Course: Human Development and Learning (8610)

Semester: Spring, 2022

Course: Human Development and Learning (8610)

Semester: Spring, 2022

Assignment No. 1

Q.1 Explain general principles of development.

Growth and development are inseparable but they differ from each other. The growth represents the physical changes of an individual and development represents the overall changes, structure and shape of an individual.

Knowledge of the growth and development at the various stage is very essential for the teacher. The teacher has to stimulate the growth and development of a child. He can do it only if he has proper knowledge of the growth and development at various stages.

Growth terms represent a purely physical sense of a person, i.e height, weight, size and length etc.

Growth is quantitive. It starts with conception but ends at some particular age.

Development implies the overall change in shape, form or structure, along with the function of the organ. Development is both quantitative and qualitative. It is a continuous process starting from the Womb and ending with the tomb.

Principles of Growth and Development

Principle of Continuity

The development follows the principle of continuity which means that development is a continuous process. It starts with pre-natal and ends with death.

Principle of Integration

Development thus involves a movement from the whole to parts and from parts to the whole and this way it is the integration of the whole and its parts as well as the specific and general responses. It enables a child to develop satisfactorily concerning various aspects or dimensions of his personality.

Example: Child first starts to learn hand movement then finger movement and then learn the movement of both hand and finger together this is called integration

Principle of lack of uniformity in the developmental rate

Development through the continuous process, but does not exhibit steadiness and uniformity in terms of the rate of development in various development of personality or the developmental periods and stage of life.

Example: A person may have a high rate of growth and development in terms of height and weight but may not have the same pace of mental and social development.

Principle of individual difference

Every organism is a distinct creation in itself. One of the most important principles of development is that involves individual differences. There is no fixed rate of development. That all children will learn to walk is universal, but the time at which each child takes his her first step may vary.

Principle of uniformity pattern

Although development does not proceed at a uniform rate and shows marked individual differences concerning the process and outcome of various stages of development, it follows a definite pattern in one or the other dimension which is uniform and universal concerning the individual of a species.

Principle of proceeding from general to specific

While developing to any aspect of personality. The child first pickup or exhibit a general response and learn how to show specific and goal-directed responses afterwards.

Principle of interaction between Heredity and Environment

The development of a child is a process that cannot be defined wholly based on either heredity or environment. Both have to play an important role in development. There are arguments in favour of both. However, most psychologists agree that an interplay of these two factors leads to development.

Where heredity decides or set some limits on development (mostly physical), environmental influences complete the developmental process ( qualitative). Environmental influences provide space for multidimensional development through interaction with family, peers, society and so on. Growth and development is a joint product of heredity and environment.

Principle of interrelation

Various aspects or dimensions of one’s growth and development are interrelated.  A healthy body tends to develop a healthy mind and an emotionally stable, physically strong and socially conscious personality. Inadequate physical or mental development may, on the other hand, result in a socially or emotionally maladjusted personality.

Principle of Cephalocaudal

Development proceeds in the direction of the longitudinal axis. Development from head to foot or toe. That is why, before it becomes able to stand, the child first gains control over his head and arms and then on his legs.

Principle of Proximodistal

Development of motor skills to start at central body parts to outwards. That is why, in the beginning, the child is seen to exercise control over the large fundamental muscles of the arm and then hand and only afterwards over the smaller muscles of the fingers.

Principle of predictability

Development is predictable, which means that with the help of the uniformity of pattern and sequence of development. We can go to a great extent, forecast the general nature and behaviour of a child in one or more aspects or dimensions at any particular stage of its growth and development.  We can know the particular age at which children will learn to walk, speak and so on

Principle of Spiral versus Linear advancement

The child doesn’t proceed straight or linear on the path of development at any stage never takes place at a constant or steady pace. After the child had developed to a certain level, there is likely to be a period of rest for consolidation of the developmental progress achieved till then. In advancing further, therefore, the development turn back and then moves forward again in a spiral pattern

Principle of Association of Maturation and Learning

Biological growth and development are known as maturation. Biological changes involve changes in the brain and the nervous system, which provide new abilities to a child. Development proceeds from simple to complex. In the beginning, a child learns through concrete objects and gradually moves to abstract thinking. This transition happens because of the maturation

The principle of growth and development is one of the most important topics in child development psychology. We as a teacher must understand the different stages and principles of growth and development so that we can teach the students according to their age, interest, skills and needs

Q.2 Why is good physical health necessary for good learners?

Children who exercise regularly, have good nutrition and sleep well are more likely to attend school, and do well at school. And the benefits are not just for children: good physical health is associated with enhanced quality of life, increased productivity in the workplace and increased participation in the community and society.

However, children and young people across the OECD are not engaging enough in the behaviours they need to be healthy. Between 2000 to 2016, PISA data show that children and young people were less likely to reach the minimum recommended daily physical activity levels (>60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity daily). They were also less likely to get enough quality sleep, and more likely to be overweight and obese and have poor dietary habits (including increasing overconsumption of soft drinks, sweets, salty snacks and fast food).

These trends are extremely concerning. Unhealthy lifestyle behaviours are associated with higher rates of cardiovascular diseases and type II diabetes, and while historically considered to be diseases of adulthood, these are now evident in children as young as two years old.

Education is uniquely placed to positively influence the health of students. A newly published paper on recent trends has identified two of the most effective types of school-based interventions:

Building a healthy school environment: this includes educational interventions, health promotion, counselling and management strategies to promote health and physical fitness. These approaches need to include the whole-school community. Interventions associated with the play environment need to evolve and develop with children and young people as they grow. Building a supportive school culture is also key to effective, sustained behaviour change. For this to work, teachers need supportive school leaders and adequate training, time and resources.

Changing attitudes towards risky behaviour: for example, universal school-based interventions for preventing drug use. Interventions incorporate knowledge-focussed curricula (teaching the risks associated), social competence curricula and social norms, and usually a component of behavioural modelling. A systematic review of the literature showed that overall, interventions combining social competence and influence approaches had sustained positive benefits. Interventions that focused only on transmitting knowledge, on the other hand, had the effect of improving knowledge, but did not affect behaviour.

In addition to school-based interventions, supporting, encouraging, and modelling healthy lifestyle behaviours in the home environment and in the community are also crucial. In fact, even the best school-based interventions benefit from the involvement of other actors, such as health care practitioners and family and community members.

The report highlighted that interventions that involve the community, target several behaviours, use multiple behaviour change strategies are most effective. Involving stakeholders in the design and implementation and using technology where appropriate can also help change the behaviour of children and adolescents. This is especially important for disadvantaged communities, because not only is there a greater likelihood to engage in risky lifestyle behaviours in these settings, there is also a higher probability for reduced access to services (due to high cost, location, or lack of transportation), including safe facilities for physical activity such as green spaces. Physical fitness can be a key component of a healthy lifestyle. This is why P.E. is a key subject in all the leading universities in the world. When regular fitness activities are included in the lifestyle of a student, it is possible for them to maintain fit. Regular physical activity can help to improve the absorption of nutrients in the body. It also helps to improve cardiovascular health and develop muscular strength.

The heart plays an important role in pumping blood to the entire body. When students remain inactive throughout the day, they can be at a risk of various cardiovascular issues. Unlike adults, children don’t have to spend a lot of their time in the gym to get the adequate amount of workout. All they need is ample playtime and running around the field.

• Regular physical activity promotes growth and development and has multiple benefits for physical, mental, and psychosocial health that undoubtedly contribute to learning.
• Specifically, physical activity reduces the risk for heart disease, diabetes mellitus, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, obesity, and metabolic syndrome; improves various other aspects of health and fitness, including aerobic capacity, muscle and bone strength, flexibility, insulin sensitivity, and lipid profiles; and reduces stress, anxiety, and depression.
• Physical activity can improve mental health by decreasing and preventing conditions such as anxiety and depression, as well as improving mood and other aspects of well-being.
• Physical activity programming specifically designed to do so can improve psychosocial outcomes such as self-concept, social behaviors, goal orientation, and most notably self-efficacy. These attributes in turn are important determinants of current and future participation in physical activity.
• Sedentary behaviors such as sitting and television viewing contribute to health risks both because of and independently of their impact on physical activity.
• Health-related behaviors and disease risk factors track from childhood to adulthood, indicating that early and ongoing opportunities for physical activity are needed for maximum health benefit.
• To be effective, physical activity programming must align with the predictable developmental changes in children’s exercise capacity and motor skills, which affect the activities in which they can successfully engage.
• Frequent bouts of physical activity throughout the day yield short-term benefits for mental and cognitive health while also providing opportunities to practice skills and building confidence that promotes ongoing engagement in physical activity.
• Distinct types of physical activity address unique health concerns and contribute in distinct ways to children’s health, suggesting that a varied regimen including aerobic and resistance exercise, structured and unstructured opportunities, and both longer sessions and shorter bouts will likely confer the greatest benefit.

Q.3 Give an overview of intellectual development.

Intellectual development refers here to the changes that occur, as a result of growth and experience, in a person’s capacities for thinking, reasoning, relating, judging, conceptualizing, etc. In particular it concerns such changes in children. Cognitive or intellectual development means the growth of a child’s ability to think and reason. It’s about how they organize their minds, ideas and thoughts to make sense of the world they live in.

Some intellectual development milestones you may notice in five and six-year-olds include:

• Vocabulary increasing to 2,000 words, sentences of five or more words.
• Can count up to 10 objects at one time, can copy complex shapes.
• Begin to reason and argue, uses words like why and because.
• Understand concepts like yesterday, today and tomorrow.
• Are able to sit at a desk, follow teacher instructions and do simple assignments independently.

Some intellectual development milestones you may notice in seven to 11-year-olds include:

• A longer attention span and willing to take on more responsibility such as chores.
• Understand fractions, money and the concept of space.
• Can tell time and name months and days of week in order.
• Enjoy reading a book on their own.

Adolescents aged 12 to 18 are capable of complex thinking. This includes the ability to:

• Think abstractly about possibilities.
• Reason from known principles, forming own new ideas or questions.
• Consider many points of view, comparing or debating ideas or opinions.
• Thinking about the process of thinking, being aware of the act of thought processes.

 

There are a number of different approaches to the study of intellectual development in children. As in the history of most branches of scientific knowledge, the study began with observation and description. For many years descriptive accounts of children’s thinking, reasoning, and other intellectual capacities were thoroughly mixed with descriptions of their social and emotional development and of their verbal and motor skills. Moreover, there was at first a tendency to attribute to the child mental processes that were simply miniature versions of adult thought patterns. Such early observers as Darwin (1877) were careful and deliberate, but their records often revealed the limitations of studying only one child, and the biases of the observer.

Predictably, the early, unsystematic observation of one child at a time was eventually replaced by systematic efforts to measure children’s behavior and capacities in standardized and objective ways. The growth of the mental testing movement in the first 40 years of the twentieth century testifies to the enthusiasm that was generated by the possibility of applying the precision of quantitative measurement to the task of comparing individual children and calibrating the changes that take place over the early years of life. Although observation had been supplemented by measurement, the primary purpose of these efforts remained descriptive, and the generalizations achieved were themselves only descriptions of trends and improvements that occurred consistently with increasing age.

Still more recently, since about 1950, there has been an increasing movement toward the laboratory study of the ways in which patterns of development themselves change as age changes. This recent work has been not so much concerned with the effects of age itself as with the development in children of certain functional relationships between experience and performance that have been demonstrated in human adults and have been found lacking in most infrahuman species. The emphasis is on the application of laboratory controls and experimental manipulations to the study of cognitive development. The aim is to control the stimulus conditions under which behavior is observed and to explain why intellect develops, as well as describing how and when it develops.

Such an approach does not obviate the need for study of the child’s understanding as it changes with age. Rather, it relies on developmental descriptions of intellectual processes and products for clues as to when a certain level of understanding or specific intellectual accomplishment is likely to be achieved, and what repertoire of cognitive processes constitutes the means available for such an accomplishment at that age. Even the correlation of processes with products over ages, however, leaves the detailed cause-effect analysis still to be performed.

In contrast, a functional emphasis, i.e., a concern with dynamics, processes, and interrelationships, is found in the descriptions of cognitive development and in the explorations of dynamic mechanisms in cognitive change that have largely been undertaken by American behaviorists and behavior analysts and by Soviet pedagogists. These lines of research are more concerned with the processes of learning and thinking than with the structure of understanding. It is to the contributions of these functionalists that the present article is primarily devoted. It will be necessary first to summarize the most important age changes that have been described from infancy to adolescence. Consideration is then given to cognition, seen as the elaboration and selective generalization of simpler forms of learning and conditioning. Concepts such as mediation, learning set, and expectancy are discussed in relation to experimental studies of discrimination learning and discrimination reversal, concept formation, and the perceptual constancies. Curiosity and exploratory motivation are treated in relation to orienting responses and observing behavior. Research on acquired dis-tinctiveness, equivalence, and relevance of cues is presented as evidence for the importance of a general class of intervening responses, and the major role of language in this connection is stressed. Finally, consideration is given to individual differences in cognitive style, including discussion of such variables as field dependency, rigidity, reflectivity, and creativity.

Q.4 Suggest activities for elementary schools to enhance intellectual development of

the students.

There are various factors that contribute to healthy cognitive development.

A child’s environment plays an immense role in their cognitive development, and stability is paramount. For example, in a study of migrant children. Sleep is critical for cognitive development. Shortened sleep in children and toddlers has a detrimental effect. Making sure a child gets enough rest is an important part of cognitive development.

Nutrition is crucial for developing brains, and nutrients such as iodine, iron, folate, zinc, vitamin B12, and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids support emergent cognitive functions . Additionally, hydration is just as important, as dehydration has the potential to affect cognition negatively.

When considering activities that support cognitive development, we would be remiss if we failed to include videos games or television shows. It is beneficial for children when the virtual and physical worlds are combined in interactive computer games.

Preschoolers have demonstrated academic achievement in English, mathematics, and science because of educational television viewing. Of course, parents and educators must ensure that the content is educational and free of violence.

Adults should also limit the time children spend in front of screens. The American Academy of Pediatrics (2019) recommends less than two hours per day of recreational screen time.

Recess is necessary for brain consolidation, and any kind of brain break can be considered an extension of cognitive work. Additionally, physical exercise positively influences cognition. Children need time to process their learning.

Hide and Seek

Hide and seek is one of the favorite games that every kid loves to play. For this, hide any objects inside your home or outside. Tell your kids to find it out. They will love this act to play. This activity aids in visual memory skills in preschoolers. Also, this benefits in developing the ability to form mental pictures when an object is hidden.

Singing Nursery Rhymes

Repetitive singing of rhymes and songs also aid kids in building long-term memories. When kids learn to follow simple patterns and sequences, it will be easier to remember them. Moreover, as the kid grows, they will comprehend more. So, teach them simple rhymes and later ask them to repeat them.

Story Telling

As we know, storytelling is a great activity to foster intellectual and cognitive skills in kids. Do expert research on the best storybooks for your little one. Spending some quality time with your kids will surely benefit you and your kids. Tell them stories with morals. This act will help them to develop curiosity, imaginativeness, and memory power.

Number Games

Number games are simple activities to develop intellectual skills. Numbers are the stepping stones of mathematical reasoning. It is an excellent activity to teach your kids letters and numbers.

Prompt them to count stairs or anything around them. Teach them alphabets and ask them to find them from their surroundings. You can also give them alphabetic blocks to play with it.

Puzzles

Kids love puzzles. We can build intellectual development in kids through a variety of puzzles. Give them puzzles to solve and gradually give the problematic ones. As they start to learn to solve the problems, they will be more interested in the act. Kids will learn problem-solving skills through this activity. For toddlers, give 2D and 3D puzzles to solve.

Sudoku

Solving Sudoku is a fun and learning activity for kids. It improves memory skills, abstract reasoning, and data memorizing ability in kids. Also, it teaches the kids to be patient and focused. This activity may occupy kids and entertain them for a long time.

Parents can turn this activity into a daily routine and ask them to collect sudoku puzzles from old newspapers or magazines. Each sudoku puzzle is a brain challenge for the kids. Hence, it builds intense concentration and logical reasoning in kids.

Chess

Playing Chess is a strategy for developing and improving intellectual skills in kids. There are a lot of incredible benefits to playing chess. It focuses on problem-solving skills, pattern recognition, memory power, brain functions, and planning strategies in children. It also aids in the IQ levels of kids. Plus, it helps the kids to build self-confidence. Moreover, it is great fun to play!

It is never too late to teach your kids to play chess. So, why not get started today itself? BaaBee TV offers incredible online chess classes for kids.

Solving Rubik’s Cubes

Solving a Rubik’s Cube is fun as well as a learning activity for kids. It is an excellent activity for kids to develop curiosity and short-term memory skills. It helps to enhance the cognitive mapping of the brain and make your kids smarter.

Moreover, it allows the children to speed up their thought processes and hand-eye coordination. It aids your kids in developing problem-solving skills at an early age and keeps their minds active at all times.

Real-life questions

Encourage higher order thinking skills to fine tune children’s ability to apply knowledge, skills, and values in reasoning, reflection, problem-solving, decision-making, innovating, and creating (Sulaiman, Muniyan, Madhvan, Hasan, & Rahim, 2017). Questions that range from concrete to abstract on Bloom’s Taxonomy, which is a hierarchical classification of the different levels of thinking, can stimulate higher-order thinking.

Conduct communication and social skills class

Communication and social skills are good to teach at an early age as most of these skills are needed throughout life. You can do this in a fun way.

For example, teaching new simple words like mat, cat, rat, cat, bat, fat for very young children and enacting each one of them as you say them. You can even show some pictures related to those words to make it more interesting.

For social skills, teach them to smile, maintain eye contact, and say a greeting (it hardly takes around three seconds to do these three things for anyone).

Throwing down a challenge 

When children are thrown a challenge, they most certainly try to complete it. Tell them that they can never do this particular work or plead them not to do a particular work. (Play way/ Using negative psychology).

In most cases, students would end up doing exactly that and as a result, the primary task gets completed. This could also have an adverse effect, at times. However, teachers must strategize this in their own way

Relaxing

Simply tell students to relax by keeping their eyes closed. Ask them to open their eyes as soon as you stop counting. Tell them that the one who opens his/her eyes before counting will lose.

Start counting backward from 10 to 1, 20 to 1, 30 to 1 or reach 100 to 1. This results in an increase in concentration and also a bit of relaxation for students in their busy class schedules.

Creating a competitive atmosphere

Try inculcating team games to enable students to give their best. When children compete with their own friends, the game becomes a lot of fun.

For example; Divide students into two teams. Give rubber bands to one team (one packet) and newspapers (about 15) to the other. Keep a one-liter water bottle in the center of the room and give the teams 10 minutes to lift the bottle from the ground using the given props. The focus is on the teams functioning together to succeed.

Group Activity

Grouping participants according to their birth months and encouraging them to share an important event that has happened in that particular month or the favorite present that they received.

You can even ask them to talk about a great personality born in the same month as them. Even you can share your fun moments with them to encourage them to share more.

This would give the required break from routine work and imparts a good feeling to the children.

 

Q.5 Why is developing social skills among children necessary? Discuss the tools for

promoting social lerning.

A child’s ability to develop friendships, communicate with others and have playmates depends on many factors, which are the ones that grow in early childhood.

Learning to play and interact with others is a lifelong goal that starts in the early childhood years. Children’s social competencies are compatible with their academic skills, and they are the background and the essence of learning in the early childhood years.

We all communicate from birth in different ways. As we grow older, we feel the need to communicate and connect with others by exchanging different ideas and feelings verbally and non – verbally. Social skills are essential to get along with others, and this is why developing them in young children is a must. Pandemic made us realize that families need to be taught and kept aware of children’s social behaviour.

Deepening family engagement in this regard is vital as children tend to stay more at home these days and do online courses. Teachers around each school should create closer bonds with families and help them by offering social and emotional development support. Social skills are the life skills that help students in their personal and professional life along the way. Fostering an environment where they can be taught, learned and developed is necessary, and we should not assume the school students already have them. As parents, as teachers, as caregivers, it is our job to make sure children receive the help and education they need in this regard.

There are many social skills, but some of the most important are:

1. Communication
2. Cooperation
3. Assertion
4. Responsibility
5. Empathy
6. Engagement
7. Self – control

Each of the above help young children stay connected and have a positive social life. Having the right social skills help them understand social behaviours in others.

Helping children develop social skills in childhood and at a young age can influence their health, happiness and stability throughout their entire life. Teachers, parents and caregivers are the ones responsible for developing and enriching the kids’ social relationships.

A lack of social skills can put children in difficult situations. Some of them are situations where they cannot make new friends, they are not able to communicate effectively with unfamiliar individuals, do not understand social situations that may arise, have a low understanding of jokes and figurative language as well as when reading books and do not know how to cope with failure.

According to DiPerna & Elliot, 2002, social skills help students with their reading and mathematics achievements, influencing their motivation, engagement, and studying skills.

Having developed social skills help children to compete with other problem behaviours; they may be prone to have or meet others. It is essential to have a good development of the social skills to have both a positive attitude and to solve the conflicts that may arise – such as externalizing, bullying or hyperactivity.

Social skills help teenagers have better educational and career outcomes, better success in life and create stronger friendships.

As of today, antisocial behaviour is more contagious than kindness; promoting more socially desirable behaviours is a must. The online system for education can both help and harm. It depends a lot on the child, the parents, the teachers and tutors and the school.

Recognizing that social learning and skills are cognitive academic qualities that begin to develop with early childhood helps us improve where needed and grow imperious. The primary way children pass on skills is through play, so making sure we do not take this from themselves is the beginning of their social skills development.

Curiosity is what helps children learn. They are born with inquisitiveness.

Inside the school, teachers can promote prosocial behaviour like gratitude, kindness, empathy by:

1. Having a class or some minutes of a class where you practice gratitude by asking students to take some notes on what they feel grateful for.
2. Encouraging kindness – the more we give compliments and praise, the more students act alike.
3. Creating a social interaction climate. Whether face to face or online, this is an excellent way for students to develop social skills, as they can see that each person can contribute with something new to the projects. Giving students tasks that mean relying on others to succeed will emphasize social interconnectedness.
4. Teaching empathy. Empathy must be modelled and taught. The best way to do this is to use personal experiences, as it will help students understand and recognize how other people feel in different situations. Empathy is one of the key characteristics a person with social skills should have.
5. Helping the students accept and display their emotions. They should understand what each emotion and feeling mean and that they are free to express them.

Children with higher social development can form stronger friendships and are more likely to succeed in their education. Research shows that children with better social competence also benefit in the following areas:

• Twice as likely to attend post-secondary education
• More likely to earn a high school diploma
• Less likely to use illegal substances

• Less likely to get into trouble with the law

These are just a few of the ways that a child can benefit from social competence. There are special programs to help enhance social skills and build a strong foundation for success in the future.

Being a Good Role Model  

Modeling behavior is one of the most effective ways that you can teach your child social skills. During social interaction, use your manners by saying “please” and “thank you.” Address others in a polite manner so that your child can see and copy your behavior.

Be sure to remind the child if they don’t use polite language to reinforce good behavior.

Additionally, talk to the child about the importance of things like teamwork and cooperation. As you do something, talk to your child about why it’s important. If everyone cleans up the toys, it’s much easier, or helping a friend can make them happy.

Role-Play with Your Children  

Another effective way to encourage the development of social skills is by role-playing. Create opportunities where you can put those skills into practice.

You can role-play being at a restaurant and how to ask for something they’d like. You can use arms-length distance to teach a child about personal space and keeping their hands to themselves.

If you read a story, ask the child what they remember to ensure that they are developing listening skills. Practice eye contact when telling a story. You can talk about how they felt after you’ve gone through the scenario to make sure they understand why it’s important.

Offer Praise and Positive Reinforcement  

Positive reinforcement is a great way to keep a child encouraged to utilize social skills. Be direct when giving praise by saying phrases like “Thank you for putting away your toys as I asked.” These are clear and direct words of reinforcement that show they are following the rules.   If a child has difficulty following directions, reinforce their listening and operating skills. You can do this by asking your child to do something and giving them immediate praise for having listened and followed the directions.

Learning Through Playing 

Children learn through listening to others, mimicking behavior, and language. But they also enjoy learning through play. There are a variety of ways that you can incorporate social skills learning through play.