Child Development
Child Development
Development and Learning
The growth and development of the innate capacities, abilities and potentialities of the child depends upon the constant interaction with the environment.
In general, growth means the growth of different parts of the human body and the ability of those parts to work. Physical growth affects our behaviour and vice versa. Thus growth means body, shape and growth in weight and also the growth of muscles. Physical growth is “big and heavy”- Herbert Stevenson
The word ‘Development’ indicates charges related to growth and moves towards maturity. Due to Qualitative and Qualitative changes, man’s form and creation change. Thus development is a process of maturity.
“Development refers to the complex set of processes involved in the emergence of the matured functioning organism from the fertilized ovum.”- Jersild, Telford and Sawrey,
“Development is not limited to growing layer. Instead, it consists of a progressive series of changes towards the goal of maturity.”- E. Hurlock.
Growth and Development:
Growth refers to quantitative change in size which includes physical changes in height, weight, size, internal organs etc. It is observed that as an individual develops his old features like his body fat, hair teeth etc. disappear; in their place various new features like facial, hair etc. appear.
Growth: During infancy and childhood, the body of a person steadily becomes larger, taller and heavier. Thus, it is clear that growth involves changes in body proportions as well as in overall stature and weight. The term growth thus indicates an increase in bodily dimensions.
Development: Development means the various qualitative changes taking place simultaneously with quantitative changes of growth. Thus, development may be defined as a progressive series of orderly and coherent changes.
By development, these terms can be understood as
(a) Progressive: It denotes that changes are directional. They lead forward rather than backward.
(b) Orderly and Coherent: These terms suggest that there is a definite relationship between the changes taking place and those that precede or will follow them. The development represents changes in an organism from its origin to its death.
Learning of the Various Stages of Development
In a human being, the development period ranges from birth to the attainment of maturity i.e. after the adolescence period. The significant stages of development during this period may be named as the stage of infancy, stage of childhood and stage of adolescence. Learning may be called a Development task.
Learning of Infancy (0- 2 years).
-They learn to talk, to drink and to take solid food.
-They learn to crawl, stand, walk, run, climb, jump, throw etc.
-They learn to acquire physiological stability.
-They learn to control the elimination of bodily wastes.
-They learn to explore the physical environment surrounding them.
-They learn to play with toys.
-They learn to accomplish the skill of recycling.
-They learn to pay attention to things, persons and events.
-They learn to shift their attention from the play material to their playing mates.
-They learn to take an interest in the company of their age mates and other grown children.
-They learn to relate themselves emotionally to parents, siblings and others.
-They learn to recognize and identify things and persons.
-They learn to form simple concepts of social and physical reality.
-They learn to recite poems and stories. I
-They learn to imitate the behaviour and actions of others. I
-They learn to acquire almost all the positive and negative emotions in their behavioural expression.
Learning of Early Childhood ( 3 - 5 years)
-Children learn to acquire simple basics in language skills like speaking, listening, reading and writing.
-Children learn to acquire competencies in motor skills like walking. jumping, climbing. sliding, recycling, hopping galloping, skipping, throwing. bouncing and catching.
-Children learn sex differences and sex modesty. Learning to distinguish right and wrong and developing a conscience.
-Children learn to develop the right concepts related to social and physical reality.
-Children learn to remain away from the parental fold and enjoy the companionship of other children.
-Children learn to acquire the ability to sense similarities and dissimilarities and compare and contrast things.
-Children learn to control over expression of emotions.
Learning of Later Childhood (6 - 12 years)
-Children learn to acquire simple basics in language skills like speaking, listening, reading and writing.
-Children learn motor and physical skills necessary for playing indoor and outdoor games.
-Children learn to get along with age-mates.
-Children learn appropriate sex roles.
-Children learn to build wholesome attitudes towards themselves as a growing organism.
-Children learn the development of necessary skills in language and communication, computation, sketching and drawing etc.
-Children learn the development of various interests, attitudes, linking and disliking towards things, persons and ideas.
-Children learn the development of concrete and abstract concepts regarding things, persons, ideas and processes.
-Children learn the development of conscience, morality and scale of values.
-Children learn development of the loyalty towards the group.
-Children learn the development of the capacity to reason, think and problem-solve.
Learning of Adolescence (13 - 18 years)
-Children learn the development of abilities, and motor and physical capacities for performing mental tasks and physical labour.
-Children learn the development of abilities, motor and physical skills for playing difficult complex and hard indoor and outdoor games.
-Children learn the development of mental and cognitive abilities to perform difficult mental tasks and operations.
-Children learn the development of all types of concepts- requiring a concrete or abstract operation.
-Children learn to accept one's physical and satisfaction with their appearance.
-Children learn to play a masculine or feminine role.
-Children learn to develop new relations with age-mates of both sexes.
-Children learn to acquire maturity in sexual behaviour. Development of a sense of one's own identity.
-Children learn to acquire maturity in sexual behaviour.
-Children learn the Development of a sense of one's identity.
-Children learn to gain the means and ways for economic independence.
-Development of sentiments towards things, persons, places and values.
-Children learn to acquire civic sense, social responsibilities and ways of democratic living.
-Children learn to build a sense of belongingness to one's group, culture, community and nation.
-Gaining vocational awareness and getting ready to enter into higher academic or professional courses of study.
-Gaining competencies and skills for meeting the needs of specific interests and aptitudes.
-Striving to gain the desired height on the mental, emotional and social maturity scales.
-Preparing for playing the roles of a mature adult in future life.
-Children learn to adjust with a sense of self-sacrifice and martyrs-like feelings for the cause of society, religion, nation and humanity.
Principle of Child Development
The process of development is very wide, complex and continuous; thus some principles need to be followed to understand it. Some of these principles are as under:
1. Principle of Continuity: The development follows continuity, goes from womb to tomb and never ceases. The life of an individual starts from a tiny cell and develops his body, mind and other aspects of his personality through a continuous stream of development in various dimensions.
2.Principle of Uniform Pattern: The process of development has uniformity and few individual differences. But uniformity is in functions like the development of language in children. Physical development is also in a uniform manner. This development starts from the head.
3.Principle of Individual Differences: The process of development has been divided into different age groups and every age group has its specific features and different behaviour. Even twin children have differences. Thus every individual has individual differences.
4.Principle of Integration: Development proceeds from general to specific or from whole to parts, it also scenes that specific response or part movements are combined in the later process of learning or development. It is the integration of the whole and its part as well as of the specific and general responses that make a child develop satisfactorily in the various dimensions of his growth and development.
5. Principle of Interrelation: The growth and development in various dimensions like physical. mental, social etc. are interrelated and interdependent. For example, children with above-average intelligence are generally found to possess above-average physical and social development. The lack of growth in one dimension diminishes the bright possibility in other dimensions. So, the child having poor physical development tends to regress in emotional social and intellectual development.
6. Principle of Maturation and Learning: Maturation and learning plays an important role in the process of Growth and development. In maturity growth and development are affected by learning. Any child needs to be mature to do work.. Different maturity levels affect his learning process. For instance, if a child is keen to learn something and lacks maturity then he will not be able to learn this.
7. Principle of Heredity and Environment: Heredity and environment is the joint product of a Child’s growth and development. Heredity is the foundation of the personality of the child. The effect of both heredity and the environment cannot be separated.
8.Principle of Total Development: The physical development in human beings is as per time and side-by-side the different aspects of human personality also develop like social, physical, emotional, mental etc. All these aspects are dependent on each other and affect each other.
9. Principle of Development Direction: Growth and development have their own definite direction. In the human body, first of all, the head becomes of adult size and legs in the end. In the development of the embryo, this principle is very clear. Thus development has different directions that are mentioned below:
(a) Cephalic Caudal Sequence: Child grows from head to legs
(b) Proximo-distal Sequence: This development begins from the back have one and then the external Promixo-distal sequence begins. At the embryo stage, at first, the head develops, then the lower portion of the body. Similarly, firstly spinal cord develops, then the heart, chest etc.
(c) Structure Precedes Functions: At first, all the body parts develop then they are used, but before that, their muscles should develop.
10. Development proceeds from General to Specific Responses: In all phases of a child's development, general activity precedes specific activity. His responses are of a general sort before they become specific. For example, when a newborn infant cries, the whole of the body is involved. With growth, the crying is limited to the vocal cords, eyes etc.
11. Principle of Cumulation and Recapitulation: Development is a net average of
experiences and it is not based on a single experience. Development is also a recapitulation of how experiences are used again and again.
12. Principle of Predicability of Development: It is clear that it is possible to predict development. For instance, the interests, growth, and dislikes of a child.
13. Principle of Outer Control to Inner Control: Small children depend on others for values and principles. When they grow up they develop their, conscious, own
value system, inner control and outer control.
These principles help a teacher to understand direction and help in understanding the level of development among children.
Theories of Development
Three theories of child development are mentioned below:
Field Theory: According to this theory all parts of the psychological environment influence the individual's behaviour, and it can be compared to field theory in physics in which is concerned with electromagnetic fields and how they change. Behaviour, it says, is shaped not by simple cause-effect chains, but by forces that make up the entire field. In other words, there are psychological forces at work on the person that has a certain strength and a certain direction - forces that can be either positive, attracting behaviour in a certain direction, or negative, repelling us. The strength of a force toward or away from us is increased or decreases with distance. As the child grows older, he exhibits a greater variety of behaviour. Some activities drop out, but he learns more of a range of emotional expressions and social responses.
Cognitive Theory: Piaget divides the child's development into four main periods. First is the sensory-motor period of the first two years, where the child is acquiring skills and learning to integrate information from his different senses. He sees the world as a permanent place, not one whose existence depends upon his perceiving it. He can experiment with things about him and deliberately vary his actions. However, the child gets into trouble in this first stage because of a lack of understanding corresponding to his behaviour.
During the years of 2-7 build a conceptual scheme, which becomes organized and pre-operational. During this period, the child oversimplifies his thinking. For the four-year-old, when the red light on the stove goes out, dinner is ready. His understandings are often not logical, yet in free play, he may be most sensible. From 2-4 years the child is egocentric, unable to see the point of view of others. From 4-7 years he sees things in better relationships and can put them into categories animals, boys, friends etc.
From 7-11, years come the third period, which is of concrete operations, where the child organizes things well and thought processes are stable and reasonable. He can arrange objects in order of size and fit new ones into the series. He understands that the number of objects in a group is not changed by purely spatial rearrangement. The conception of time, space, numbers and logic has been acquired; but he cannot grasp concepts like volume.
The fourth period is that of formal operations comes in early adolescence. During this period the child can understand the basic principles of causal thinking and scientific experimentation. He can grasp logical thought.
Stimulus-Response Theory: The basic elements of this theory include the assumption that most human behaviour is learnt, and that this is done piecemeal rather than all at once. When two different stimuli appear together repeatedly, the responses to one of them are gradually transferred to the other. If a response to a stimulus is followed by reinforcement, this reward increases the probability of the response to that stimulus. Over time the person builds up habits of behaving and of thinking. It also contains a frustration-aggression hypothesis which says, in effect, that the stronger the frustration, the more likely the aggression; the greater the interference with a frustrated response, the stronger their instigation to aggression. It also relates to social learning. The child is dependent, and hence we have the beginnings of socialization where there is a gradual timing of aggression into a socially acceptable form.
Factors Affecting Growth and Development
1. Heredity, 2. Gender, 3. Emotions, 4. Nutrition 5. Intelligence 6.Family situation 7. Diseases & Injuries, 8. Culture 9. Healthy living environment
Educational Process of Different Developmental Stages
Infancy Period
Fast Development, Depending on Parents, Self-Assertion, Selfish and Unsocial, Emotionally Unstable, Development of Rote Memory, Fast Learning Process, Copying Tendency, Development of Curiosity, Development of Imagination, Playing Habits Tendency of Repeating, Time Concept not Developed, Lack of Morality, Feeling of Self-Attachment, Basic Instincts as basis of Behaviour
Education in Infancy
-Presenting them with good examples
-Education through activities
-Don't give the wrong notion to the child about his merit.
-Learning of social etiquette
-Care about dress, food and sleeping habits
A child's mind is very active
-Precautions regarding praise and punishment
-No shift in responsibility
-Importance of mother tongue
-Aesthetic sense
-Children are a critic of parents
-Friends
-Curiosity
-Education starts with births
Childhood
Slow physical Growth
Physical Activities
Power of Questioning and Answering
Understanding and Thinking Power
Mental Stability
Complete Development of Audio and Visuals Sense
Increase in Vocabulary
Development of Interests
Change in Social Behaviour
Development of Morality
Imagination and Memory
Sincere for Friends
The feeling of Bravery, Self-Exhibition and Leadership
Separation of Male-Females
Development of Construction Instinct
Love for Exploring and Wandering
Sex Instinct
Formation of Concept of Right and Wrong
Interest in Acting and Collection
Some other Characteristics
Education in Childhood
Be Careful About the Behaviour of Children
Development of tendencies
Teaching of social sciences
Mental exercise
Development of writing power
Interesting subject-matter
Development of attributes
Opportunities for expressing emotions
Teacher and Ideals
Co-curricular activities
More participation
Selection of subjects
Teaching methods
Areas of Development
At every stage, development takes place in various areas simultaneously. Development in these areas during different stages is described under the following aspects.
1. Physical: Physical development is about the physique (height and weight).
2. Motor: Motor development is about muscular development and coordination.
3. Cognitive: Cognitive development is about mental growth and intellectual development.
4. Language: Language development is about the way children learn the language, and the age at which they acquire different components of language.
5. Moral: It deals with what is right and what is wrong at the age at which this knowledge is acquired and with their rules of punishment and justice. The development of conscience and values also comes under the realm of moral development.
6. Personality Development: It is about the total development of a personality.
7. Vocational: It deals with the choices about careers and who they develop and are pursued in life.
8. Psychosocial: Psychological development is about the cultural and societal influences on personality.
9. Emotional: Emotional development is about different emotions at various stages and how they grow over time.0 0 0.
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