The School as a Socialization Agent

The School as a Socialization Agent

■ Schools influence many aspects of development.
■ Formal school curricula teach academic knowledge.
■ Schools’ informal curricula teach children skills that
help them to become good citizens.
■ “Effective” schools produce positive outcomes such as
low absenteeism, an enthusiastic attitude about learning,
academic achievement, occupational skills, and socially
desirable patterns of behavior.
■ Research suggests that the following characteristics influence
a school’s “effectiveness”:
■ Monetary support
■ School and class size
■ Students who are highly motivated and intellectually
competent
■ A positive, safe school climate
■ An effective “goodness of fit” between students and
schools
■ A scholastic atmosphere stressing:
■ an academic emphasis;
■ challenging, developmentally appropriate curricula;
■ authoritative classroom management and
discipline;
■ teamwork.
■ Children making the transition between elementary
and secondary schools need special attention to their
changing developmental needs and support from parents
and teachers.

Peers as Agents of Socialization

Peers as Agents of Socialization

■ Peer relationships are a second social world for
children—
a world of equal-status interactions that is
very different from the social interactions children have
with adults.
■ Peers are social equals (not necessarily the same age),
who behave at similar levels of social and cognitive
complexity.
■ Sociability and the form of social interactions change
across development.
■ By age 18 to 24 months, toddlers’ sociable interactions
become complex and coordinated as they
reliably imitate each other, assume complementary
roles in simple social games, and occasionally coordinate
their actions to achieve shared goals.
■ During the preschool years, nonsocial activities and
parallel play become less common, whereas the social
skills that foster associative play and cooperative
play become more common.
■ During middle childhood, more peer interactions
occur in peer groups—groups of children who associate
regularly, define a sense of group membership,
and formulate norms that specify how group members
are supposed to behave.
■ Early adolescents spend even more time with
peers—particularly with their closest friends in small
cliques, and in larger groups of like-minded cliques,
known as crowds.
■ Cliques and crowds help adolescents forge an identity
apart from their families and pave the way for
the establishment
of dating relationships.
■ Children clearly differ in peer acceptance—the extent
to which other children like or dislike them.
■ Using sociometric techniques, developmentalists find
that there are five categories of peer acceptance:
■ Popular children: liked by many and disliked by few
■ Rejected children: disliked by many and liked by few
■ Controversial children: liked by many and disliked
by many
■ Neglected children: seldom nominated by others as
likable or dislikable
■ Average-status children: those who are liked or disliked
by a moderate number of peers
■ Social status with peers is related to a child’s temperament,
cognitive skills, and the parenting style she or he
has experienced.
■ The strongest predictor of peer acceptance is a child’s
pattern of social behavior.

The Effects of TV on Child Development

The Effects of Television on Child Development

■ Although children watch a lot of TV and it can influence
their behavior, research suggests that watching
TV in moderation is not likely to impair children’s
cognitive growth, academic achievement, or peer relations.
Cognitive development and experience watching
television lead to increases in television literacy during
middle childhood and adolescence. Televised violence
can instigate aggressive behavior, instill mean-world
beliefs, and desensitize children to aggression. TV also
presents stereotypes that influence children’s beliefs
about ethnicity, race, and gender.
■ On the positive side, children learn prosocial lessons
and put them into practice after watching acts of kindness
on TV.
■ Educational programs such as Sesame Street have been
quite successful at fostering basic cognitive skills, particularly
when children watch with an adult who discusses
the material with them and helps them to apply
what they have learned.
Child Development in the Digital Age
■ Children benefit, both intellectually and socially, from
their use of computers.
■ Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) often improves
children’s basic academic skills, especially when basic
drills are supplemented by discovery programs that are
presented as games.
■ Word-processing programs foster the growth of writing
skills; and computer programming facilitates cognitive
and metacognitive development.
■ Despite the advantages associated with children’s use of
computers, critics fear that
■ violent computer games may instigate aggression and
■ harm may result from children's unrestricted access
to the Internet.
■ Research suggests that exposure to the Internet benefits
children academically, socially, and in their healthy
biological development.
■ Concerns about Internet exposure can be addressed if
parents
■ learn the technology;
■ place computers in rooms the family frequents;
■ plan family activities in advance and include the teen;
■ limit the teen’s online time; and
■ monitor online activities.

MCQ - Cognitive Development

MCQ-  Cognitive Development 

Multiple Choice: Check your understanding of Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories of cognitive development by selecting the best choice for each question.

1. Before learning about Piaget’s theory, you understood the terms assimilation and accommodation as they are used in conversation. After learning about Piaget’s theory, you understood these terms as processes of intellectual development. This new understanding is most specifically known as

a. organization.

b. assimilation.

c. accommodation.

d. epistemology.

2. A most basic assumption of Piaget’s theory is that children progress through developmental stages

a. in an invariant sequence.

b. at specific ages.

c. dependent on their sociocultural experiences.

d. as they acquire increasingly complex understandings of imitation.

3. Developmental research has confirmed the basic sequence of development that Piaget proposed for the sensorimotor period, but some of the milestones are reached earlier than he proposed, including all of the following except

a. A-not-B errors.

b. deferred imitation.

c. primary circular reactions.

d. object permanence.

4. Which of the following competencies is acquired in Piaget’s preoperational stage?

a. Symbolic function

b. Decentration

c. Reversibility

d. Transitivity

5. Piaget noted that children’s cognitive competencies were often uneven, with children being unable to solve certain problems even though they could solve similar problems requiring the same mental operations. He referred to this phenomenon as

a. genetic epistemology.

b. decentration of operations.

c. mental seriation.

d. horizontal décalage.

6. Tamara is beginning to use hypothetico-deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning in her thinking. She is becoming quite idealistic in her thinking about world politics and even her parents’ behavior. In addition, she imagines that other people are as interested in her thoughts and behaviors as she is. Tamara is most likely in the _______ stage of

development.

a. sensorimotor

b. preoperational

c. concrete-operational

d. formal-operational

7. Developmental psychologists criticize Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory for all of the following reasons except

a. the assumption that development occurs in stages.

b. failing to adequately describe different stages of cognitive development.

c. failing to specify how children progress from one stage of development to the next.

d. underestimating social and cultural influences on cognitive development.

8. Vygotsky proposed that we should evaluate development from the perspective of four interrelated levels in interaction with children’s environments. These four levels include all of the following except

a. microgenetic.

b. ontogenetic.

c. phylogenetic.

d. sociogenetic.

9. Text messaging to communicate using cell phones is so common in today’s generation of teenagers and young adults that it has become what Vygotsky would call a

a. zone of proximal development.

b. tool of intellectual adaptation.

c. scaffold.

d. guide of participation.

10. _______ argued that children’s self-talk was a form of egocentric speech. _______ argued that children’s self-talk was a cognitive self-guidance system that regulates problem-solving activities.

a. Piaget; Vygotsky

b. Piaget; Piaget

c. Vygotsky; Piaget

d. Vygotsky; Vygotsky

answer  key

1. a

2. a

3. c

4. a

5. d

6. d

7. b

8. d

9. b

10. a

Educational Implication of Piaget and Vygotsky’s theory

Educational Implication of Piaget and Vygotsky’s theory

Vygotsky’s theory has some rather obvious implications for education. Like Piaget, Vygotsky stressed active rather than passive learning and took great care to assess what the learner already knew, thereby estimating what he was capable of learning. The major difference in approaches concerns the role of the instructor. Whereas students in Piaget’s classroom would spend more time in independent, discovery-based activities, teachers in Vygotsky’s classroom would favor guided participations in which theystructure the learning activity, provide helpful hints or instructions that they carefully tailor to the child’s current abilities, and then monitor the learner’s progress, gradually turning over more of the mental activity to their pupils. Teachers may also arrange cooperative learning exercises in which students are encouraged to assist each other; theidea here is that the less competent members of the team are likely to benefit from the instruction they receive from their more skillful peers, who also benefit by playing the role of teacher.