EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

Name

Institution

Course Name

Professor

Year

Preschool children love to play, get dirty and discover. Discussed herein, is an overview of Piaget’s Stage Theory and classroom management. Included in this section is a menu of activities that foster learning across each of the domains: physical, cognitive, social and emotional, and language acquisition as well as a detailed step-by-step procedure. Preschool teachers need to be cognizant of individual children’s developmental level, chronological ages and general developmental stages. Children feel secure and benefit from a structured and routine environment.

Discussion

Discovery centres in preschool foster observational and problem-solving skills through the exploration and examination of objects. Teaching pre-schoolers using a learner centred approach is considered best practice, as regards classroom management. When setting up a preschool classroom, the expectation in the environment should be clear. The floor plans include should clearly demonstrate the most effective classroom arrangement to foster learning among preschool children (Koza & Smith 2007). Developing effective activity centres in the early childhood classroom results in measurable, meaningful educational outcomes, and the physical embodiment of developmentally appropriate practice. Classroom management also involves effective strategies of parent involvement that will ensure student achievement. Many of Piaget’s ideas were based on insights carefully gleaned from careful observation of his own three children during infancy. He suggested that the child’s cognitive development could be divided into four thought stages: The sensorimotor period (birth – age two); preoperational period (ages two – seven); the concrete operational period (ages seven – eleven); and formal operational period (age 11 onwards).

Piaget regarded his age norms as approximations and acknowledged that transitional ages may vary, but, Piaget was convinced that all children progress through the stages of cognitive development in the same order. As the child develops and goes through the process of assimilation and accommodation, their brain develop through natural process of maturation, and therefore their understanding of the world matures and their ability to accurately interpret and predict the world develops (Van 2012). Piaget thought that there were clear links between children’s cognitive development and the natural biological maturation of the brain. According to Piaget, cognitive development is an inevitable process, as the brain matures the thinking natures, and the understanding increases. Piaget developed a stage theory, based upon his research with children. This theory described different stages of cognitive development. Piaget’s theory can be thought of as based upon the idea of a staircase. Each stage represents a step and each step represents more development and a higher level of cognitive ability. It is important to note that these stages are fixed in sequence. That is, a, individual cannot complete the stages in any order other than that described.

The sensorimotor stage encompasses children from age 0 – 2 years. This is a stage of rapid development. During this stage, the child will change from a fairly helpless new-born baby to a walking, talking toddler. This stage is dominated by sensory activity. The new-born baby is dependent upon built-in schemas and reflexes, and is unable to imitate or integrate information. An example of a reflex is the sucking reflex, which is necessary for feeding and growing. As the child develops, their sensory and motor activities develop and increase, so that at the end of this period they stand able to imitate and integrate information to some degree (Koza & Smith 2007). A 2-year-old child is capable of using objects to represent other objects, for example, a cup can become a boat in a game. Object permanence is a key factor in this stage of Piaget’s model. Piaget hypothesised that at 8 months the child develops the concept of object permanence, which is knowledge that an object is ‘permanently present, even if temporarily out of sight’. Before a child acquires object permanence thy will cease to look for an object when it is out of their field of vision. If they cannot see it, it does not exist.

During the preoperational period, which extends roughly from ages 2 to 7, children progressively improve their understanding of mental pictures. While development in symbolic reasoning continues, Piaget highlighted the limitations in preoperational though. Consider a simple problem that Piaget presented to youngsters. He would take two identical beakers and fill each with the same amount of water. After a child had approved that both beakers held the same quantity of water, he would pour the water from one of the beaker into a considerable taller, thinner beaker. He would then ask the child whether the two differently shaped beakers still contained the same amount of water. Confronted like this, children in the preoperational period generally said no. they typically focused on the on the higher water line in the higher beaker then insisted that the slender beaker held more water. The children had not yet mastered the principle of conversation (Van 2012). Conversation is Piaget’s term for the consciousness that physical measures remain steady regardless of changes in their shape appearance. Why were the preoperational children unable to solve conversation problem? According to Piaget, their inability to understand conversation is caused by some basic flaws in preoperational thinking. These flaws include centration, irreversibility, and egocentrism.

Centration is the trend to concentrate on one trait of a challenge, while neglecting other crucial aspects. When working on the conversation problem with water, preoperational children tend to concentrate on the tallness of the liquid whilst overlooking the width. They have difficulty in focusing on several aspects of the problem at once. Irreversibility is the inability to envision reversing an action. Preoperational children cannot mentally “undo” something. For instance, in grappling with the conversation of water, they don’t think about what would happen if the water were poured back from the giant beaker into the first beaker. Lastly, in thinking, egocentrism is illustrated by an imperfect ability to assign another individual’s perspective (Koza & Smith 2007). Indeed, Piaget felt that preoperational children fail to acknowledge that there exists different standpoint excluding their own. For example, if they ask a preoperational girl whether her sister has a sister, she will almost certainly say no if they exist the merely two girls in their family. She is unable to view sisterhood from her sister’s perspective.

The concrete operational stage includes children of ages 7 – 12 years. The term operation is used because this stage is characterized by development of strategies and rules of interpreting and investigating the child’s world. The term concrete, by definition, refers to the child’s ability to apply these strategies to things that are present. Thus the child can solve problems they can see or manipulate. The formal operational stage, alternatively, involves children of ages 12 – 16 years (Van 2012). At this stage, the dependency on concrete objects diminishes in this stage and children are able to solve hypothetical deductive reasoning and systematic problem solving. Hypothetical deductive reasoning that uses deductive logic, for example, a child is told that all rabbits have furry feet and all guinea pigs have bald feet. When asked the question, what type of feet does a rabbit have? The children will deduce that all rabbits have fury feet. Thus type of reasoning is not seen in younger children. The second element of this stage is systematic problem solving. As the term suggest, a child at this stage will solve problems in a systematic logical manner. For example, a child trying to make a colour purple from a set of paints will be made on the foundation of what they need to learn from previous combinations. This is a systematic approach which will eventually solve the problem, it is not random but clearly thought out.

In early childhood, a learning focus on movement provides ample opportunity for children to become more physically competent and to learn in the social, cognitive, and affective domains. Physical education has traditionally concentrated on learning in the physical domain that develops specific skills in certain activities. Although this is the distinctive ingredient of physical education, the parallel learning opportunities that enhance teamwork, self-esteem, and problem solving are just as important and for some children more meaningful in the interactive, dynamic, and challenging context that physical education provides. This is particularly so for young children, for whom play remains spontaneous, exciting, and central to the culture of childhood. In relation to the cognitive domain, learning is an active process between the mental system and the environment (Koza & Smith 2007). While learning, the children’s mind does not only receive the information but rather acts on it, interpretation. Learning is a meaningful activity where new information is given interpretation within the teaching-learning environment. Within this context, teaching becomes effective if there is a background situation which makes it impossible to use the new knowledge.

Learning increases the pace for change. For example, activities related to intellective skill development cannot proceed without the social system management that helps to foster roles and relationships appropriate to a new division of learning. Integration and learning are responsibilities that fall within each domain, because without a shared commitment to interdependence and the production of value adding knowledge, the legitimacy of the learning community will suffer (Van 2012).

Conclusion

In light of the above, discovery centres in preschool foster observational and problem-solving skills through the exploration and examination of objects. Teaching pre-schoolers using a learner centred approach is considered best practice, as regards classroom management. Piaget regarded his age norms as approximations and acknowledged that transitional ages may vary, but, Piaget was convinced that all children progress through the stages of cognitive development in the same order. Learning increases the pace for change. For example, activities related to intellective skill development cannot proceed without the social system management that helps to foster roles and relationships appropriate to a new division of learning. Although this is the distinctive ingredient of physical education, the parallel learning opportunities that enhance teamwork, self-esteem, and problem solving are just as important and for some children more meaningful in the interactive, dynamic, and challenging context that physical education provides.

References

Koza, W., & Smith, J. L. (2007). Managing an effective early childhood classroom. Huntington Beach, Calif: Shell Education

Van, B. D. L. (2012). College study skills: Becoming a strategic learner. Boston, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.