Theories of child development: Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget believed that children construct knowledge for themselves by actively making sense of their environment. He referred to this active learning as constructivism. For example, a young child might know that a baby bird comes from an egg. When the same child sees a baby elephant, she may also assume that the elephant comes from an egg too. The child is assimilating information to fit her idea of the world.

Later, perhaps in a conversation about animals, her parent may explain that elephants do not come from eggs. At this point the child will adapt her way of thinking to accommodate this new idea. In this way children are active constructors of their knowledge of the world.

Piaget also observed that children of similar ages display similar characteristics and behaviors. After conducting a series of tasks and experiments with children, he developed a framework which proposed that children go through four stages of development. He asserted that each child follows these stages in exactly the same order, and that development unfolds as a result of the biological processes of growth.

• • • Sensorimotor stage: from birth to 2 years. The infant learns that her actions can cause things to happen.
    • Pre-operational: from 2 – 7 years.  Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects. They lack logical thinking skills and instead, are characterized by egocentrism, which means they typically look at the world around them from their own point of view and find it almost impossible to see things from someone else’s.
    • Concrete operational: from 7 – 11 years. This is the turning point in cognitive development as children begin to think more logically. They develop the ability to apply logical reasoning in several areas of knowledge, such as maths, science, or map reading, but this ability is restricted to the immediate context. This means they cannot yet generalize their understanding.
    • Formal operational: from 11 years onwards.  Children are able to think beyond the immediate context in more abstract terms. They are able to carry out logical operations such as deductive reasoning in a systematic way.

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• Theories of child development: M. Donaldson

Donaldson highlighted the importance of the context and the familiarity of tasks, as well as recognizing that learning continues after the age of 11 or 12. Analytical development leading to formal logic is also the result of formal schooling rather than natural maturation and different educational systems contribute to maintaining differences between same-aged children or teenagers in different parts of the world. In addition, it is also reasonable to propose that development does not actually stop at the age of 11 or 12, but continues well beyond this age, well beyond Piaget’s last stage.

While it is true that Piaget’s original ideas have been challenged, most developmental psychologists would still support the existence of some stage-like development in children even though the stages are believed to be less rigid and perhaps more deterministic than originally suggested by Piaget.

What is important for teachers to learn from Piaget’s theory? It is important for teachers to be sensitive and open to the needs and interests of various age groups and continually monitor their changing needs. Careful monitoring and regular feedback from children will help teachers select suitable materials that are developmentally appropriate for the given age group in a given context. 

• Theories of child development: L. Vygotsky

1. Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

2. Scaffolding

Overview of theories of child development

Piaget believed that children actively make sense of their environment. This theory is called Constructivism. Donaldson criticized the methodology behind Piaget’s four stages of development, and in making her tasks and experiments more child-friendly, found that younger children can show signs of logical thinking when given familiar tasks in familiar contexts by familiar adults. Vygotsky believed in Social Constructivism − the importance of interacting with other people in order to learn.His Zone of Proximal Development suggests that in order to learn, children need to be given tasks that are just beyond their current abilities. They need to be challenged and then given support to help them complete the task. This scaffolding can later be removed when the child is able to complete the task alone.

What key differences are there between how younger and older children learn?

Younger children (age under 7) enjoy imitation, short activities, and repetition. They also learn through rhythm rhyme. It is important to have movement like moving around and miming. Adding visual stimuli is also critical.

Older children will become more patient with activities that last longer, maybe tasks that have got several stages. So for example, dialogues can get longer, they can concentrate longer, they take also interest in more abstract ideas. So, whereas younger children would never want to know in a song what each word means because the whole thing as a line is interesting to them, an older child might ask ‘what does this word mean?’ or ‘what does that word mean?’. So gradually they take an interest in the language as a system. So comparing, for example, first language with second language, maybe even translating. But also grappling with gap tasks and more complicated tasks becomes possible.

What are learning strategies?

• Social and affective strategies can help to raise awareness of how learners’ own emotional states and feelings as well as those of others can influence their learning. This is often done in the mother tongue – talking about the importance of listening to each other, turn-taking, or controlling shyness and fear of speaking in front of others.
• Awareness-raising about language learning. Teachers might discuss with children how long it takes to learn a language, why it is important to practise, or why we make mistakes and how to learn from them.
• Metacognitive or reflective strategies are the ways we can introduce and develop the ongoing process of reflection through planning, monitoring, and evaluating children’s own language learning. Children can also be encouraged to think about why they have done certain tasks or activities and what they learned from them.
• Cognitive strategies are designed to develop a child’s ability to deal with linguistic information effectively, i.e. to organize, categorize or memorize, predict or deduce meaning.

Creating a positive learning environment

• Using routine songs: Children respond to music and singing more readily than to simple verbal instructions. Songs, chants or raps are therefore effective tools in establishing  routines, which in turn make children feel secure. Routine songs will remind them of what behaviours are expected, and will allow them to self-correct. They will know whether they will have to sit down to listen to a story, or if it’s clean-up time, etc., all through hearing and gradually joining in the song. Songs also help children maintain a relaxed and positive attitude towards learning.
• Limiting error correction: To become successful language learners, children need to learn to take risk. They will only become independent and proactive in the language learning process if they feel secure and happy in the classroom. One way of achieving this is by welcoming whatever contributions they make, including their mistakes. In this approach, errors are viewed as opportunities for improvement, not as failures. It is important to encourage children to experiment with the language, to manipulate spelling, pronunciation, use of words and structures, to notice similarities and differences in the language use, etc., as soon as they are ready to do so. Error correction benefits the learning process during the discovery stage and controlled practice activities, but not when language is used for communication.
• Varying interaction: Children are not usually able to focus on a single task for more than five to ten minutes and all have different learning styles. In order to maintain their interest and motivation, and to engage them fully in the lesson content, it is essential to include a variety of different tasks with different interaction patterns each lesson, using varied forms of collaboration: whole-class work, individual work, pairwork, groupwork. There should be a variety of task formats within a lesson – from a song with movement to flashcard games, from a story through drama to working on a worksheet – to cater for all types of learner.

What are the benefits of collaborative learning?

Collaborative tasks have numerous benefits. As children are collaborating in pairs, groups of four, or even larger groups, they have an opportunity to practice social skills that help them succeed in real-life situations. These skills include, for example, helping each other, asking for clarification, being patient towards another person, respecting differing opinions, agreeing and disagreeing.  While collaborating, children work towards a common goal, in some cases taking on different roles within the group, such as ‘language expert’, ‘recorder’, ‘checker’, ‘noise monitor’, etc., and so they also develop a sense of responsibility.

Another advantage of collaborative tasks is that it provides learning opportunities for all types of learners. Some learners may be quick at picking up new language and others may need more time and support to do it. Some may be more talkative while others may be shy and more reticent. While working together in groups, there are plenty of opportunities for children to help each other, work out meaning, and construct knowledge together. Each of them can also contribute whatever individual skills or knowledge they have. Beyond these life skills, these group tasks provide a useful framework for language development. They allow each individual child more time to speak and use the language being practiced, and more opportunity to participate in the classroom discourse, compared to teacher-directed activities.

In addition, as the focus in such a setting is often on achieving non-linguistic goals with personalized relevance, it makes working with the language enjoyable and therefore more memorable. Let’s say for example that children play a board game in groups of four to six. As they are playing, they will be using the language required by the game because they want to win, not because they would like to practice this particular structure or lexis. They are focused on the game itself and consequently the acquisition of the language they are using becomes almost automatic.

What are advantages of collaboration in the classroom?

Collaboration is a key feature of 21st century skills, at its simplest, collaboration is children working together in pairs or small groups as well as working together as a class. When developing collaboration skills in your children it is important for them to learn to be helpful, to be flexible, and to take on responsibility.

Listening is essential in order to learn a foreign language, so it is important that children listen to each other in class. Encourage this not by confirming the answers to an exercise, direct students to talk to each other and not the teacher when completing an exercise in class.

Give your children opportunities to work in small groups. At the end of the group work, briefly discuss how well they contributed to the work in the group. You may have them rate themselves on a scale of 1-5, 5 being excellent and 1 meaning little or no contribution. To develop their contribution to the work in the group, ask them how they contributed, what they actually did do.There are no wrong or right answers but by asking them, children will become aware of their role within different groups and what they can do to help the group succeed.

Collaboration is also important when playing games. Children will learn to wait for their turn, they will learn to be part of a team, to ask for help when they need it, and to help others when they can. They will learn to accept winning or losing as a team.

Tips for setting up collaborative tasks

Setting up pair and group tasks where children collaborate is key to encouraging effective and meaningful communication in large classes.

• Children ask and answer the questions working with the person next to them to find out personal information.
• Teacher demonstrates the activity with a student while the rest of the children
  watch.
• Collect all the information and make a chart about the whole
  class. 
• Children then work with the person directly behind them or in front of
  them. 
• They talk about their previous partner. 

Monitoring collaborative tasks

checking task compliance: In order to ensure that children follow the instructions correctly, the teacher should demonstrate the activity with a student or a group of students before getting the class to do it. This way children will see exactly what they are expected to perform, and if they are still unsure about the task, they will be able to ask questions such as: ‘So should we both look at the book or only one of us?’, ‘Should I write down the answer or do I have to memorize it?’, etc. Often, depending on their level of English, children ask these questions in L1, and the teacher clarifies it in L1, in cases where it cannot be mimed or explained through body language or other means. Once the class starts pairwork or groupwork, the teacher walks around the room to check if they are all doing the right task. If there are any pairs or groups that have misunderstood the task, they could either be directed to a neighbouring pair/group to observe them and find out what they are expected to do, or the teacher can quickly demonstrate or explain the task to them.

Providing assistance: Following the initial brief task check, it is important that children get enough support from each other or the teacher with the language they are asked to practice. Before or during the demonstration of the activity, the teacher encourages the students to help each other with the language, and also those children who are uncertain to ask for help from their peers. In this way they will gradually become used to relying more on each other during the pairwork or groupwork, and will be less teacher dependent and more autonomous as learners. They will usually find that there is already someone within their group who can provide help. As they start working together, the teacher goes round the class, first to those pairs or groups more likely to need help. At this stage, monitoring needs to be unobtrusive. While children feel that there is a ‘safety net’, they should be focusing only on their partners and on the activity they are engaged in, without feeling hindered or distracted by the presence of the teacher.

Identifying error for correction: The help offered during the pairwork or groupwork is focused on any particular issues children have concerning the task or the language content involved. It is key, however, that the teacher encourages independent language use, even if it is incorrect at times. It is important for children to have the opportunity to wrestle with new language, experiment with it themselves, and manipulate sounds or the form of words and sentences. The teacher normally interrupts only to correct mistakes that children make with the target language and not other types of errors. Where a teacher corrects all other mistakes as well, it will negatively impact on the flow of the task, the number of interruptions potentially rendering the task unenjoyable and therefore demotivating. Children cannot pay proper attention to multiple corrections, and so would be more likely to get frustrated and demotivated because of their inability to succeed, than to benefit from the opportunity to improve. Errors in the use of the target language can be addressed first through self-correction, by providing hints and examples for reflecting and correcting the problematic forms. If a student is not yet ready for this, or if self-correction proves unsuccessful, peer-correction is the next available step. The teacher providing the answer to the children can generally be left as a last resort. Even then, a positive attitude and patient explanation will contribute to the learners’ sense of security and self-confidence.

How to organize a mixed ability class?

Involving parents of children with special educational needs

• parents can provide information about their child, e.g. how they prefer to learn, their behavior at home, how much effort they put into homework, their different reactions to input
• parents can share their expectations of their child’s progress and keep track of their progress in a journal
• teachers and parents can share information on methodological strategies that benefit the child so that they can be accommodated at home and at school

How can we help our students develop their listening and speaking skills?

Listening is crucial to language learning as young learners begin to make sense of the language before they can speak. A non-threatening environment will help build students’ confidence. The teacher is a key source of listening material, so give classroom instructions in English, when possible. Challenge your students by using language at a level slightly above theirs. You can reinforce understanding through your tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, gestures, and pictures.

It’s important to make the reason for doing a listening activity clear, for example, completing a picture or putting on a performance. Young learners are motivated by clearly defined tasks and a clear end-product. They often learn best through specific objects and everyday activities which they are familiar with in their own language. They are unlikely to understand everything, but can be encouraged to get the gist and to make guesses based on their world knowledge.

Initially, they may not produce language themselves, but will engage with activities non-verbally. With activities like songs, role-playing and drama, you can teach your learners stress patterns and grammatical patterns and rules.

Try to make your pronunciation clear and correct as young learners will start to repeat what they hear. Children are often less self-conscious about speaking a foreign language than adults, and have a better chance of achieving native-like pronunciation.

After an initial ‘silent period’ in which they begin to absorb the rules and pronunciation of English, learners will usually start to speak naturally. You can concentrate on short set phrases first, such as classroom language, greetings, and requests.

Your students will be less anxious if speaking activities are initially controlled. You can correct errors by modelling the correct answers yourself and helping your learners to self-correct. In time, activities can become looser. In free-speaking activities, it’s better not to correct errors, as fluency rather than accuracy is the aim.

As with listening activities, speaking activities can involve a lot of repetition. Repetition helps you teach intonation patterns and prepares your students for more meaningful conversation. Songs, chants, and other activities involving music and rhythm can help them learn natural stress patterns. Ensure there are lots of varied opportunities to practice listening and speaking in class, so that your children build confidence.

How do children develop listening and speaking skills?

The benefits of storytelling

• helping children consider new ideas
• introducing them to new cultures
• encouraging children to ask questions
• encouraging active participation
• encouraging cooperation
• increasing world knowledge
• creating a link to the home and the world outs

General tips for develop listening and speaking :

• It is preferable to expose children to language that is slightly above their level, mixed with language they are already familiar with.
• Listening and speaking materials for younger learners should have authentic meaning.
• Younger learners prefer activities with a clear goal.
• Young learners may have an initial ‘silent period’ when they are ‘absorbing language rules’
• When telling a story you may need to adapt it to the level of the class.
• When telling a story you should use a variety of techniques to engage students.
• Top-down processing involves use of background knowledge.
• During free-speaking activities the teacher should not interrupt to encourage fluency.
• Music and rhythm can help children learn natural stress patterns.
• Dictation is an example of an activity using bottom-up processing.

What are the sub-skills of reading and writing?

Reading sub-skills

• concentration
• correct posture at a desk and having the paper aligned to the body
• recognizing letters in the Roman alphabet
• visualizing letter shapes
• making connections between letters and sounds, i.e. phonics
• understanding how letters blend to make new sounds, e.g. o+w = /au/ as in ‘how’ and ‘now’
• recognizing and understanding words using bottom-up and top-down processing
• understanding the sense of a text
• making inferences and filling in gaps of information

Writing sub-skills

• concentration
• fine motor skills – holding and controlling a pen or pencil
• hand-eye coordination
• keeping letters and words in the head, e.g. when copying from the board
• creating the correct shapes of letters
• thinking clearly and organizing thoughts coherently
• using punctuation and connectors
• being aware of the audience
• developing a personal style and voice

Activating reading through prediction-reading sub skills

• Encourage young learners to predict what a text will be about from examining the cover, title, contents page, and pictures in the book.
• Read Big Books and picture books, and model the strategies you can use to encourage children to predict (‘What do you think will happen next?’ ‘Where do you think she is going?’ ‘Oh no, I’m scared! Will he be OK?’ ‘What do you think her mother is going to say?’ ‘I wonder what she’s going to do now’, etc.).
• Cut up texts and sequencing tasks and ask students to put the sentences/paragraphs in order.
• Read puzzles and riddles to the class, to encourage the children to hypothesize and make good guesses.
• Play guessing games, to encourage curiosity and hypothesizing.
• Use storyboards to help children see sequences and make connections between different parts of the story

Bottom-up & Top-down processing

Bottom-up processing works by starting with smaller details and building on them to create an understanding of something.

Top-down processing starts with a larger concept or idea, then works down to the smaller details.

Approaches for reading and activities for different classes

• Teacher-led reading is a useful whole-class activity in which the teacher can model useful reading strategies such as encouraging prediction, point out interesting features to the class such as pictures, headings, and content pages, and provide a natural oral model for beginner and more experienced readers. It can be used effectively with large classes.
• Shared reading encourages collaboration, enabling children of all levels to enjoy working at the same pace. Children can take it in turns to be the one who holds the book, guided by an adult.
• Guided reading is a very common approach in many first language classrooms. Certain sections or pages are set by the teacher, who gives the children the opportunity to read silently; the whole group can then discuss questions set by the teacher. Alternatively, the teacher can nominate children in the group to read aloud. This is much less daunting than reading in front of the whole class. Using multiple class sets allows children to work at their level as the class can be divided into different book groups according to ability.
• Paired reading can be set up with two children sharing one book or two children with their own copy of the same book. This is a useful approach for small class sizes. The teacher can ask the children to work on particular parts of the story and to discuss and share their answers. This can be very effective for story boarding activities, where the children rewrite their own  versions by changing one thing (e.g. a main character, a setting, a conversation, an event, an outcome, etc.).
• Free reading
  Children choose their own reading material and are not set a task: they read for pleasure over an extended period of time (at home or in class). The teacher may set feedback activities (e.g. complete a reading diary or log) or there may be no task at all.

The importance of CLIL in literacy:Using language to learn, learning to use language

CLIL, or Content and Language Integrated Learning involves pupils learning a subject, such as science, music, geography, and so on through the medium of a foreign language. The intention is to teach both the subject and the language at the same time. Literacy development is an integral part of CLIL. When our pupils encounter new concepts, it is speaking and writing about them that enables them to process the new information and thus make it meaningful to them.

21st century literacy: multi-modality refers to the multiple forms of communication which includes text as well as non-print ‘texts’, i.e. sounds, shapes, images, color, and so on.

Grammar and vocabulary

• Using the inductive approach, the teacher supplies language examples from which a grammar rule is inferred. Learners then discover the rule for themselves.
• With the deductive approach, the teacher starts with a presentation of an item of grammar, followed by an activity which applies the rule.
• Using explicit teaching methods, the teacher gives learners the rule, then moves on to manipulating the structures and practising them.
• The aim of implicit teaching methods is to provide opportunities for learners to ‘notice’ grammatical features and to raise awareness of language structures, without requiring the learners to directly analyse or manipulate them in any way.

Pro-grammar or anti-grammar? Who makes the rules?

As we have seen, it is important to adopt a holistic approach to grammar for very young learners. In this initial stage, learning grammar is implicit, with very young children absorbing formulaic chunks of language that combine both lexis and grammar.  Very young children want to understand the meaning of these chunks and what they can use them for. They are not interested in seeing them as separate structures or grammatical forms, and cannot conceptually understand them in this way. It is also important to remember that children in this age group have limited motor skills (e.g. cutting, drawing) and learning skills (reading, writing), and have short attention spans.

As learners develop, they become more able to move beyond implicit learning and simple thematic concepts, towards dealing with abstract ideas and a more systematic, analytical understanding of aspects of grammar. We can then introduce activities which a) focus on separating chunks into vocabulary and grammar, allowing for more explicit noticing of language patterns and b) encourage a deeper awareness of how these patterns can be analyzed and used.

It is very important that grammar is still presented in a fun, motivating way, and introduced when the learners themselves start to show an interest in language structures. This will be different depending on the cognitive and conceptual stage of the child and the educational and cultural context they are learning in, rather than by specific age or class level. Often children will be learning grammar in this way in their first language, as well as basic metalinguistic terms, and this can be helpful in furthering language awareness and development in English.

The role of error correction

• The importance of correction: Making mistakes is undeniably a natural part of the learning process. Raising students’ awareness of their errors supports the view that focusing on form is necessary in order to learn, and that without correction, learners will find it difficult to progress beyond a certain level – a state referred to as ‘fossilization‘.
• Deciding what to correct: In order not to demotivate or damage learner confidence, it is crucial that corrective feedback is balanced appropriately and handled sensitively. Limit the number of corrections made to a few significant errors, and remember to respond to the content of the communication as well as its form.
• Using errors positively: In How to Teach Grammar (1999), Scott Thornbury notes that ‘learners’ errors can offer a rich source of material for language focus and consciousness raising’, but outlines the importance of evaluating which errors to focus on, what strategies to select and how best to implement them.
• Types of error: There are many different types of errors, but broadly speaking those to focus on stem from two main sources: negative transfer: learners’ first language patterns are incorrectly transferred to the second language. developmental errors: learners are attempting to apply second language rules or patterns, but have not yet assimilated the structure sufficiently well to do so accurately.
• Strategies for correction: Possible strategies for responding to errors are: Encouraging self correction by the learner by identifying the problematic point and inviting other options, either from the individual or the class. Reformulation, i.e. supplying a corrected version of the error for the learner. Noting the error and marking it for future practice/revision at a later date, so as not to interrupt communicative flow at the time.
• Older learners: With older learners, it is possible to focus more overtly on particular errors by asking them to make error charts to focus on, or having an ‘error of the week‘ board which they can add to. Above all, it is vital to recognize that noticing errors and working on them does not mean they will be repaired immediately, and frequent repetition and practice of the language in a variety of different contexts and situation is essential.

Ways of encouraging dynamic vocabulary use

• Build on previous knowledge by recycling and recycling vocabulary through the use of semantic network categories, and groups.
• Create opportunities for multiple exposures to lexis by using different contexts and a broad variety of activity types.
• Encourage deep-level processing through using familiar vocabulary and engaging learners cognitively.
• Use categorization to help engage learners’ critical-thinking skills. Get learners to create types, groups, clines, and hierarchies to aid memorization and create new contexts for recycling vocabulary.

Assessing vocabulary activities for different age groups

• Learner ability to understand, remember, and extend vocabulary changes and develops considerably over the primary years. Advances in conceptual understanding, as well as personal and social development, mean that as learners mature, their capacity for more complex analysis and interaction with ideas and language is possible. As reading and writing skills develop, a broader range of communicative possibilities open up. From the age of around eight years children are becoming more autonomous, more able to engage productively in group and pairwork activities, and to show themselves capable of taking more responsibility for their own learning.When assessing the suitability of different vocabulary activities, it is helpful to bear in mind the key changes between very young and older learners, and to exploit these developments for maximum learning potential.
• Clearly these divisions are not concrete and need to be assessed flexibly to account for individual learners and their specific needs and learning environment.Certain issues are always important in the vocabulary-learning process regardless of age, such as providing meaningful contexts, creating ample opportunity to recycle and extend word networks in varied activities, and engaging the active participation of the learner.

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