Jean Piaget, Howard Gardner, and
Maria Montessori would be interesting dinner guests and could create an
enlightening evening full of ideas and differing opinions with possible new
solutions to current problems plaguing early childhood education. Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget are very
similar in their ideas that children develop in a sequential way, however they
disagree on the timing of those stages.
Howard Gardner believes all children learn in their own ways and use
seven different learning intelligences to increase their knowledge. There are many issues plaguing early
childhood education today, and it would be great to get the input from
foundation experts on those issues and maybe develop solutions to help the
children, parents, and educators of the United States.
Three questions came to mind
immediately when thinking about these experts and some of the problems plaguing
our early childhood education system, and they are:
Do you believe a child’s
development is changed because of the disintegration of the family unit and lack
of family stability?
Jean: Learning and development are two different things. Development is a physiological process that
biology controls and learning is something that is provoked by external
situations (Gauvin & Cole, 1997). A child will continue to progress through
developmental stages regardless of the adults in their life; however a child’s
schemas and deferred imitation will be different (Morrison, 2007) from those children who come from a
supportive, intact, loving home creating differing experiences to grow up with
and influence future decisions. A
child’s idea of a father may be the man in their mothers’ life, not always
knowing if that person will change and another child may view a father as the
man who helps to raise them, love them, and stay with them no matter what. The same could be said about a child’s ideas
on education, maybe it only means graduating high school and maybe it means
going on to college and getting a degree.
Some children’s’ deferred imitation will imitate poor choices that parents
make, and other children imitate parents who make good choices; however gains
can be made to make up for any lack of support from the home when the child
enters the school setting. A
school/teacher/educator can help children who lack experience by exposing them
to those experiences they have not come across in their home life. By exposing children to the ‘missing’
experiences needed to create a better understanding of the world around them,
gaps can be bridged that may have been created by the lack of family support.
Maria: A child that is not exposed to as many experiences as a young child
because of the lack of support from home or any other reason can make up those
differences when they begin school as long as the teacher creates an
environment to allow that child to experience and explore things they have not
come across within their own home lives.
In a school setting, educators can give children the opportunity to
explore things they would not normally be privy to at home which in turn helps
the child broaden their knowledge base by becoming more aware of the world and
how things may work outside of their home and family experiences. Classrooms should be filled with children of
multiple ages and learning abilities to provide the widest range of tools and
hands on activities available for all children instead of only addressing the
average need of most children (Morrison, 2007).
Howard: A child will not encounter the same kind of
learning experiences as their peers causing distress for children trying to fit
into just one learning style; as their life itself is ever changing, their
learning styles can change. As long as a
child’s teacher offers a variety of ways for the child to attain and absorb
knowledge being introduced to them, no matter their home life, the child will be
given the opportunity to compensate for any voids in their knowledge base by
being exposed to new experiences around other children and adults from
differing backgrounds.
Do you think the current
increases in educational standards are developmentally appropriate?
Jean: If children have not progressed far enough through their
developmental stages, the outside influences will have little effect on the
child until they are ready to absorb that information. Children should not be pushed to reach
learning goals before they are ready. As
young children they are only capable of learning to a certain level, until they
have assimilated enough time and knowledge to move to the next level. By increasing the amount of information a
child is responsible for learning at earlier and earlier ages, children are
becoming too stressed because of their inability to attain the level of
knowledge being put in front of them, creating children who can possibly fall
further and further behind in their learning and become distressed and dislike
learning all together due to the frustration is causes.
Maria: Children should be exposed to all subjects and experiences as early
in their lives as possible. The more
experiences and tools children are given to explore their world with the faster
and better understanding they will have of the world around them and how things
work. The child will express their need
for further education when they are ready, and the teacher needs to be waiting
to be ready to introduce more information when the child is ready. As children learn and grow, they should be
allowed to move at their own pace and be given the time to thoroughly explore
the information in front of them before being forced to move forward (Morrison,
2007). A child should achieve deep understanding of
what they are working with before being encouraged to move forward. Young children should be given concrete tasks
allowing them to manipulate their own discovery (Morrison, 2007), and not be expected to think outside
of the box until they have mastered the box and its contents. Children should be exposed to new experiences
and concrete activities to further their education when they express the need
for it and not just because of the chronological age (Morrison, 2007).
Howard: Developmentally appropriate is different for
every child. Young children learn in
many ways which can change from day to day or task to task; the job of the
teacher is to assure the availability for children to have multiple opportunities
to foster and encourage their learning styles to develop while continuing to explore
other learning styles (Morrison, 2007).
When the emphasis is on the amount of information a child should acquire
or master by a specific time, children are not being allowed the freedom to use
their own intelligence to increase their knowledge, but expected to learn as
the rest of the students using one or two ways.
Children also need to be allowed to learn how to interact with other
children and adults they will come into contact with by helping children to
develop and strengthen their personal intelligences (Morrison, 2007), which may not be able to or encouraged
to be developed in the home. Children
must be allowed to understand that just because they learn something a
different way that their friend does not make it wrong, just different.
Do you think the amount of
standardized testing given to children provides educators with the best picture
of their students’ learning?
Jean: My whole theory is based on children’s observations of children
and not forcing children to do things they do not naturally want to or know how
to do. The problem with standardized
testing is the fact that it does not allow for explanation and reasoning behind
the given answer. Many times children
come to a conclusion on an answer because of their experiences and knowledge
base and with their justification the answer makes sense. If a child is asked a question that is
answered with an unconventional response, standardized testing would consider
the answer wrong no matter if the child can defend their answer. Children do not learn in black and white,
they learn in all different methods and spaces of time. Children cannot be expected to perform as
their peers in all subjects and in the same amount of time (Fox & Roconscente, 2008).
Maria: Children are best monitored by observing and analyzing their
behavior for signs of understanding and further exploration (Morrison, 2007).
A standardized test will not allow children to be actively involved in
their learning process but force them to learn something just for the test
without making a connection or real meaning to their world around them. Educators today will get more information
from observing children’s experiences, and behaviors than sitting them down and
asking questions expecting to hear one answer.
No two children are alike and no two children will learn and absorb
their world in the same way, therefore a standardized test is not a fair
judgment of their learning. Children
learning using their senses (Saracho & Spodek, 2009) and no two
children’s senses work the same, so how can we expect children to be able to
learn and be assessed in the same way and have reliable evidence of their
learning progress?
Howard: “Standardized
tests that require only short answers present a situation that does not exist
outside Of school; life does not present itself in multiple-choice formats (Gardner,
1994).” Portfolio assessment gives an educator a much
better picture of the learning achievements over time of a specific
student. Being able to show specific
examples of how a child is learning or the pace a child is learning is more
valuable than if the child can chose the correct letter to correspond to the
answer they think the teacher is looking for.
Children should be able to demonstrate their use of knowledge in
multiple ways (Gardner, 1994) and not just be able to recite back
information they have been given. Teachers need to give feedback to their
students to allow them to better understand and more opportunities to learn and
expand their knowledge (Gardner, 1994).
When
thinking of three early childhood foundation experts to invite to a dinner
party I thought of three people from differing time periods, thinking there
would be more disagreements about education today; however in the end all three
of these experts agree overall on the same topics. Each theorist has their own differences in
the small parts of early childhood development, but the overall feelings seem
to make the same points. Being able to
explore and spend time with these experts and many more in the same party would
be very exciting and I would not want the evening to end wanting to continue to
pick their brains and work together to come up with possible solutions for the
education crisis we are in here in the United Sates alone. The policy makers in this country need to go
back to the beginning and explore the knowledge of these experts and apply
these theories in whole or part to help the children of this country and in
turn the world. The children of the
United States are increasingly falling behind their peers in other countries
and if the problems are not addressed and fixed the United States will no
longer be able to compete in the global market putting our country at risk.
References
Fox, E., &
Roconscente, M. (2008). Metacognitions, and self-regulation in James, Piaget,
and Vygotsky. Education Psychology Review, 373-389.
Gardner, H.
(1994, March). Interview with Howard Gardner: Educating for understanding. (J.
Siegel, & M. F. Shaughnessy, Interviewers)
Gauvin, M.,
& Cole, M. (1997). Readings on the development of children. New
York: W.H. Freeman and Company.
Morrison, G. S.
(2007). Early childhood education today. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:
Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall.
Saracho, O. N.,
& Spodek, B. (2009). Educating the young mathematician: The twentieth
century and beyond. Early Childhood Edcuation, 305-312.
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