly concerned with being accepted by their peer group and do not have enough self-assurance to oppose group norms, there is a noticeable increase, by both boys and girls, in gossip about others. On the other hand, children who are accepted by a peer group and have friends within that group are more likely than rejected and friendless children to have higher levels of motivation, grades, and test scores.

Friendships become more selective and gender-based.

Adult stage

Generativity Versus Stagnation

For some time now, schools around the country have run what are called social and emotional learning programs. These programs typically have the following goals: recognizing and managing emotions, adopting realistic goals, understanding how others think and feel, creating positive relationships, making sound decisions, and getting along with others.

Given the importance of social and emotional forces in the lives of middle school as well as younger and older students, it makes sense to ask if schools can positively enhance their development. The answer is, yes.

This is a period of relative calm and predictability in physical development.

Growth in height and weight tends to be consistent and moderate, hormonal imbalances are absent, disease occurs less frequently than at any other period, and bodily coordination is relatively stable.

And just as biological processes must be kept in a state of balance (through homeostasis), intellectual processes seek a balance through the process of equilibration (a form of self-regulation that all individuals use to bring coherence and stability to their conception of the world).

He called this process equilibration.

Arrange situations to permit social interaction, so that children can learn from one another.

Hearing others explain their views is a natural way for students to learn that not everyone sees things the same way. The placement of a few advanced thinkers with less mature thinkers is more likely to facilitate this process than is homogeneous grouping.

Typical of Six-Year-Olds

Holds single, absolute moral perspective (behavior is right or wrong).

Adolescents stage

Identity Versus Role Confusion

Crisis partially experienced. Has given some thought to identity-related questions.

Identity status moratorium

First, identity achievement status evolves gradually over a period of years (10 or more in many cases) and may only occur among a relatively small percentage of individuals.

If an ego-shattering event (loss of a job, divorce) occurs later in life, individuals who have reached identity achievement, for example, may find themselves uncertain about old values and behavior patterns and once again in crisis.

Although many techniques exist for changing a negative self-concept to a positive view of self, one effective approach to minimizing depression is to help as many of your students as possible to experience success as they learn. Techniques to accomplish that goal will be discussed in subsequent chapters of this book.

If depression becomes severe, suicide may be contemplated.

Young children find it difficult to focus their eyes on small objects. Therefore, their eye-hand coordination may be imperfect.

If possible, minimize the necessity for the children to look at small things. (Incomplete eye development is the reason for large print in children's books.) This is also important to keep in mind if you are planning to use computers or software programs; highly graphic programs requiring a simple point-and-click response are most appropriate for very young students.

Bone growth is not yet complete. Therefore, bones and ligaments can't stand heavy pressure.

If you notice students indulging in strenuous tests of strength (punching each other on the arm until one person can't retaliate, for example), you might suggest that they switch to competition involving coordinated skills. During team games, rotate players in especially tiring positions (e.g., the pitcher in baseball).

The single most important signal of a youth at risk for suicide is depression. Along with the common symptoms noted earlier under point 2, other signs of depression and potential suicide include poor appetite, weight loss, changes in sleeping patterns, difficulty in concentrating, academic problems, poor self-concept, withdrawing from friends and/or social activities, giving away prized possessions, lack of interest in personal appearance, and feelings of loneliness. These symptoms take on added significance when accompanied by a family history of suicide or parents who commit abuse or use drugs and alcohol excessively. The factors that usually trigger a suicide include a shameful or humiliating experience, such as perceived failure at school or rejection by a romantic partner or parent.

If you notice that a student in one of your classes seems extremely depressed, take the trouble to ask if there is anything you can do to provide support and seek the advice of the school counselor. To encourage students to discuss their concerns with you, suggest that they read books written for adolescents that address suicide in a direct and forthright manner. Your interest and sympathy may prevent a suicide attempt. Also, be aware that recent prevention efforts include school-based programs. These programs, which are run by a mental health professional or an educator (or both), are typically directed at high school students, their parents, and their teachers. They usually include a review of suicide statistics, a list of warning signs, a list of community mental health resources and how to contact them, and a discussion of how to refer a student or peer to counseling.

-Practice. Practice speeds up the internalizing of thinking skills that students observe and discuss with others. -Confirmation. To confirm others is to bring out the best in them by focusing on what they can do with some assistance, and this process helps create a trusting and mutually supportive relationship between teacher and student. For example, you might say to a student, "I know this assignment seems difficult right now and that you have had some problems in the past with similar assignments, but with the help I'm willing to offer, I'm certain you'll do good-quality work."

In Chapter 13, we will describe how a fourth-grade teacher used various types of prompts as a form of scaffolding to help students better understand stories they had read and the effects these prompts had on subsequent discussions of reading assignments.

Talking about different viewpoints will help children understand that people have beliefs about the world, that different people believe different things, and that beliefs may change when new information is acquired. Astington offers the following example of how teachers can foster the development of children's theory of mind:

In a 1st-grade classroom that I recently observed, the teacher often talked about her own thought processes, saying, for example, "I just learned something new" when she found out that one student had a pet rabbit at home. When she was surprised or made a mistake, she talked about her own wrong beliefs, and at story-time, she had the children talk about the motivations and beliefs of story characters. Her style of talk helped the class focus not just on the thought content, but also on the thinking process—yet the term theory of mind was unknown to this teacher.

Research findings support the accuracy of these theoretical positions. In one study, the opportunity for kindergarten students to play with peers during recess was a significant predictor of first-grade achievement.

In another study, third graders who were given at least one recess period that was at least 15 minutes long received higher classroom behavior scores from their teacher than did similar peers who were given either no recess or a minimal break. Lastly, a review of recent research found exercise to be associated with improvements in children's attention and executive cognitive functions (which we describe at length in Chapters 8, 9, 10).

The elementary grade child can think logically, although such thinking is constrained and inconsistent.

In terms of Piaget's stages, upper elementary grade children are concrete operational stage thinkers. Most will have attained enough mastery of logical schemes that they can understand and solve tasks that involve such processes as class inclusion (understanding the superordinate-subordinate relationships that make up hierarchies), seriation, conservation, and symbolic representation (reading maps, for example), provided that the content of the task refers to real, tangible ideas that the child has either experienced or can imagine. But general and abstract ideas often escape the elementary age child. For example, sarcasm, metaphor, and allegory are usually lost on concrete-stage thinkers.

During the sensorimotor stage, the infant and toddler use senses and motor skills to explore and understand the environment.

In the preoperational stage, the child masters symbol systems but cannot manipulate symbols logically.

Roy Pea and Gavriel Salomon were among the first to suggest that technology might play the same role as more capable tutors with such tasks as writing an essay and reading a book.

Indeed, within the context of technology-driven learning environments, the technology itself, if it is designed to be supportive of the learner, is sometimes referred to as a scaffold.

Forcing students to compete with one another for grades is likely to have a negative effect on their sense of industry.

Individuals with a strong sense of identity are comfortable with their physical selves, have a sense of purpose and direction, and know they will be recognized by others. When faced with making an occupational choice, some adolescents declare a psychosocial moratorium.

Elementary stage

Industry Versus Inferiority

Elementary grade general factors to keep in mind

Initial enthusiasm for learning may fade as the novelty wears off and as the process of perfecting skills becomes more difficult. Differences in knowledge and skills of fastest and slowest learners become more noticeable. "Automatic" respect for teachers tends to diminish. Peer group influences become strong.

Preschoolers stage

Initiative Versus Guilt

The physical consequences of an action determine goodness or badness. Those in authority have superior power and should be obeyed. Punishment should be avoided by staying out of trouble.

Instrumental relativist orientation

Elderly stage

Integrity Versus Despair

Elderly explanation

Integrity is "the acceptance of one's one and only life cycle as something that had to be and that, by necessity, permitted of no substitutions...Despair expresses the feeling that the time is now short, too short for the attempt to start another life and to try out alternate roads to integrity."

One interesting proposal is that educators adopt character development as a basic goal and think of it as being composed of four parts: intellectual character, moral character, civic character, and performance character.

Intellectual character refers to ways of thinking that direct and motivate what a person does when faced with a learning task and that often lead to a meaningful outcome.

Young adult stage

Intimacy Versus Isolation

Meaningful learning, then, occurs when people create new ideas, or knowledge (rules and hypotheses that explain things), from existing information (e.g., facts, concepts, and procedures).

It is a powerful notion that has motivated a great deal of psychological research that can be applied to teaching and learning.

Another example of equilibration at work comes from the grandson of one of the authors who was six years old at the time.

It is a state of disequilibrium, or a perceived discrepancy between an existing scheme and something new.

Kindergarten children tend to express their emotions freely and openly. Anger outbursts are frequent.

It is probably desirable to let children at this age level express their feelings openly, at least within broad limits, so that they can recognize and face their emotions. In Between Parent and Child and Teacher and Child, Haim Ginott offers some specific suggestions on how a parent or teacher can help children develop awareness of their feelings. His books may help you work out your own philosophy and techniques for dealing with emotional outbursts.

If you will be teaching courses in social studies, you may find this information useful in lesson planning.

It may also help you understand why students may respond to discussions of political or other abstract matters in different ways.

Ginott suggests that when children are encouraged to analyze their own behavior, they are more likely to become aware of the causes of their feelings. This awareness, in turn, may help them learn to accept and control their feelings and find more acceptable means of expressing them. But because these children are likely to be in Piaget's preoperational stage of intellectual development, bear in mind that this approach may not be successful with all of them. The egocentric orientation of four- to five-year-olds makes it difficult for them to reflect on the thoughts of self or others. Anger outbursts are more likely to occur when children are tired, hungry, or exposed to too much adult interference. If you take such conditions into account and try to alleviate them (by providing a nap or a snack, for example), temper tantrums may be minimized.

Jealousy among classmates is likely to be fairly common, as kindergarten children have much affection for the teacher and actively seek approval. When there are 30 individuals competing for the affection and attention of just one teacher, some jealousy is inevitable.

Between the ages of twelve and sixteen, political thinking becomes more abstract, liberal, and knowledgeable.

Joseph Adelson used an interview approach to obtain information about the development of political thought during the adolescent years. At the start of the interviews, the participants were requested to imagine that 1,000 people had ventured to an island in the Pacific for the purpose of establishing a new society. The respondents were then asked to explain how these people might establish a political order; devise a legal system; establish a balance among rights, responsibilities, personal liberty, and the common good; and deal with other problems of public policy.

Helping students answer difficult questions or solve problems by giving them hints or asking leading questions is an example of a technique called scaffolding .

Just as construction workers use external scaffolding to support their building efforts, Vygotsky recommended that teachers similarly support learning in its early phases.

Toddlers explanation

Just when children have learned to trust (or mistrust) their parents, they must exert a degree of independence. If toddlers are permitted and encouraged to do what they are capable of doing at their own pace and in their own way—and with judicious supervision by parents and teachers—they will develop a sense of autonomy (willingness and ability to direct one's behavior). But if parents and teachers are impatient and do too many things for young children or shame young children for unacceptable behavior, these children will develop feelings of self-doubt.

Teach students how to solve problems more systematically (suggestions for doing this will be provided in later chapters), and provide opportunities for hands-on science experiments.

Keep in mind that some high school students may be more interested in possibilities than in realities.

The social behavior of preschool and kindergarten children is marked by rapidly changing friendships and play groups, a variety of types of play, short quarrels, and a growing awareness of gender roles.

Kindergartners openly display their emotions. Anger and jealousy are common.

Kohlberg defined six stages in the development of moral reasoning: punishment-obedience, instrumental relativist, good boy-nice girl, law and order, social contract, and universal ethical principle. The end product of each stage is a more complete and stable understanding of moral values and behavior.

Kohlberg's theory has been criticized because the level of an individual's response to a moral dilemma can be influenced by the nature of the dilemma, moral reasoning may vary from one culture to another, the moral dilemmas used by Kohlberg are not relevant to everyday social settings, and the theory relies too much on macromoral issues.

Schedule quiet activities after strenuous ones (story time after recess, for example) and relaxing activities after periods of mental concentration (art after spelling or math).

Large-muscle control is still superior to fine coordination. Many children, especially boys, have difficulty manipulating a pencil.

Because early-maturing girls are taller and heavier than their peers and don't have a thin and "leggy" fashion model look, they are likely to have lower self-esteem and are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and panic attacks. They are more likely to be popular with boys, particularly older boys, and experience more pressure to date and become sexually active than their more normally developing peers.

Late-maturing girls, whose growth spurt is less abrupt and whose size and appearance more closely reflect the feminine stereotype mentioned, share many of the characteristics (positive self-concept, popularity) of the early-maturing boy. Late-maturing girls are more likely to be seen by peers as attractive, sociable, and expressive.

In 2007, 14.5 percent of high school students had seriously considered attempting suicide during the previous 12 months, 11.3 percent had made a suicide plan, and 6.9 percent had made one or more attempts. Many more females than males considered attempting suicide (18.7 percent versus 10.3 percent, respectively) and made one or more attempts (9.3 percent versus 4.6 percent). The only good news in these statistics is that they are lower than they were in 2005.

Latino teens are more likely than White or Black teens to consider a suicide attempt (15.9 percent, 14 percent, and 13.2 percent, respectively) and to make a suicide attempt (10.2 percent, 5.6 percent, and 7.7 percent, respectively). As of 2005, the death rate from suicide in the fifteen- to twenty-four-year-old age group was highest for American Indian/Alaskan Native males (32.7 per 100,000) and females (10.1 per 100,000) and lowest for Asian or Pacific Islander males (7.2 per 100,000) and Black females (21.7 per 100,000).

The right action is one that would be carried out by someone whose behavior is likely to please or impress others.

Law and order orientation

Although almost all girls reach their ultimate height, some boys may continue to grow even after graduation from high school. Tremendous variation exists in height and weight and in rate of maturation. Approximately 16 percent of students are considered to be overweight; 13 percent are obese. As noted earlier, late-maturing boys seem to have considerable difficulty adjusting to their slower rate of growth. There is still concern about appearance, although it may not be as strong as during the middle school years. Glandular changes leading to acne may be a source of worry and self-consciousness to some students. The most significant glandular change accompanying puberty is arousal of the sex drive. A brief summary of the types of behavior stressed by the theorists discussed in the preceding chapter is found in Table 3-7.

Many adolescents become sexually active, although the long-term trend is down.

Play activities are an important part of young children's development and should be encouraged.

Many adults believe that young children's play activities (meaning they are voluntary and self-organized) are relatively unimportant and so should be either ignored or deemphasized by educators. Nothing could be more wrong. Research clearly shows that children of all ages profit socially, emotionally, and cognitively from engaging in play.

The pros and cons of after-school employment have been vigorously debated. On the positive side, it is thought to enhance self-discipline, a sense of responsibility, self-confidence, and attitudes toward work. On the negative side, part-time employment leaves less time for homework, participation in extracurricular activities, and development of friendships; it may also lead to increased stress, lower grades, and lower career aspirations.

Many psychiatric disorders either appear or become prominent during adolescence. Included among these are eating disorders, substance abuse, schizophrenia, depression, and suicide.

Try not to schedule too much writing at one time. If drill periods are too long, skill may deteriorate, and children may develop a negative attitude toward writing or toward school in general.

Many students may have difficulty focusing on small print or objects. Quite a few children may be farsighted because of the shallow shape of the eye.

Here is a hypothetical moral dilemma that a first-grade teacher presented to her class:

Mark was going to the movies when he met his friend Steven. Although Steven wanted to go to the movie with Mark, he had spent all of his allowance and wouldn't be getting any more until after the movie left town. Both boys were twelve years old but looked much younger. If they lied about their ages, they could both see the movie for the amount of money that Mark had. Mark was unsure if he should lie about his age. Steven said, "It's your money, so it's your decision." What should Mark do?

Stage 6 "You need to weigh all the factors and then try to make the most appropriate decision in a given situation. Sometimes it would be morally wrong not to steal." Moral decisions should be based on consistent applications of self-chosen ethical principles.

Moral decisions should be made in terms of self-chosen ethical principles. Once principles are chosen, they should be applied in consistent ways.

Believes children should obey rules because of mutual concerns for rights of others.

Most eight-year-olds will say that you should tell the person, and they justify their behavior with some type of preconventional (Level 1) explanation.

These self-evaluative beliefs influence what activities students choose and for how long they will persist at a given task, particularly when progress becomes difficult. Students with a moderate to strong sense of self-efficacy will persist at a task long enough to obtain the success or corrective feedback that leads to expectations of future success. Students with a low sense of self-efficacy, however, tend to abandon tasks at the first sign of difficulty, thereby establishing a pattern of failure, low expectations of future success, and task avoidance.

Most students reach physical maturity, and virtually all attain puberty.

The responses of the students illustrate both the punishment-obedience orientation (stage 1) and the instrumental relativist orientation (stage 2) of Kohlberg's preconventional level of morality:

Ms. Kittle: Okay, what do you think Mark should do? John: Him and Steven should tell them how old they are. Emily: They shouldn't lie about their age. Ms. Kittle: Why do you think they shouldn't lie? Tina: Because if they did lie, they'd get a spanking. John: Mark shouldn't lie about his age because it leads to a mess. Ms. Kittle: What kind of mess? John: His mother might find out. Sara: The father too. Erin: They'd get punished. Ms. Kittle: So you all think Mark and Steven shouldn't lie because they might get caught and be punished. What if no one catches them—would it be right to lie then? Most: Yes! Billy: No, it's not. The manager of the show might catch them.

Ms. Kittle: But what if no one catches them? Billy: Then it's all right. Ms. Kittle: Who thinks it would still be wrong to lie, even if Mark and Steven wouldn't get caught? (Five children raise their hands.) Troy: They'd still get in a mixed-up mess. Ms. Kittle: How? Troy: Somebody might tell somebody that they lied. Ms. Kittle: He might, that's true. But would it still be wrong even if Steven didn't tell anybody? Troy: Yes. Ms. Kittle: Why, Troy? Troy: I don't know—but it is. Emily: It's not nice to lie. Troy (in a rush): Yeah, and it's not fair to other people, either! Ms. Kittle: Who wouldn't it be fair to? Troy: The others in the show. They had to pay full price.

Ms. Kittle: You mean if other twelve-year-old kids had to pay the full price for their tickets, then it's not fair for Mark and Steven to get in cheaper? Troy: Right.

7-11 years

Nevertheless, children in the concrete operational stage are often more capable of learning advanced concepts than most people realize.

Gilligan maintains that Erikson's theory of identity development and Kohlberg's theory of moral development more accurately describe male development than female development, although research suggests that the difference may not be as large as Gilligan originally thought.

Noddings's care theory emphasizes the critical nature of caring relationships, in which each person feels that she or he is cared for by the other.

In 1984, Nel Noddings, an educational philosopher, extended Gilligan's argument in Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education.

Noddings's development of care theory supports Gilligan's criticisms of Erickson and Kohlberg.

When adolescents look for models and advice on such social matters as dress, hairstyle, speech patterns, friendships, and leisure activities, the peer group is likely to have the greatest influence (as a visit to any high school will reveal). Peer values can also influence academic performance. When the issues are which courses to take in school and what different careers are like, teachers, guidance counselors, and parents are likely to have more influence over decision making than peers. For questions about values, ethics, and future plans, the views of parents are usually sought.

Not surprisingly, most conflicts between parents and their adolescent children are about such peer-influenced issues as personal appearance, friends, Internet and cell phone use, dating, hours, and eating habits. This general pattern may be modified, however, by type of parenting style. The adolescent children who experience authoritarian parenting (see Diana Baumrind's work on parenting styles in the section on the cognitive characteristics of preschool and kindergarten children) have a stronger tendency than other adolescents to make decisions that are consistent with peer group advice. The adolescent children of parents who have an authoritative style, on the other hand, are more likely to make decisions that are consistent with parental advice. Perhaps this is why the influence of parents appears to be greatest when there are mutual affection and respect between parent and child.

Primary grade children begin to understand that learning and recall are caused by particular cognitive processes that they can control.

Not until children are about seven or eight years of age do they begin to realize that learning and memory stem from cognitive processes that are under their conscious control. When learning words, for example, younger children may need to be prompted or directed to group the words by category because they do not realize that such a technique aids recall. Likewise, they may not recognize their lack of comprehension when they read difficult or unfamiliar material and may need to be prompted to think about how well they are understanding what they read. By the primary grades, this awareness and monitoring of one's learning processes, called metacognition, begins to emerge. We will return to the subject in Chapter 8, "Information-Processing Theory."

Believes children should obey rules because they are established by those in authority.

Notice how these last three differences call attention to the tendency for children above the age of ten or so to see rules as mutual agreements among equals.

Defines moral wrongness in terms of what is forbidden or punished.

Notice that these first four differences call attention to the tendency for children below the age of ten or so to think of rules as sacred pronouncements handed down by external authority.

In general, there is a decrease in the growth of fatty tissue and an increase in bone and muscle development. In a year's time, the average child of this age will grow about 2 to 3 inches and gain about 5 to 7 pounds. As a result, the typical child will tend to have a lean and gangly look. Although the average nine-year-old boy is slightly taller and heavier than the average nine-year-old girl, this difference all but disappears a year later. And from age eleven until about fourteen and a half, girls are slightly heavier and taller than boys. Because secondary sex characteristics have not yet appeared, boys and girls can be mistaken for one another. This is particularly likely to happen when girls have close-cropped hair, boys have very long hair, and both genders wear gender-neutral clothing.

Obesity can become a problem for some children of this age group.

Piaget's beliefs about the ability of instruction to speed up cognitive development were decidedly cautious, if not negative.

On the other hand, instruction was likely to be a waste of time if undertaken too soon, such as teaching children to count up to, say, 20 or 50 before they had a genuine understanding of the concept of number.

Activities that encourage children to create new ideas or schemes through experimentation, questioning, discussion, and discovery often produce meaningful learning because of the inherent drive toward equilibration.

One day he asked what to him was a logical question given the nature of his schemes at that time: "Mommy, who lives in those little houses?"

You can see these impediments at work most clearly when children attempt to solve conservation problems —those that test their ability to recognize that certain properties stay the same despite a change in appearance or position.

One of the best-known conservation problems is conservation of continuous quantity.

To minimize fidgeting, avoid situations in which your students must stay glued to their desks for long periods. Have frequent breaks, and try to work activity (such as bringing papers to your desk) into the lessons themselves. When children use computer software that contains sound effects, distribute headphones to ensure that they concentrate on their own work and to minimize distractions among students.

One of the effects of the current emphasis on preparing students to meet state learning standards is the reduction or elimination of recess time, even for kindergarten and primary grade students. Are educators acting wisely in seeking to reduce the number and length of breaks young children receive to focus more intensively on teaching academic skills? Not according to cognitive development theory and research.

A learner with intellectual character is, for example, curious, open-minded, reflective, strategic, and skeptical.

One persuasive reason for making intellectual character an educational goal is that, once these habits of mind are acquired with one or two subject areas, they are likely to generalize to other domains.

Preoperational, then, means prelogical.

One reason preoperational-stage children have difficulty solving conservation problems (as well as other problems that require logical thinking) is perceptual centration : the strong tendency to focus attention on only one characteristic of an object or aspect of a problem or event at a time.

Technology connects people to people, and it can do so in a variety of contexts that allow learners to gain knowledge and the psychological tools that help them to grow intellectually.

One way in which technology connects people is in multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs).

Piaget postulated that human beings inherit two basic tendencies: organization (the tendency to systematize and combine processes into coherent general systems) and adaptation (the tendency to adjust to the environment).

Organization refers to the tendency of all individuals to systematize or combine processes into coherent (logically interrelated) systems.

The worst of the STDs is, of course, HIV/AIDS. HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus, and AIDS stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. HIV is the viral cause of AIDS. In 2006, almost 12 adolescents for every 100,000 in the fifteen- to nineteen-year-old age group were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.

Parents and other adults are likely to influence long-range plans; peers are likely to influence immediate status.

Expressions of civic character include serving on public boards and committees, doing volunteer work for charitable and social service organizations, attending city council meetings, working for candidates for public office, and running for public office.

Performance character refers to personal qualities that facilitate the achievement of one's goals.

Authoritarian parents , by contrast, make demands and wield power, but their failure to take into account the child's point of view and their lack of warmth lead to resentment and insecurity on the part of the child.

Permissive parents , as defined by Baumrind, are disorganized, inconsistent, and lack confidence, and their children are likely to imitate such behavior. Permissive parents make few demands of their children, allow them to make many of their own decisions, do not require them to exhibit mature behavior, and tend to avoid confrontations with their children. As a result, such children are markedly less assertive and intellectually skilled than are children from authoritative homes.

Provide examples of how Jean Piaget's stage theory of cognitive development can be used to guide learning experiences in and out of the classroom.

Piaget believed that individuals inherit two basic intellectual tendencies: organization (the tendency to combine mental processes into more general systems) and adaptation (the tendency to adjust to the environment).

According to Piaget, adaptation is accomplished by two subprocesses: assimilation and accommodation.

Piaget believed that people are driven to organize their schemes to achieve the best possible adaptation to their environment.

Equilibration is the process of trying to organize a system of schemes that allows us to adapt to current environmental conditions. Equilibration is produced by a state of disequilibrium.

Piaget concluded on the basis of his studies that schemes evolve through four stages: sensorimotor (birth to two years), preoperational (two to seven years), concrete operational (seven to eleven years), and formal operational (eleven years and older).

Explain how cognitive development influences moral thinking and moral behavior.

Piaget identified two types of moral reasoning in children: morality of constraint (rules are inflexible and external) and morality of cooperation (rules are flexible and internal).

The education and technology literature is filled with examples of telementoring in pre-K-12 education.

Piaget referred to the moral thinking of children up to the age of ten or so as the morality of constraint , but he also called it moral realism.

Elementary grade children become even more discriminating than primary grade children in the selection of friends and playmates. Most children choose a best friend, usually of the same gender. These relationships, based usually on common ideas, outlooks, and impressions of the world, may last through adolescence. Although children of this age will rarely refuse to interact with members of the opposite sex when directed to do so by parents and teachers, they will avoid the opposite sex when left to their own devices.

Play continues to make numerous contributions to children's development.

Typical of children up to the age of nine. Called preconventional because young children do not really understand the conventions or rules of a society.

Preconventional all about me

Describe one or more aspects of the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development of preschool and kindergarten children.

Preschool and kindergarten children are quite active and enjoy physical activity. Their incomplete muscle and motor development limits what they can accomplish on tasks that require fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and visual focusing.

The form and types of play that young children exhibit are quite varied. They may, for example, play by themselves with toys that are different from those being used by nearby children, play alongside but not with other children who are playing with the same toys, or play cooperatively with other children in an organized form of play. Common types of play include pretend play (mimicking the behavior of parents, siblings, and peers), exercise play (running, climbing, jumping, and other large-muscle activities), and rough-and-tumble play (mostly wrestling types of activities, as well as pretend fighting) Boys are much more likely than girls to engage in rough-and-tumble play.

Preschool and kindergarten children show definite preferences for gender of play peers and for pair versus group play.

Many preschool and kindergarten children do not accurately assess their competence for particular tasks.

Preschool and kindergarten children typically think of themselves as being much more competent than they actually are, even when their performance lags behind that of their peers. They do not differentiate between effort and ability as factors that affect performance. Although this limitation in self-assessment is influenced, at least in part, by the characteristics of preoperational-stage thinking, it can also be the result of classroom environments that are relatively unstructured, that emphasize free play, and that deemphasize peer-peer comparisons. Israeli children who grew up on a kibbutz, a communal form of living in which child rearing occurs as much within a peer group as within one's nuclear family, used peer comparison to construct a sense of their own competence about a year earlier than did urban children who spent most of their time within their own families.

Begin lessons with concrete objects or ideas, and gradually shift explanations to a more abstract and general level.

Preschool, Elementary, And Middle School Grades

Finally, rejecting-neglecting parents do not make demands on their children or respond to their emotional needs. They do not structure the home environment, are not supportive of their children's goals and activities, and may actively reject or neglect their child-rearing responsibilities. Children of rejecting-neglecting parents are the least socially and intellectually competent of the four types. Teachers, especially teachers of young children, use power as they interact with their students.

Primary grade children are still extremely active. Because they are frequently required to participate in sedentary pursuits, energy is often released in the form of nervous habits—for example, pencil chewing, fingernail biting, and general fidgeting.

Describe one or more aspects of the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development of primary grade students.

Primary grade children exhibit many of the same physical characteristics as preschool and kindergarten children (high activity level, incomplete muscle and motor development, frequent periods of fatigue). Most accidents occur among third graders because they overestimate their physical skills and underestimate the dangers in their activities.

Friendships are typically same-sex relationships marked by mutual understanding, loyalty, cooperation, and sharing. Competition between friends should be discouraged because it can become intense and increase their dissatisfaction with each other. Although friends disagree with each other more often than with nonfriends, their conflicts are shorter, less heated, and less likely to lead to a dissolving of the relationship. A brief summary of the types of behavior stressed by the theorists discussed in the preceding chapter is found in Table 3-2.

Primary grade children often like organized games in small groups, but they may be overly concerned with rules or get carried away by team spirit.

Primary grade children's friendships are typically same sex and are made on a more selective basis than among younger children. Quarrels among peers typically involve verbal arguments, although boys may engage in punching, wrestling, and shoving.

Primary grade students are becoming more emotionally sensitive. As a result, they are more easily hurt by criticism, respond strongly to praise, and are more likely to hurt another child's feelings during a quarrel.

Preschool children are extremely active. They have good control of their bodies and enjoy activity for its own sake.

Provide plenty of opportunities for children to run, climb, and jump. Arrange these activities, as much as possible, so that they are under your control. If you follow a policy of complete freedom, you may discover that 30 improvising three- to five-year-olds can be a frightening thing.

Kindergartners are quite skillful with language. Most of them like to talk, especially in front of a group.

Providing a sharing time gives children a natural opportunity for talking, but many will need help in becoming good listeners. Some sort of rotation scheme is usually necessary to divide talking opportunities between the gabby and the silent extremes. You might provide activities or experiences for less confident children to talk about, such as a field trip, a book, or a film.

If late-maturing boys in your classes appear driven to seek attention or inclined to brood about their immaturity, you might try to give them extra opportunities to gain status and self-confidence by succeeding in schoolwork or other nonathletic activities. If you notice that early-maturing girls seem insecure, you might try to bolster their self-esteem by giving them extra attention and by recognizing their achievements.

Pubertal development is evident in practically all girls and in many boys.

Keep in mind that, according to Piaget, children at this age practice the morality of constraint: they find it difficult to understand how and why rules should be adjusted to special situations. When you divide a class into teams, you may be amazed at the amount of rivalry that develops (and the noise level generated). One way to reduce both the rivalry and the noise is to promote the idea that games should be fun.

Quarrels are still frequent. Words are used more often than physical aggression, but many boys (in particular) may indulge in punching, wrestling, and shoving.

Suggestions for Teaching Encouraging Moral Development

Recognize that younger children respond to moral conflicts differently from older children.

If possible, assess the level and the type of thinking of each child in your class. Ask individual children to perform some of Piaget's experiments, and spend most of your time listening to each child explain her reactions.

Remember that learning through activity and direct experience is essential. Provide plenty of materials and opportunities for children to learn on their own.

Another manifestation of adolescent egocentrism is the assumption that adults do not, indeed cannot, understand the thoughts and feelings of early adolescence. It's as if the early adolescent believes she is experiencing things no one else has ever experienced before. Hence, a teen or preteen will likely say to a parent, "You just don't know what it feels like to be in love".

Research shows that when these programs are carried out properly students show significant growth in social and emotional skills, attitudes toward self and others, positive social behaviors, and achievement, and they show significant decreases in behavior problems, depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal.

Create a classroom atmosphere that will enhance open discussion. For example, arrange face-to-face groupings, be an accepting model, foster listening and communication skills, and encourage student-to-student interaction.

Richard Hersh, Diana Paolitto, and Joseph Reimer (1979) offer the following specific suggestions for supervising classroom discussions:

The purpose of scaffolding is to help students acquire knowledge and skills they would not have learned on their own.

Scaffolding techniques that are likely to help students traverse their ZPD include prompts, suggestions, checklists, modeling, rewards, feedback, cognitive structuring (using such devices as theories, categories, labels, and rules for helping students organize and understand ideas), and questioning.

Because of an inclination toward bursts of activity, kindergartners need frequent rest periods. They themselves often don't recognize the need to slow down.

Schedule quiet activities after strenuous ones. Have rest time. Realize that excitement may build up to a riot level if the attention of "catalytic agents" and their followers is not diverted.

As a result, attempts to explain the logic behind conservation are usually met with quizzical looks and the insistence (some would mistakenly call it stubbornness) that the tall, thin glass contains more water.

Schemes are developing that allow a greater understanding of such logic-based tasks as conservation (matter is neither created nor destroyed but simply changes shape or form or position), class inclusion (the construction of hierarchical relationships among related classes of items), and seriation (the arrangement of items in a particular order).

Of those who can be classified, most are likely to be either in the diffusion or foreclosure statuses.

Scoring somewhat lower on adjustment scales were those in the moratorium and foreclosure statuses.

Robert L. Selman has studied the development of interpersonal reasoning in children. Interpersonal reasoning is the ability to understand the relationship between motives and behavior among a group of people. The results of Selman's research are summarized in Table 3-6. The stages outlined there reveal that, during the elementary school years, children gradually grasp the fact that a person's overt actions or words do not always reflect inner feelings. They also come to comprehend that a person's reaction to a distressing situation can have many facets. Toward the end of the elementary school years and increasingly during adolescence, children become capable of taking a somewhat detached and analytical view of their own behavior, as well as the behavior of others. By mid-adolescence, they can, for example, understand that offering unsolicited academic help to a classmate may embarrass that individual.

Selman believes that teachers and therapists might be able to aid children who are not as advanced in role-taking skills as their age-mates by helping them become more sensitive to the feelings of others. If an eight-year-old boy is still functioning at the egocentric level, for example, he may fail to interpret the behavior of classmates properly and become a social isolate. Selman describes how one such boy was encouraged to think continually about the reasons behind his social actions and those of others and acquired sufficient social sensitivity to learn to get along with others.

Civic character, which was one of the reasons public schools were created in the first place, is the desire and willingness to use one's knowledge and skills to become an engaged and responsible citizen.

Some of the building blocks of civic character are a respect for freedom, equality, and rational thinking; understanding the importance of diversity and due process; and a willingness to participate in civic affairs.

Punishment obedience orientation

Stage 1 "You might get caught." The physical consequences of an action determine goodness or badness.

Good boy nice girl orientation

Stage 3 "Your parents will be proud of you if you are honest." The right action is one that will impress others.

Social contract orientation

Stage 5 "Under certain circumstances, laws may have to be disregarded—if a person's life depends on breaking a law, for instance." Rules should involve mutual agreements; the rights of the individual should be protected.

The view of early adolescence as a period of "storm and stress" appears to be an exaggeration.

Starting with G. Stanley Hall, who wrote a pioneering two-volume text on adolescence in 1904, some theorists have described adolescence as a period of turmoil. Feelings of confusion, anxiety, and depression; extreme mood swings; and low levels of self-confidence are felt to be typical of this age group. Some of the reasons cited for this turbulence are rapid changes in height, weight, and body proportions; increases in hormone production; the task of identity formation; increased academic responsibilities; and the development of formal operational reasoning.

Primary grades General factors to keep in mind

Students are having first experiences with school learning, are eager to learn how to read and write, and are likely to be upset by lack of progress. Initial attitudes toward schooling are being established. Initial roles in a group are being formed, roles that may establish a lasting pattern (e.g., leader, follower, loner, athlete, or underachiever).

Piaget believed that social interactions among peers on the same level of development would do more to stimulate cognitive development than social interactions between children and adults because interactions among intellectual equals are more likely to lead to fruitful discussions, analyses, and debates.

Systematic instruction may have modest positive effects on the rate of cognitive development as long as the schemes that will govern the next stage have already begun to develop.

Vygotsky believed that cognitive development is aided by explicitly teaching students how to use cognitive tools to acquire basic concepts and by teaching within a student's zone of proximal development.

Technology consistent with Piaget's view of cognitive development helps students explore and construct knowledge, formulate concrete representations of abstract ideas, and understand the ideas of others.

Provide examples of how technology can encourage cognitive development by challenging current conceptions and encouraging collaborative interactions.

Technology consistent with Vygotsky's view of cognitive development provides a virtual environment that plays the role of an expert tutor who gives a high degree of support and structure that is gradually withdrawn (scaffolding). It also allows online mentoring and provides opportunities for students to interact with other students in sophisticated virtual environments.

Vygotsky's notion of producing cognitive development by embedding instruction within a student's ZPD is an attractive one and has many implications for instruction.

Technology gives students access to experiences that contribute to disequilibrium.

Preschoolers explanation

The ability to participate in many physical activities and to use language sets the stage for initiative, which "adds to autonomy the quality of undertaking, planning, and 'attacking' a task for the sake of being active and on the move." If four- and five-year-olds are given freedom to explore and experiment and if parents and teachers take time to answer questions, tendencies toward initiative will be encouraged. Conversely, if children of this age are restricted and made to feel that their activities and questions have no point or are a nuisance to adults and older siblings, they will feel guilty about acting on their own.

Infants explanation

The basic psychosocial attitude for infants to learn is that they can trust their world. The parents' "consistency, continuity, and sameness of experience" in satisfying the infant's basic needs fosters truth. Such an environment will permit children to think of their world as safe and dependable. Conversely, children whose care is inadequate, inconsistent, or negative will approach the world with fear and suspicion.

Gilligan's view implies that because females are socialized to value more highly the qualities of understanding, helping, and cooperation with others than that of preserving individual rights, and because the former orientation is reflected most strongly in Kohlberg's two conventional stages (stages 3 and 4), females are more likely to be judged to be at a lower level of moral development than males.

The caring orientation advocated by Gilligan in the 1980s arose from her criticism that Erickson's and Kohlberg's theories did not provide the best account of the psychosocial and moral development of female adolescents.

We can see the nature of formal operational thinking and how it differs from concrete operational thinking by looking at a simplified version of Piaget's rod-bending experiment.

The concrete operational thinker, however, continues trying out each rod and recording each observation independent of the others.

Discussion techniques Selman recommends can be introduced in a natural, rather than a formal, way. If you see a boy react with physical or verbal abuse when jostled by a playmate, for example, you might say, "You know, people don't always intentionally bump into others. Unless you are absolutely sure that someone has hurt you on purpose, it can be a lot pleasanter for all concerned if you don't make a big deal out of it."

The desire to conform reaches a peak during the middle school years.

For girls in the United States, puberty can begin as early as age seven or as late as age thirteen. For boys, the onset of puberty can be as early as age nine or as late as age thirteen and a half. Because sexual maturation involves drastic biological and psychological adjustments, children are concerned and curious. It seems obvious that accurate, unemotional answers to questions about sex are desirable. However, for your own protection, you should find out about the sex-education policy at your school. Many school districts have formal programs approved by community representatives and led by designated educators.

The development of interpersonal reasoning leads to greater understanding of the feelings of others.

As Vygotsky so elegantly put it, "Through others we become ourselves".

The difference between Vygotsky's views on the origin and development of cognitive processes and those of other cognitive developmental psychologists is something like the old question, "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?"

From 2001 through 2007, sexual intercourse among high school students trended up after having declined through the 1990s, as shown in Table 3-8. In 2007, close to two-thirds of students reported having engaged in sexual intercourse by the end of grade 12.

The factors that are significantly related to initiation of sexual activity among high school students vary by gender and race. White males and females with low educational goals and below-average grades are more likely to have sexual intercourse at an earlier age as compared with peers who have higher goals and grades. The factors that were most strongly related to initiation of sexual activity for African American female students were having a mother with 12 or more years of education (presumably, mothers with more education spend less time at home caring for their children), spending less time with one's mother, and being uninvolved in church activities. The factors that predicted onset of sexual activity for African American male students were low grade-point average, living in a one-parent family, limited contact with the father, and lack of participation in family decision making. In addition, the onset of sexual activity is associated with subsequent declines in educational goals and achievement and an increased risk of substance abuse.

Students who are within Piaget's formal operational stage of cognitive development are capable of solving problems by systematically using abstract symbols to represent real objects.

The formal operational thinker reasons that if all of the available weights are not sufficient to bend the 4-inch rod enough to touch the water, the same will be true of the remaining rods.

Adolescents explanation

The goal at this stage is development of the roles and skills that will prepare adolescents to take a meaningful place in adult society. The danger at this stage is role confusion : having no clear conception of appropriate types of behavior that others will react to favorably. If adolescents succeed (as reflected by the reactions of others) in integrating roles in different situations to the point of experiencing continuity in their perception of self, identity develops. In common terms, they know who they are. If they are unable to establish a sense of stability in various aspects of their lives, role confusion results.

Physical development during the high school years is marked by physical maturity for most students and by puberty for virtually all. Sexual activity increases.

The long-range goals, beliefs, and values of adolescents are likely to be influenced by parents, whereas immediate status is likely to be influenced by peers. Many teens have part-time, after-school employment.

Schizophrenia, a thinking disorder characterized by illogical and unrealistic thinking, delusions, and hallucinations, is relatively rare among adolescents, affecting less than 0.25 percent of all thirteen- to nineteen-year-olds. Yet it is the most frequently occurring psychotic disorder, and the number of cases diagnosed between the ages of twelve and eighteen is steadily increasing. Early symptoms include odd, unpredictable behavior; difficulty communicating with others; social withdrawal; and rejection by peers.

The most common type of emotional disorder during adolescence is depression.

When middle schools fail to provide students with an intellectually challenging yet emotionally safe classroom environment, one negative consequence is an effect on motivation. Theorists like Carol Dweck describe achievement goals as being either mastery or performance. Students who subscribe to a mastery goal are primarily interested in understanding ideas and their interrelationships, acquiring new skills, and refining them over time. Students who subscribe to a performance goal are primarily interested in demonstrating their ability to finish first (however that is defined) and avoiding situations in which a relative lack of ability would be apparent. Mastery goals have been associated with positive feelings about one's ability, potential, the subject matter, and school and with the use of effective learning strategies (which we describe in Chapter 9, "Social Cognitive Theory").

The most recent evidence suggests that, as students move from the elementary grades to the middle grades, there is a shift in their values and practices that leads to more of an emphasis on performance goals. Some researchers blame this change on teaching practices. For example, middle grade teachers are more inclined to post papers and exams with the highest scores, to grade on a curve, to accord special privileges to high achievers, and to remind students of the importance of getting high grades and producing mistake-free papers. Such an environment tells students that meaningful learning is not necessarily expected and that support of learning will not be provided. Students then are motivated to focus on their scores and grades rather than on what they can learn.

Elementary grade boys and girls become leaner and stronger and tend to have a gangly look. But some run the risk of becoming overweight because of poor eating habits and lack of exercise. Boys usually outperform girls on such sports-related motor skills as kicking, throwing, catching, running, and jumping, whereas girls often surpass boys on such play-related motor skills as flexibility, balance, and rhythm.

The peer group becomes a strong influence on the norms that govern the behavior of elementary grade children. Friendships in the elementary grades become even more selective and gender based than they were in the primary grades.

A brief summary of the types of behavior stressed by the theorists discussed in the preceding chapter is found in Table 3-3.

The peer group becomes powerful and begins to replace adults as the major source of behavior standards and recognition of achievement.

The product of organization and adaptation is the creation of new schemes that allow individuals to organize at a higher level and adapt more effectively.

The process of creating a good fit or match between one's conception of reality (one's schemes) and the real-life experiences one encounters is called adaptation.

In 1991, the birthrate for teens of ages fifteen to nineteen was 61.8 births per 1,000. By 2005, that figure had declined to 41.9. Pregnancy rates for teens fifteen to nineteen years old have also declined. In 1990, the pregnancy rate was 117 per 1,000, but it slid to 72.2 per 1,000 in 2004. This decline is attributed to a combination of increased abstinence and contraception. Even so, pregnancy rates and birthrates in the United States are considerably higher than in Canada and many European countries because American teens are less likely than their Canadian and European counterparts to use contraception. Among the many factors related to these trends in adolescent sexual behavior, one has clear educational implications: Adolescents who were retained at least once and were behind schedule in their schooling were more likely to have unprotected sex than adolescents who had not been retained.

The relatively high levels of sexual activity and low levels of regular contraception among adolescents are particularly worrisome because they put adolescents at risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) . According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the United States STDs occur more frequently among adolescents than in any other age group. The rates for syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia among fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds, for example, are 6.0 per 100,000, 977.4 per 100,000, and 3,559.8 per 100,000, respectively.

Although most children grow rapidly during the middle school years, girls grow more quickly and begin puberty earlier than boys. Early versus late maturation in boys and girls may affect subsequent personality development.

The social behavior of middle school children is increasingly influenced by peer group norms and the development of interpersonal reasoning. Children are now capable of understanding why they behave as they do toward others and vice versa. Because the peer group is the primary source for rules of acceptable behavior, conformity and concern about what peers think reach a peak during the middle school years.

The main impediments to logical thinking that preschoolers have to overcome are perceptual centration, irreversibility, and egocentrism.

The third major impediment is egocentrism.

One factor that has long been known to have a detrimental effect on one's sense of industry is competition for a limited number of rewards.

There are at least two reasons that this practice may damage a student's sense of industry:

Taken together, self-descriptions, self-esteem, and self-concept constitute a person's self-image or self-portrait.

There are several important facts to keep in mind about the formulation of a child's self-image. First, in elementary grade children, self-image is more generalized or integrated than is the case for primary grade children because it is based on information gained over time, tasks, and settings. A child may think of herself as socially adept not just because she is popular at school but because she has always been well-liked and gets along well with adults, as well as peers, in a variety of situations. It is this generalized quality that helps make self-portraits relatively stable.

Develops schemes primarily through sense and motor activities. Recognizes permanence of objects not seen.

Therefore, Piaget called this the sensorimotor stage.

Such strong gender-typing in play activities occurs in many cultures, including non-Western ones, and is often reinforced by the way parents behave: they model what their culture has defined as gender-appropriate roles and encourage boys to be active and independent and girls to be more docile. Peers may also reinforce these tendencies. A boy or girl may notice that other children are more willing to play when he or she selects a gender-appropriate toy.

Therefore, if you teach preschool children, you may have to guard against a tendency to respond too soon when little girls ask for help. If they need assistance, of course you should supply it, but if preschool girls can carry out tasks on their own, you should urge them to do so. You might also remind yourself that girls often need to be encouraged to become more achievement oriented and boys to become more sensitive to the needs of others.

Because of continuing neurological development and limited experience with formal learning tasks, primary grade children do not learn as efficiently as older children do.

Therefore, you should assign primary grade children relatively short tasks and switch periodically from cognitively demanding activities to less demanding ones. Providing youngsters with periodic breaks, such as recess, increases their ability to attend to and perform well on subsequent classroom tasks. The nature of the recess activity does not seem to be important. It can be physical activity in a schoolyard or playing games in class.

But what motivates people's drive toward equilibration?

These processes are two sides of the learning coin: for equilibration to occur, disequilibrium must already have occurred (Photo 2-2).

High school students become increasingly capable of engaging in formal thought, but they may not use this capability.

These students are more likely than younger students to grasp relationships, mentally plan a course of action before proceeding, and test hypotheses systematically. Without supervision and guidance, however, they may not use such capabilities consistently. Accordingly, you might take advantage of opportunities to show students at these grade levels how they can function as formal thinkers. Call attention to relationships and to ways that previously acquired knowledge can be applied to new situations. Provide specific instruction in techniques of problem solving. (Ways you might do this will be discussed in Chapter 10, "Constructivist Learning Theory, Problem Solving, and Transfer.") Although some students may ignore your advice, others will probably take it more seriously. Despite the constant attempts of adolescents to appear totally self-sufficient and independent, they still view parents and teachers as knowledgeable authority figures when it comes to school achievement.

"The kind of power that characterizes authoritarian parents is coercive (arbitrary, peremptory, domineering, and concerned with marking status distinctions) ...". Children of authoritarian parents may do as they are told, but they are likely to do so out of compliance or fear, not out of a desire to earn love or approval.

They also tend to be other-directed rather than inner-directed.

Over the past 30 years, dozens of experiments have been conducted to determine the accuracy of Piaget's position.

They found that schools that participated in a science instruction program called CASE (Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education), which combined aspects of the cognitive developmental theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, had a much greater percentage of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds at or above the early formal operational stage than did non-CASE schools.

Most primary grade children are eager to please the teacher.

They like to help, enjoy responsibility, and want to do well in their schoolwork. The time-honored technique for satisfying the urge to help is to assign jobs (eraser cleaner, wastebasket emptier, paper distributor, and the like) on a rotating basis.

Second, comparison with others is the fundamental basis of a self-image during the elementary grades.

Third, in the elementary grades, the self is described for the first time in terms of emotions (pride, shame, worry, anger, happiness) and how well they can be controlled. Fourth, a child's sense of self is influenced by the information and attitudes that are communicated by such significant others as parents, teachers, and friends and by how competent the child feels in areas in which success is important. The implications of this fact will be discussed in many of the remaining chapters of the text.

College students who were either in the identity achievement or moratorium status were more likely to exhibit helping behaviors and be motivated intrinsically than were individuals in the diffusion status.

This cycling between certainty and doubt as to who one is and where one fits in society may well occur in each of the last three of Erikson's stages and is often referred to as a MAMA (moratorium-achievement-moratorium-achievement) cycle.

Through formal instruction, informal experiences, social contact, and maturation, children over the age of seven gradually become less influenced by perceptual centration, irreversibility, and egocentrism.

This inability to differentiate between the world as the adolescent thinks it should be and the world as it actually is was referred to by David Elkind (1968) as adolescent egocentrism.

When we think of tulips and roses as subcategories of the more general category flowers, instead of as two unrelated categories, we are using organization to aid our thinking process.

This organizational capacity makes thinking processes efficient and powerful and allows a better fit, or adaptation, of the individual to the environment.

Rather than putting the matter to rest, her "explanation" created a state of disequilibrium that resulted in several additional questions designed to create a new mental structure that would, albeit temporarily, bring his mental world back into balance.

This process of creating knowledge to solve a problem and eliminate a disequilibrium is referred to by Piagetian psychologists and educators as constructivism.

This orientation is due in part to the fact that children are not as egocentric as they were a few years earlier and are developing the capability to think in terms of multiple categories. Also, because competition and individualism are highly prized values in many Western cultures, children will naturally compare themselves with one another ("I'm taller than my friend") as well as with broad-based norms ("I'm tall for my age") in an effort to determine who they are.

This social comparison process can have detrimental effects on a student's academic self-image when he or she moves from a classroom or school where most classmates are perceived to be less capable to one where most of his or her classmates are perceived to be more able learners, the so-called big-fish-little-pond effect.

When it comes to social experiences, Piaget clearly believed that peer interactions do more to spur cognitive development than do interactions with adults.

Thus, educational programs that are patterned after Piaget's ideas usually provide many opportunities for children to interact socially and discover through these interactions basic ideas about how the world works.

Young adult explanation

To experience satisfying development at this stage, the young adult needs to establish close and committed intimate relationships and partnerships with other people. The hallmark of intimacy is the "ethical strength to abide by such commitments, even though they may call for significant sacrifices and compromises." Failure to do so will lead to a sense of isolation.

Stage 4 "It's against the law, and if we don't obey laws, our whole society might fall apart." To maintain the social order, fixed rules must be obeyed.

To maintain the social order, fixed rules must be established and obeyed. It is essential to respect authority.

Infants stage

Trust vs mistrust

The thinking of children eleven or older Piaget called the morality of cooperation .

Typical of Twelve-Year-Olds

Most sixteen-year-olds will give the same response and cite some form of a conventional (Level 2) justification.

Typical of nine- to twenty-year-olds. Called conventional since most nine- to twenty-year-olds conform to the conventions of society because they are the rules of a society.

Children are becoming sensitive to the feelings of others.

Unfortunately, this permits them to hurt others deeply by attacking a sensitive spot without realizing how devastating their attack really is. It sometimes happens that teasing a particular child who has reacted to a gibe becomes a group pastime. Be on the alert for such situations. If you are able to make a private and personal appeal to the ringleaders, you may be able to prevent an escalation of the teasing, which may make a tremendous difference in the way the victim feels about school.

Rules needed to maintain the social order should be based not on blind obedience to authority but on mutual agreement. At the same time, the rights of the individual should be protected.

Universal ethical principle orientation

Vygotsky, however, believed that just the opposite was true.

Unlike Piaget, Vygotsky believed that children gain significantly from the knowledge and conceptual tools handed down to them by those who are more intellectually advanced, whether they are same-age peers, older children, or adults.

Post conventional all about others

Usually reached only after the age of twenty and only by a small proportion of adults. Called postconventional because the moral principles that underlie the conventions of a society are understood.

Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development is often referred to as a sociocultural theory because it maintains that how we think is a function of both social and cultural forces.

Vygotsky believed that the most important things a culture passes on to its members (and their descendants) are what he called psychological tools.

Children understand that there are different ways to know things and that some ways are better than others.

When an observation can be explained with either a possible (that is, a theoretical) explanation or an evidence-based explanation, preschoolers fail to see one as more compelling than the other, but primary grade children usually prefer the explanation based on evidence. This is the beginning of scientific thinking. In one study described by Deanna Kuhn, preschoolers viewed a set of pictures depicting two individuals running a race. They were asked to indicate who won the race and to explain what led them to that conclusion. One of the runners was wearing a fancier running shoe, and some of the children said that was the reason he beat his opponent. But because this same individual was also holding a trophy and exhibiting a wide grin in the last picture, some children cited that fact as evidence that the boy won the race. By the time they reach the primary grades, virtually all children understand that a fact-based explanation is superior to a theory-based explanation and so point to the second picture as the reason for their conclusion.

Increased ability to deal with abstractions is a function of the shift from concrete to formal operational thought. When thirteen-year-olds were asked, "What is the purpose of laws?" a typical answer was, "So people don't steal or kill". A fifteen- or sixteen-year-old, by contrast, was more likely to say, "To ensure safety and enforce the government".

When considering punishment for crimes, younger children (Piaget's moral realists) hold the conviction that laws are immutable and that punishment should be stern. But by age fourteen and fifteen, the adolescents whom Adelson interviewed were more likely to consider circumstances and individual rights and to recommend rehabilitation rather than punishment.

On tasks that call for simple memory skills, elementary grade children often perform about as well as adolescents or adults. But on tasks that require more complex memory skills, their performance is more limited.

When tasks call for recognizing previously learned information, such as vocabulary words or facts about a person or event, or for rehearsing several items for immediate use, elementary grade children can perform about as well as older students. Relatively simple memory processes, such as recognition or rote repetition, approach their maximum levels by this point in cognitive development. But the same is not true for tasks that require such advanced memory processes as elaboration and organization. When asked to sort a set of pictures into categories, for example, elementary grade children create fewer and more idiosyncratic categories (which are generally less effective for later recall of the items in the category) than do older children or adults. Also bear in mind that elementary grade children need constant practice on a variety of tasks before they use such memory processes consistently and efficiently.

For example, individuals in moratorium were more numerous during the 1960s and 1970s than during the 1980s.

With respect to family and career priorities and sexuality, males are likely to be foreclosed or diffuse, whereas females are likely to express an identity achievement or a moratorium status.

Become thoroughly familiar with Piaget's theory so that you will be aware of how your students organize and synthesize ideas.

You may gain extra insight if you analyze your own thinking, since you are likely to discover that, in some situations, you operate at a concrete rather than an abstract level.

Another technique is to rotate team membership frequently.

You might also consult Cooperative Learning: Theory, Research, and Practice, by Robert Slavin, for descriptions of several team learning games that emphasize cooperation.

Children tend to be extreme in their physical activities. They have excellent control of their bodies and develop considerable confidence in their skills. As a result, they often underestimate the danger involved in their more daring exploits. The accident rate is at a peak in the third grade.

You might check on school procedures for handling injuries, but also try to prevent reckless play. During recess, for example, encourage class participation in "wild" but essentially safe games (such as relay races involving stunts) to help the children get devil-may-care tendencies out of their systems.

Suppose, for example, that a boy who was wildly waving his hand to be called on during share-and-tell time later knocks down a block tower built by a girl who monopolized sharing time with a spellbinding story of a kitten rescued by firefighters. When you go over to break up the incipient fight, the boy angrily pushes you away. In such a situation, Ginott suggests you take the boy to a quiet corner and engage in a dialogue such as this:

You: It looks as if you are unhappy about something, Connor. Boy: Yes, I am. You: Are you angry about something that happened this morning? Boy: Yes. You: Tell me about it. Boy: I wanted to tell the class about something at sharing time, and Lily talked for three hours, and you wouldn't let me say anything. You: And that made you mad at Lily and at me? Boy: Yes. You: Well, I can understand why you are disappointed and angry. But Lily had an exciting story to tell, and we didn't have time for anyone else to tell what they had to say. You can be the very first one to share something tomorrow morning. Now how about doing an easel painting? You always do such interesting paintings.

Most children have one or two best friends, but these friendships may change rapidly. Preschoolers tend to be quite flexible socially; they are usually willing and able to play with most of the other children in the class. Favorite friends tend to be of the same gender, but many friendships between boys and girls develop.

Young children generally interact with most of the other children in their preschool and kindergarten classes but think of their friends as those with whom they share toys and play the most. Although these friendships can dissolve quickly, if one child hits the other, refuses to share a toy, or is not interested in playing, early friendships can be longer lasting if they are based also on shared ideas, feelings, concerns, as well as concern for the other's well-being. Whereas some children prefer to play alone or observe their peers, others lack the skills or confidence to join their peers. In those cases, you might want to provide some assistance.

Students are sensitive to criticism and ridicule and may have difficulty adjusting to failure.

Young children need frequent praise and recognition. Because they tend to admire or even worship their teachers, they may be crushed by criticism. Provide positive reinforcement as frequently as possible, and reserve your negative reactions for nonacademic misbehavior. Scrupulously avoid sarcasm and ridicule. Remember that this is the stage of industry versus inferiority; if you make a child feel inferior, you may prevent the development of industry.

Middle school cognitive development

beginning of formal operational thought for some. There is increasing ability to engage in mental manipulations and test hypotheses.

Children who use private speech to help them solve moderately difficult but challenging tasks are more task involved and perform

better than classmates who talk to themselves less often.

Technology tools can help primary to elementary grade children cope with the barriers to logical thinking created by egocentrism and

can support the development of such higher-level cognitive skills as inquiry, critical thinking, and problem solving among older children.

By middle childhood, each of these aspects of self-image is present;

children can make an accurate self-description, construct a global evaluation of themselves, and specify their positive and negative attributes in specific domains.

Elementary grade cognitive development

concrete operational. Except for the most intellectually advanced students, most will need to generalize from concrete experiences.

High school cognitive development

formal operational thought for many students. There is increasing ability to engage in mental manipulations, understand abstractions, and test hypotheses.

High school psychosocial development

identity vs. role confusion. Concerns arise about gender roles and occupational choice. Different identity statuses become apparent.

Elementary grade psychosocial development

industry vs. inferiority. Keep students constructively busy; try to play down comparisons between best and worst learners.

Primary grades Psychosocial development

industry vs. inferiority. Students need to experience a sense of industry through successful completion of tasks. Try to minimize and correct failures to prevent development of feelings of inferiority.

Preschool and kindergarten Psychosocial development

initiative vs. guilt. Children need opportunities for free play and experimentation, as well as experiences that give them a sense of accomplishment.

How and whether teachers choose to exercise that power can have

long-lasting effects on their students.

Primary grades Moral development

morality of constraint, preconventional. Rules are viewed as edicts handed down by authority. Focus is on physical consequences, meaning that obeying rules should bring benefit in return.

Preschool and kindergarten Moral development

morality of constraint, preconventional. Rules are viewed as unchangeable edicts handed down by those in authority. Punishment-obedience orientation focuses on physical consequences rather than on intentions.

Elementary grade moral development

morality of constraint; transition from preconventional to conventional. A shift to viewing rules as mutual agreements is occurring, but "official" rules are obeyed out of respect for authority or out of a desire to impress others.

High school moral development

morality of cooperation, conventional level. There is increasing willingness to think of rules as mutual agreements and to allow for intentions and extenuating circumstances.

Preschool and kindergarten Cognitive development

preoperational thought. Children gradually acquire the ability to conserve and decenter but are not capable of operational thinking and are unable to mentally reverse operations.

Informal, spur-of-the-moment class discussions may create more

problems than they solve.

These are the kinds of thought processes that are fundamental to self-directed learning and include the ability to

select, organize, and properly use goal-directed actions.

Most experts agree that students who work more than 20 hours per week are likely to have lower grades than

students who work less or not at all.

Middle school psychosocial development

transition from industry vs. inferiority to identity vs. role confusion. Growing independence leads to initial thoughts about identity. There is greater concern about appearance and gender roles than about occupational choice.

Primary grades Cognitive development

transition from preoperational to concrete operational stage. Students gradually acquire the ability to solve problems by generalizing from concrete experiences.

Middle school moral development

transition to morality of cooperation, conventional level. There is increasing willingness to think of rules as flexible mutual agreements, yet "official" rules are still likely to be obeyed out of respect for authority or out of a desire to impress others.

Because self-efficacy beliefs grow out of personal performance, observation of other people doing the same thing, and verbal persuasion,

you can help students develop strong feelings of self-efficacy by following the suggestions we will make in later chapters about modeling and imitation, learning strategies, and effective forms of instruction.