CHILDREN DEVELOPMENT

Habiba
Contents
Question 1. As human beings, brain development has a very large influence on our ability to learn. We
know that genetics and environment will both affect the way our brain develops. From the perspective
of your study area (Early childhood, Primary, or Secondary education) discuss how the biological
development of the brain may interact with a student’s environment. What factors might promote or
slow down brain development? How can we structure a classroom environment (i.e., learning materials,
social/cultural factors or physical environment) to support brain development? Provide specific
examples.....................................................................................................................................................1
Answer 1......................................................................................................................................................1
Brain Development......................................................................................................................................1
Biological brain environment:.....................................................................................................................1
Factors promoting:......................................................................................................................................1
Factors slowing down:.................................................................................................................................2
Classroom environment:.............................................................................................................................2
Example:......................................................................................................................................................2
Question 2. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is an important concept of Vygotsky’s theory of
development. From the perspective of your study area (Early childhood, Primary, or Secondary
education) discuss this concept and how you might a) assess if your instruction is within your student’s
ZPD and b) once you have this information, what specific teaching strategies might be useful to
maximize your students learning.................................................................................................................3
Answer 2......................................................................................................................................................3
Zone of proximal development:..................................................................................................................3
If instructions are within students ZPD:.......................................................................................................3
Teaching strategies:.....................................................................................................................................4
Strategies:....................................................................................................................................................4
Question 3. Discuss the implications of reduced physical activity for children’s cognitive, social and
emotional development. What has contributed to the decline in physical activity? What can schools do
to help to reverse the trend?......................................................................................................................5
Answer 3......................................................................................................................................................5
Implications:................................................................................................................................................5
Cognitive development:..............................................................................................................................6
Social development:....................................................................................................................................6
Emotional development:.............................................................................................................................6
Contribution:...............................................................................................................................................6
Reversing the trend:....................................................................................................................................7
Children development
Question 1. As human beings, brain development has a very large influence on
our ability to learn. We know that genetics and environment will both affect
the way our brain develops. From the perspective of your study area (Early
childhood, Primary, or Secondary education) discuss how the biological
development of the brain may interact with a student’s environment. What
factors might promote or slow down brain development? How can we
structure a classroom environment (i.e., learning materials, social/cultural
factors or physical environment) to support brain development? Provide
specific examples.

Answer 1
Brain Development is influenced by environment, genetics and the actions of individuals. A
child’s brain develops from the birth to the age of 5 more. As human beings, early brain
development has a lasting influence on a child’s ability to succeed and learn in school life.

Biological brain environment:

Brain development highly contributes to the physical skill development and learning ability.
Adolescence is the essential and critical time for brain development. During this period of brain
growth a person learns to control his impulses, starts to think and plan critically, and develops
ability to solve several problems and to generalize things.
Biological development of brain interacts with a student’s environment in many ways. During
adolescence, the brain development strongly depends on the learning environment provided.
Events and activities experienced during this period prepare the brain for future circumstances.
Students need to enhance strong learning skills such as problem solving, generalizing and
planning critically. The learning environment plays a major role in proper brain development. As
adolescents experience complex events, the neural networks strengthen resulting in enhanced
memory skills. Without such opportunities, networks are under developed, resulting in difficulties
for the students in the later life. Hence, proper brain development helps in enhancing learning
abilities, problem solving, thinking critically and also strengthening memory skills in student’s
environment.

Factors promoting: factors that promote brain development are as follow.

1. Experiences: brain development is affected by experiences with the people and

world. Good parenting can result in enhanced brain development.
2. Explore: letting your child explore things helps in better ability to learn and
understand.
 3. Good nutrition: brain growth like the rest of the fetus body is highly effected by the
quality of the food pregnant women consumes
4. Play: playing with your child helps him in discovering new things and better brain
development.

Factors slowing down: factors that slows down brain development are as follows
1. Environment: the rate of brain growth is highly influenced by environment. Chemicals
and toxic substances retard brain development.
2. Genetics: a mutation in genes can also slow down brain development to some
extent.
3. Alcohol: alcohol and cigarette consumption during pregnancy can affect brain
development as well.

Classroom environment:
We can construct a classroom environment to support brain development in students by
following ways:
1. Transforming curriculum: new literacy and easy ways to solve mathematical problems.
2. Transforming inclusive education
3. Transforming approaches to motivation: it results in enhanced motivation and self-
esteem to do more challenging things
4. Changing assessments
5. Ask questions
6. Perform different activates
7. Changing classroom management
8. Engaging students more into games and sports also enhance brain development

Example: The main aim for classrooms and teachers is to enhance brain development.
Classroom structure set up is essential to support brain development for teachers. The physical
environment of the classroom can prevent behavior problems and Improve learning abilities.
Teachers can provide following facilities to the students

 - a clean, freshly painted and well lightened classroom;

 - books on the shelves
 - access to dictionaries and technology
 - access to the library
 -new literacy
 -new methods of learning styles
 -sharing time
 -teaching with innovative ideas
 -asking frequent questions
 -indulging more in physical activities
 -games
 -healthy activities
Question 2. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is an important
concept of Vygotsky’s theory of development. From the perspective of your
study area (Early childhood, Primary, or Secondary education) discuss this
concept and how you might a) assess if your instruction is within your
student’s ZPD and b) once you have this information, what specific teaching
strategies might be useful to maximize your students learning

Answer 2

Zone of proximal development:

A theory created by phycologist named Vygotsky’s. ZPD is the distance between Actual
Performance and Potential Performance through scaffolding collaboration with more
knowledgeable others. He said that ZPD is a sweet spot where instruction is most beneficial. He
believed learning happens in a series of steps i.e. once the students has master the information
of one step only then they are ready to move on to the next step and so on.

If instructions are within students ZPD:

We know that tasks that too simple or within our abilities already, do not promote
learning. Likely, the tasks too difficult or out of our abilities, also do not promote learning.
The tasks in ZPD are the things students can perform themselves but still need help from
knowledgeable other to accomplish

student
student can
cannot

zone of
proximal
development
If student can perform all the task and activities without difficulty but still require helps from
others, needs collaboration with the scaffolding and knowledgeable others (peers, teachers,
elders or parents) then a teacher can easily assess that the information is within students ZPD.
Moreover, through applying the concept of ZPD ( zone of proximal development) , a teacher can
estimate about the knowledge and capability of a student and can easily add more to it step by
step.
For example, let's say a teacher is instructing students about the rain cycle. If a teacher has
already given enough information about evaporation process. The student then can easily make
connections between different phases of water cycle

Teaching strategies:
Only the tasks and activities within students ZPD promotes development. So a teacher first
needs to apply zone of development in the classroom step by step

 First, a teacher should understand what a student already knows

 Help students understand more with the help of scaffolding
 Then, a teacher should relate his prior knowledge to the next lesson
 And then, apply the concept of ZPD.
Through all these steps a teacher can estimate the knowledge of the students and can
apply specific strategies in the classroom to maximize the student’s information and
knowledge.

Strategies:
 New opportunities: a teacher must provide new opportunities to allow students perform
slightly beyond their current skills but with ongoing, scaffolding and helps of others to
support.
 Motivation: motivate the students interest in the task
 Breaking task: break the task into easily and manageable steps
 Define: define the outcome and expectations of the task.
 Reduction: reduce the factors that might frustrate students
 New information: teachers should provide new information but based on prior
information and should relate it.
 Demonstration: a teacher should demonstrate problem solving first and see if a students
can easily do it.
 Self-solving: a teacher should then allow students solve problems on their own to see if
they understood or not
 Cooperation: a teacher should ask students to cooperate with each other, in order to
ensure maximum knowledge is distributed among them.

A teacher should always understand that every student has different zone of
development (ZPD). And should be treated according to it
Question 3. Discuss the implications of reduced physical activity for children’s
cognitive, social and emotional development. What has contributed to the
decline in physical activity? What can schools do to help to reverse the trend?

Answer 3
Human beings go through different stages of cognitive, social and emotional development
throughout their lives. Different factors contribute to these developments and children’s
nourishment. The most important effect is contributed by reduced physical activity which leads
to retarded social, emotional and cognitive development.

Implications:
Implications or connection of reduced physical activity for children’s cognitive, social and
emotional development are as follows

Cognitive development:
Regular and proper physical activities helps children in developing motivational and
learning skills. Physical activity also shows positive impact on brain development and
cognition, attention, motivation and achievements in the studies. Reduced physical
activity leads to slow cognitive development because a child cannot properly develop his
learning and motivational skills. Moreover, he finds it difficult to understand several
concepts and take time in understanding things. Due to reduced physical activity a child
lags behind and takes time to respond and to participate in events and does not perform
tasks efficiently. Regular exercise and activities can help a child overcome such issues.

Social development:
Physical fitness, activities and regular exercise develops a student socially and morally.
A students learns to interact with people, learns conflicts resolving, and develops skills
such as leadership. Such a child learns cooperation and teamwork, can easily find new
opportunities and shows positive attitude towards everyone.
 Physical activity lack effects social development tremendously. A child with reduced
physical activity finds it hard to interact and cannot resolve issues easily. This type of
childrens have low self-esteem and cannot develop their social skills properly, hence,
lagging behind.

Emotional development:
Physical activity and fitness leads to improved self-esteem and confidence. It helps
children develop their management of stress and anxiety. Proper exercise leads to
improved concertation, focus and emotional development.it can relieve anxiety, stress,
anger, depression and aggressiveness. Reduced physical activity leads to disturbed
management of anxiety and anger. Children have no confidence and face difficulty later
in life. Such children have low self-esteem and shows symptoms of depression and
stress. Children find it hard to accomplish task because of improper emotional
development due to lack of physical activities.

Contribution: Modernization and development of technology has horrifying and drastic

effects on the life of the children. Children prefer staying at home rather than doing exercise and
physical activities. These unhealthy activities and interests has contributed to the decline of
physical activity. Modern gadgets and appliances has diverted new generation towards reduced
physical activity.

 New technologies
 Modern gadgets
 Lack of encouragement for physical activity
 No knowledge regarding benefits of physical activity
 More academic pressure
 Sedentary behavior at home or school

Reversing the trend:

Around the age of school entry, overall physical activities starts to decline due to academic
pressure and school stress. Schools can reverse this trend of reduced physical activity by
following ways:

 Encouragement:
Teachers should encourage students about physical activity and help them
develop emotionally and socially.
 Incorporation of physical activity:
Schools should add physical activities into regular classroom lectures and school
programs
 Short breaks:
By introducing short breaks between lectures can greatly enhance physical
activities of the students
 Physical education (PE):
 By making PE mandatory in school and classroom lessons.
 Other activities:
Unstructured physical activities like running, chasing, cardboard games and
playground games must be introduced in schools to ensure proper development.
 Active environment:
By creating active environment like large grounds, swings, colorful
garden and open space can provoke students and children to go out and play,
hence, enhancing physical activities.

References

Blanksby, B. (1994). Athletics, growth, and development in children. Chur, Suisse:

Harwood Academic.
Footprints in time - the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children.
Jiao, S., Ji, G., & Jing, Q. (1996). Cognitive Development of Chinese Urban Only
Children and Children with Siblings. Child Development, 67(2), 387. doi:
10.2307/1131821
Kalil, A., Haskins, R., & Chesters, J. (2012). Investing in children. Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institution Press.
Maas, H. (1987). Social Development, its Contexts, and Child Welfare. Children
Australia, 11(2-3), 8-9. doi: 10.1017/s0312897000016738
Sarantakos, S. (1996). Children in three contexts: Family, education and social
development. Children Australia, 21(3), 23-31. doi: 10.1017/s1035077200007173
Vermeer, A. (1995). Physical and motor development in mental retardation ; 26
tables. Basel: Karger.