Early Brain Development

Early Brain Development

• Around 3 to 4 weeks into fetal development, a long tube forms in the brain, dividing into three sections: the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain.
• By 5 weeks, the forebrain and hindbrain further divide into two cavities each, resulting in five total cavities, while the midbrain remains undivided.
• The cerebellum becomes visible at around 6 weeks of fetal development and triples in size within the first year after birth.
• The cerebellum is responsible for controlling physical skills.
• The medulla oblongata, within the hindbrain, controls involuntary responses like sneezing and breathing, as well as heart rate and blood pressure.
• The medulla oblongata forms by 20 weeks of fetal development.
• From birth to 3 years old, a baby's brain experiences a surge in neural connections.
• This leads to the formation of 700–1000 new connections every second.
• The brain doubles in size during the first year and reaches 80% of its full size by age 3.
• Early neural connections are critical.

Piaget’s Four Stages of Development

• Jean Piaget proposed a theory of cognitive development.
• The theory includes distinct stages of development characterized by specific cognitive abilities.
• During the transition between stages, children may exhibit traits from both stages, and abilities develop in preparation for the next stage.

Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years)

• Infants use senses and movements to learn about the world.
• Infants live in the present, linking sensory experiences to objects, and learn to control movements.
• Around 6 months, infants develop object permanence, understanding that objects exist even when out of sight.
• By the end of this stage, children recognize themselves as separate from the world.
• Infants repeat actions intentionally, starting around 4 months old.

Pre-operational Stage (2 to 7 Years)

• First there is the symbolic function stage
• Second there is the Intuitive thought stage
• The symbolic function stage occurs between 2 and 4 years
• Here Children Imitate others and use objects as symbols.
• Symbolic play emerges, using objects to represent others, and language development begins.
• Children see the world only from their perspective (egocentrism) and may exhibit animism, believing objects are alive.
• The Intuitive Thought Stage occurs between 4 to 7 years.
• Children start to reason and ask many questions.
• They focus on one aspect of complex situations (centration) and lack conservation, not understanding that appearance changes do not change volume or weight.
• Irreversibility is present, where children cannot mentally reverse events.

Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 12 Years)

• Children apply rules and strategies to thinking with concrete aids.
• They struggle with abstract ideas like morality.
• Abilities include:
• Seriation: Sorting objects by size.
• Classification: Identifying objects by size or appearance.
• Reversibility: Understanding that actions can be reversed.
• Conservation: Knowing quantity remains the same despite appearance changes.
• Decentration: Considering multiple views of a situation.

Formal Operational Stage (12+ Years)

• Control over thoughts.
• This stage involves control over thoughts themselves, thinking about multiple factors.
• People are able to consider how time influences such circumstances.
• People are able to comprehend event sequences.
• They understand actions have consequences.
• They grasp that they and others are separate entities in the world.

Using Piaget’s Stages in Education

• Piaget's theory can apply to classroom practices.
• Children's actions shape their thinking, and capabilities depend on their stage of development.
• Young children are egocentric and may not understand a teacher's viewpoint.
• Children create schemas from experiences, individually constructing knowledge.

Applying Sensorimotor Development

• Provide stimulation and materials to build skills and schemas.
• Offer sensory experiences (smells, tastes, sights) and textures for stimulation.
• Use bright colors to help distinguishing.
• Respond to human voices, music, and sounds to enhance engagement.
• Allow to Explore with the mouth to learn shape and taste.

Applying Pre-operational Development

• Enable children to learn by doing rather than watching.
• Provide experiences to expand the understanding.
• Encourage children to experiment and discover through interaction.
• Visual aids and short instructions can help learning.

Applying Concrete Operational Development

• Have the Children concentrate on multiple aspects of a problem.
• Teachers help children to recognize other viewpoints.

Applying Formal Operational Development

• Teachers use Abstract concepts and complex questions for reasoning.
• They explore conflicting roles and societal norms.
• Children in this stage study diverse subjects, each having its own thinking.

Implications for Teaching

• Focus on the child’s thinking, rather than the actions.
• Teachers should employ discovery learning, for the ability to freely engage with the environment.
• Instruction must allow for the comprehension that rates of development differ from student to student.
• Children are individuals and progress through stages differently, so manage classrooms to suit them where appropriate.

Piaget’s Explanation of Understanding the World

• Children develop through adaptation, adjusting to new experiences.
• They form schemas to represent the world, like understanding that things drop when released.
• They assimilate new experiences into existing schemas or accommodate by changing or creating new schemas.
• Intelligence develops through stages.
• It is acquired through adaptation and cognitive development stages.

Table of Piaget’s Theory

• Schemas/Schemata: Experiences form plans and patterns, creating mental structures to understand the world. Example being, students expect to see a board, chairs, tables, a desk, and safety instructions when you enter a classroom.
• Assimilation: Incorporating new experiences into existing schemas. Example is when a young child calls a bird an aeroplane.
• Accommodation: Schemas change to accommodate new experiences. Example is when discovering that birds are alive while planes are not and that planes carry passengers, which changes the “everything that flies is a bird” schema.
• Equilibrium: Schemas explain experiences, creating mental balance. Following from above, a child understands new features and can further develop the concept.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Piaget’s Theory

• Piaget’s work has use with discovery learning.
• Allowing the the ability to build knowledge using schemas.
• Piaget’s work has generated a great deal of research, that provide support for the ideas.
• Some studies have found that children can do things earlier than Piaget thought.
• Pierre Dasen (1994) found that Aboriginal children developed the ability to conserve later than Piaget’s Swiss sample did.
• Biases in data interpretation may stem from interviews and observations with children.
• Studies underrealistic situations produced different findings.

Introduction to Dweck’s Mindset Theory

• Mindset explains our beliefs about our ability to succeed.
• Achievements can depend on on the educational, and having the opportunity to improve mindset.
• People with a growth mindset will tend to continue attempts, as a fixed mindset believes inability to perform in a role.
• People with a fixed mindset are able to change to a growth mindset

Fixed and Growth Mindset: Ability and Effort

• Praise may lead to a fixed mindset where ability is thought as decided at birth.
• If praise does not present a challenge, a child may not work hard to achieve it.
• Praising effort is better, which leads to a belief in achievability when required.
• The growth-mindset has a more positive outlook, because of effort.

Dweck’s Mindset Theory - Key Points

• With a fixed mindset, a person can become depressed and stop trying.
• A growth mindset brings success.
• Growth mindsets welcome and encourage perseverance.
• Perseverance gives the chance for teachers with a growth mindset to see children improve, where the inverse is someone with a Fixed mindset, thinking a lack of ability when it isn't apparent.

Experimental Evidence in Mindset

• Encouragement of the use of efforts (Strategies), teach a growth mindset.
• Low achievers with growth mindsets did better compared to those who didn't receive the same learning.

Strengths and Weaknesses Mindset Theory

• Is seen as having practical applications, for teaching and effort based encouragement.
• It is perceived as showing possible positive change in society.
• Better school performance for the belief that people can change.
• Studies are in artificial/experimental settings.
• This can have an affect results in real life, which lacks validity.

Learning Theory

• Factual knowledge precedes skill.
• Factual knowledge assists when building the skills for problem-solving and reasoning with previous knowledge.
• Free up space in our working to allow us to use mental processes.
• Prior understanding comes from working memory.

Practice and Effort

• There is an emphasis on practice and effort.
• It has importance to practise to be able to do things automatically and memorise what we should remember.
• The material then goes into long-term memory, for knowledge and skill to be repeated multiple times, and maintained.

Cognitive development

• Learning strategies
• New problems that are within a student’s ability.
• Understand a student’s stage of development to perform activities to their level.
• Abilities are variable and have the opportunity to change day to day.

Physical development

• Have the focus on suitable movements which assist the right order.
• Improve the practice of suitable movements.
• Use changes in the motor skills when needed.

Social development

• Create a child's ability to take someone view or others.
• Able to make positive social relationships with with others.
• Children use social learning for those that behave in certain conditions.
• Suitable educational terms, used to pay closer attention.
• Self regulation children need to be aware, because there are alternatives they rather do.

Strengths and Weaknesses

• The use of strategies to improve learning.
• They are universal strategies of change.
• There is a broad range of science based, which can be a strength, however a weakness, as they can't be tested by gathering data.

Background 3 Mountains

• The Three-Mountains: an early study into children seeing from other peoples view, to understand their own.

Aim 3 Mountains

• Determine the extent which children are able to take another person views.
• Identify the overall system to show the overall different numbers of views from what can be see.

Procedure 3 Mountains

• Used equipment with mountain models with houses, crosses and snow, alongside pictures.
• Questionings were made by, been asked to show cardboard shapes to show different view points.
• Also what has been seen, alongside choosing picture from how doll can be seen.

Results 3 Mountains

• Children cannot represent the views.
• Understanding comes as time passes, up to age 7.
• Concrete age 7-9 years start to understand model differently.
• Older are non centric, used to demonstrate different view points.

Conclusion 3 Mountains

• Demonstrates that young children are egocentric, whereas those within the concrete, being able to take a different view.

Strengths and Weaknesses 3 Mountains

• Great details shown and given, but observations provided qualitative data that wasn't detailed.
• In use experimental methods, alongside repeating the study with controls, this gave the ability to add strength to the findings.

Gunderson (2013) Parent Praise Background

• An experiment tested the parental praise, alongside experimental studies.
• Gender differences about praise and the reasoning is of interest.
• Used to indicate praise in home, which shows the support of experimental findings.

Aims Gunderson

• Impact of the effects to whether there are any natural situations.
• Find the outcome between genders, more process praise relating gender.
• To find more information on a reasoning.

Method Gunderson

• Followed a group of children over a period.
• Had a gender measured, with an aim to have children's ideas measure.

Results Gunderson

• Showed positive comments.
• In relation with parent praise, helped identify a more incremental framework of praise.

Conclusion Gunderson

• Parental use of the child use a incremental of frameworks of an ability.
• Gender differences come when boys are praised in effort, rather than skill.

Ethical reason.

• There should be an observation to demonstrate behaviour

The three levels of moral reasoning

• Pre-conventional mortality is is a belief that rules cannot be changed, up to an age of 9 years.
• Conventional mortality- most young people are adults, seen as good member of society.
• Post-conventional stage, individuals have a feeling about good and bad, where understanding is abstract and there has to be principles with actions beyond regular law.