EDN561 – Assessment 1 (Part 1) Student ID: 33735491

Assignment 1- Part 1- Child Development (Topic 2 or 3)

I. Introduction of the Concept

Heckman and Mosso (2014) claims that child development is about the period of an
individual’s progress from dependency phase to increasing autonomy one. According to
Piaget, the concept of child development has not been understood properly (Bjorklund, 2018).
It is very important to focus of gaining a good understanding of the child development
concept, before proceeding to analyse the different roles of people who are involved in the
lives of children. There are many theories of child development. Waite-Stupiansky (2017)
have placed a lot of reliance on the societal relations in overcoming the stages and individual
development. The virtue that is attached to the child development is very complicated as child
tries to find out his own feet in the world and questioning the potential to do so. The theory
provided by Lev Vygotsky emphasis on social interactions of the children that helps in
determining their ultimate growth and development (Bodrova & Leong, 2017). He places high
focus on parents’ responsibility for guiding their children through this phase and helping them
in developing better. The concept is very important in teaching process. For teachers, it is
important to know so that they can be able of finding out ways and strategies for improving
the learning development skills of children. Every child is unique in his or her own way and
the child development concept can help teachers to know how to discipline them if they
misbehave in class.

II. Definition of the Concept

Child development can be defined as the process of physical, social and cognitive growth
in children that starts right from their birth and continues throughout until they reach their
early adulthood. Walshaw (2016) in this context have opined that it is all about the period
between infancy and early adulthood. Human beings grow the most in this period and their
different aspects of growth and development are in terms of social, physical and cognitive. It
is to mention that the early child development is underpinned by epigenetic inheritance,
physical development, genetic and brain development. He claims that there are two key
features of early childhood development that the researchers study are executive function a
self-regulation.
 EDN561 – Assessment 1 (Part 1) Student ID: 33735491

III. Discussion of concept’s defining characteristics or principles

According to Ogunnaike (2015) the developmental attributes of child development are

broadly mental and physical. In terms of mental level, mental development is seen among the
children as mile stone achievements. On the other hand, in terms of physical development,
children develop by means of physical dimensions in order to interact and communicate with
their surrounding world. Furthermore, it is also to mention that child development all about
emotional, psychological and biological changes that take place in human beings in between
their birth and end of adolescence and then through the adulthood. When the intellectual and
cognitive aspects are achieved faster and are of high standards, child becomes a person of
higher IQ (Lane, Milne & Freeth, 2016).

IV. The Model Case

In primary school setting often classrooms are organised around memorisation and
recitation teaching. The teacher here disseminates the skills and knowledge for being
memorised by the children who in turn would recite the information back to the teacher. It is a
traditional school teaching method. However, guided instruction, scaffolding and reciprocal
teaching can be used in place of the traditional teaching strategy. These will help the teachers
in assisting the children to accomplish the task that they could not complete individually. In
the reciprocal teaching, students are given individual turns to play the role of teacher and read
in the classroom. This will help students and the teachers to explore the issues and share their
different problem solving strategies in open dialogue.
 EDN561 – Assessment 1 (Part 1) Student ID: 33735491

References List:

Bjorklund, D. F. (2018). A metatheory for cognitive development (or “Piaget is dead”

revisited). Child development, 89(6), 2288-2302.

Bodrova, E., & Leong, D. J. (2017). The Vygotskian and Post-Vygotskian Approach:
Focusing on “the Future Child”. In Theories of Early Childhood Education (pp. 58-
70). Routledge.

Heckman, J. J., & Mosso, S. (2014). The Economics of Human Development and Social
Mobility. Annual Review of Economics, 6(1), 689–733.

Lane, C., Milne, E., & Freeth, M. (2016). Cognition and Behavior in Sotos Syndrome: A
Systematic Review. PLOS ONE, 11(2), e0149189.

Ogunnaike, Y. A. (2015). Early Childhood Education and Human Factor: Connecting

Theories and Perspectives. Review of Human Factor Studies, 21(1).

Waite-Stupiansky, S. (2017). Jean Piaget’s constructivist theory of learning. In Theories of

Early Childhood Education (pp. 3-17). Routledge.

Walshaw, M. (2016). Lev Vygotsky. In Alternative Theoretical Frameworks for Mathematics

Education Research (pp. 11-37). Springer, Cham.