This post will be about development in middle and late childhood. We have covered development in infants and young children. This is the period before adolescence.
Moving on to physical and cognitive development in middle and late childhood. Their bodies grow, though height is more prominent than head or waist circumference, and even leg length too. Their fine and motor skills continue to develop. It is interesting to know that children get more tired when they are sitting around doing nothing, than doing strenuous physical activity. Sports can be beneficial for children, but we must be careful to not develop this mindset in them, that they must always win and do whatever they can to win.
Not all children will develop normally, some have disabilities. They will have these 3 components.
1. A minimum IQ level.
2. A significant difficulty in a school-related area, especially reading and/or mathematics.
3. Exclusion of only severe emotional disorder, second-language background, sensory disabilities, and/or specific neurological deficits.
It is found that there are more cases discovered now because the tests were not as advanced in the past and that there is a problem of over-identification, where teachers are quick to jump to conclusions. Sometimes it is a matter of teaching methodology.
Some disabilities include Dyslexia or ADHD. Dyslexia involves difficulty in reading or spelling. ADHD involves 3 factors. Inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.
Moving on to cognitive development. It entails Piaget’s Concrete Operational stage, Information Processing, Intelligence, and Language Development.
During the concrete operational stage, children are usually between 7 to 11 years old. They can perform operations, which means imaging actions in their head that were done previously. They do not need literal or concrete materials to do so. Show them 2 pieces of clay, of the same size, moulded into a ball and a long shape. They would be able to say that both are the same size, as they can revert the clay to its original state in their minds. I have noticed that ae does not guarantee you move on to the next stage of your cognitive development. Some adults never reach this stage. They are still egocentric. When they tell you to go “there”, they do not realise you don’t know where is “there”, but in their minds, they only know they know, but they do not know that you do not know. If that makes sense. Heh.
A concrete operational child will be able to do classification, seriation, and transitivity tasks.
Classification can be about sorting people in a family tree, and realizing the same person can be both a father, brother and a grandson at the same time. This is interesting, I should ask my class about this. Can your daddy be a son or grandson?
Seriation is the concrete operation that involves ordering stimuli along a quantitive dimension (such as length).
Transitivity is the ability to logically combine relations to under certain conclusions.
Moving on to Information Processing, which involves Memory, Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, and Metacognition.
Information Processing starts from Incoming Information going into Sensory Memory, where it stays up to 3 seconds before it decays. If we pay attention, Attention Perception Encoding happens, and the information goes into Short-Term Memory/Working Memory, where it can stay up to 30 seconds, and 7 +/- 2 items. This means I can only remember 5 to 9 items at once before they are forgotten. From here, it can determine my Responses and Behaviour. But, if I do Rehearsal Encoding, the information goes into Long Term Memory.
Memory involves long-term memory or LTM. Critical thinking is simply thinking reflectively and evaluating the pieces of evidence. Children can improve their LTM when they are asked to rethink previous ideas. During my group activities, I would get children to rethink what they have done. I would articulate their actions, for them to reflect. Creative thinking is about thinking in novel and unusual ways, to come up with unique solutions. Children will show expertise in different domains. Metacognition is “knowing about knowing”. Children understand what topics are easier to understand, and what topics are not.
Next, intelligence. It can be defined as problem-solving skills and the ability to learn from and adapt to life’s everyday experiences. That sounds a bit like flexibility or adaptability, isn’t it? There are many ways to assess a child’s intelligence. The traditional method of IQ is no longer applicable. After all, there are so many domains or topics to learn from. A child might be strong in language, but not able to problem-solve. The opposite is true. A child might not speak well, but can think of novel solutions to overcome problems. 2 theories shed some light on intelligence.
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory states that intelligence comes in 3 forms: Analytical intelligence (ability to analyse, judge, evaluate, compare, and contrast), Creative intelligence (ability to create, design, invent, originate, and imagine), and Practical intelligence (ability to use, apply, implement, and put ideas into practice). Hardly any of these talk about able to understand English or Math concepts. Intelligence is problem-solving, and problem-solving is essentially about dealing with problems in real situations.
The famous Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory states the 8 intelligences as such, Verbal, Mathematical, Spatial, Bodily-kinaesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Naturalistic.
I do believe that nature and nurture both play a part. We have heard of child prodigies, who are exceptionally good at a certain task. Sometimes we hear stories of special needs children. But nurture plays a part, the environment or adults play a part in cultivating that talent.
Then, I shall move on to Language Development. 2 approaches can be used to teach reading. The Whole-language approach is about language being a natural thing for children, activities do not have to be specifically about teaching language. The Basic-skills-and-phonics approach is more specific, and this forms the basic foundation. I prefer the first approach. An integrated curriculum emphasizes that, in a sense, as the different concepts or intelligences are intertwined into activities.
References
Kong, G. S. (2020). SWK104 Human Growth and Life-Span Development (Birth to Adolescence) Study Guide (5CU). Singapore.
Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span Development (17th Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
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