STARTING POINTS Part 1 – Child development: theory and practice

Part one - Child development: theory and practice

By Julia Manning-Morton, an independent consultant, trainer and author (www.key-times.co.uk/profiles/). She specialises in practice and provision that meets the needs of children under three and is an expert on the personal, social and emotional well-being of children and practitioners. Her publications include Two-Year-Olds In Early Years Settings: Journeys Of Discovery (2015) and Exploring Well-being in the Early Years (2014)

Overview

This series of articles is an introduction to the development of children from birth to five years old. It is for practitioners who are new to the early childhood field and are just starting out on their training and career in the early years profession.

The series aims to help you to notice and think about children's development, to make sense of what you observe and to understand your role in supporting children's development.

The series will include ten case study observations, each one of a child of a particular age and context, which will be discussed in relation to different theories of development.

In this first article, though, we will consider some general points about studying children's development and introduce some overarching ideas about early development.

Looking after children is a huge responsibility, and each child deserves our best efforts to support their development in the most effective way possible. This means that having an in-depth knowledge of children's development is an essential requirement for you as a professional practitioner in the early years – it is a core professional competence.

Your knowledge about child development needs to be broad, so that you can look at things from different perspectives. This will help you look at children as a whole and develop a holistic approach in your practice rather than only focusing on a few narrow areas.

Your knowledge also needs to be deep so that you can understand the different pathways that an individual child's development may take. This will enable you to understand and provide appropriately for children whose development might be different in a particular way to most other children. It will also help you to discuss a child's development with parents and other professionals in a helpful and competent way.

A good knowledge of child development theory will provide you with a framework that will support your practice, helping you to make informed assessments and to provide relevant and meaningful play opportunities that engage children.

Sometimes, some adults say being with babies or young children is boring. This is because they don't understand what is going on in all the child's actions and behaviours, so don't see all the amazing ways in which children are developing and learning. Extending your knowledge of child development means that you will see and understand more, and so your enjoyment in your work will be greater and you will experience more professional satisfaction.

What is child development?

Child development is part of the science of developmental psychology, which focuses on how humans grow, change, develop and learn over their whole lifetime.

Child development covers the ages from pre-birth, through early, middle and late childhood and adolescence, but in the early years we usually focus on the development of children from birth to six or eight years old, depending on the purpose of study.

How babies and young children grow in size, knowledge and competence is part of child development, but development is not only growth. Development is also about the changes that take place in the body and the brain and in thought processes and behaviour.

As children grow and develop, they learn. Growing, developing and learning cannot be separated, so it is important to include all three when discussing children's development. By talking only about 'learning', important aspects of a child's growth or developmental change may be missed.

KEY QUESTIONS IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Developmental psychology focuses on how and why changes in the body, brain, thinking and behaviour take place, and so asks the following questions:

Are developmental changes the same across all people or do some appear more in some populations than others?

There are common features and patterns of development, but the unique paths that individual children follow will vary according to their social and cultural context.

Which aspects of development stay mostly the same over a lifetime?

There are aspects of our genetic make-up that give us a biological 'pre-disposition' to be a certain way throughout our lives, such as aspects of our physical appearance or aspects of our temperament. These usually stay largely the same, but all aspects of our development can be influenced by changes in circumstances throughout life, such as serious illness or injury, moving to live in a different culture, being sent to a particular kind of school and so on.

What are the links between experiences in early life and our abilities, personalities and behaviours in adulthood?

The experiences that children have in their early years hugely influence their future outcomes, but these experiences do not determine these outcomes. Different children respond differently to similar circumstances and have different outcomes. Also, development does not happen in a straight line from A to B, it loops and spirals and often pauses and doubles back for a while; children can reach similar outcomes through different routes and with different timings.

It used to be thought that there were critical times for some aspects of development, so if a child missed out on certain experiences, the window of opportunity would close forever. These times are now called 'sensitive periods', when a child will more easily develop in a certain area, such as speech or attachment relationships.

If opportunities are missed at this time, the child's development and learning may be impaired, but the child may also catch up if given enough opportunity later on, although this will be harder for them.

What causes the change to happen? Is development affected more by a child's biological genes or their social environment?

The extent to which development is to do with the child's biological processes or happens as a result of experience is a very old discussion.

Today, it is generally accepted that development is a product of both nature and nurture. It happens through the interactions between the growth of the body, the developing structures of the brain and the child's experience of the world and relationships with people.

Growing, developing and learning cannot be separated, so it is important to include all three when discussing children's development.

Does development happen in separate areas?

Child development is often divided into different areas; usually social, emotional, physical, cognitive and linguistic. Although this sort of categorisation can be helpful to the adults who are studying child development, it is important to remember that all areas are interrelated in the holistic development of the child.

Does development happen in stages?

For some theorists, development happens in stages; where there are changes that happen in a set order and are common to everyone. These stages are qualitatively different to the next and characterised by a unique way of thinking or behaving. However, it is now thought that changes between stages are more gradual and that development is also continuous.

Also, the age at which children do things varies enormously and depends on biological sequences, what children inherit genetically, nutrition, the opportunities and experiences they have, the people they meet and whether they have special needs or disabilities. For this reason it is now usual to talk about sequences rather than stages of development.

WHO ARE THE KEY PEOPLE WHEN THINKING ABOUT CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENT

Parents

When you want to find out about an individual child's development, the most important people to ask are their parents or main carers. They are the people who know their child best and who can help you to understand all the little details of their child's ways that will enable you to get to know them. Without this kind of detailed information from parents, you cannot hope to provide truly effectively for a child.

THEORIES

When you want to understand more about how or why a child's development is progressing in the way it is, or want to know more about child development in general, then you need to find out more about developmental theory.

A theory is a set of ideas that have been tested to explain how and why something happens. But this does not mean that one theory is the truth about development. There are many different theories and ideas which sometimes agree and sometimes don't agree with each other; they take different perspectives:

Biological perspectives

Some theories focus more on the biological influences of development. They emphasise the genetic influences on development and the course of growth (which is called maturation). This perspective can be noticed in frameworks that describe set sequences or milestones of development.

This perspective also suggests that children naturally do what they need to in order to develop and learn, and adults help children to learn by making sure that the environment supports the child's learning as it unfolds naturally.

Environmental perspectives

Some theories take a perspective that sees development as influenced mainly by the social environment. It sees children like lumps of clay to be moulded or blank slates, on which adults can write the habits they wanted the child to develop. These are sometimes called 'learning theories' because they explain development as happening through observed learning.

This perspective also includes 'behaviourist' theories which focus on children's observed behaviours and how adults can make changes in the environment to influence them. Using tools such as 'star charts' reflects this theoretical perspective.

The interactionist perspective

Interactionist theories believe that a child's learning is an interaction between the developing child and the environment. This perspective includes the importance of genetic make-up, but emphasises how children build on their biological inheritance through their experience.

Interactionists also emphasise that children are active in their development and learning; that they construct their own knowledge and understanding about things. These are called constructivist or social-constructivist theories.

KEY THEORISTS

Jean Piaget: Piaget's constructivist theory identified that children do not passively soak up information, they are active learners, using hands-on experience and what they know already to try to make sense of the world. In the process of trying out their ideas, children construct more sophisticated levels of knowledge.

Piaget discussed cognitive development, but he also took account of the biological sequences of development and believed that children go through stages in their development, each of which have different ways of processing thought.

Lev Vygotsky: While seeing children as actively involved in constructing their knowledge, Vygotsky's constructivist theory also emphasises the social context in which it takes place. This is called social constructivism; that children construct their knowledge according to the culture in which they grow up.

Jerome Bruner and Barbara Rogoff also use a social constructivist perspective to emphasise the role of the adult in children's learning.

Urie Bronfenbrenner believes that development and learning are not limited to the individual child's biology or immediate experiences, but are also affected by the wider social and political world. This is called an ecological systems model of development.

Judy Dunn looks at children's social development in the context of their family and culture.

John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott: From a psychoanalytic perspective, Bowlby and Winnicott were interested in how personality is shaped by childhood experiences and how behaviour is activated by unconscious thoughts as well as conscious ones. They emphasised the influence of children's care experiences on their sense of self and understanding of others.

HOW DO YOU LEARN ABOUT CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENT?

Observation

Observation means watching and listening to children closely, in a purposeful and focused way, recording the information and then analysing it to make sense of what you have observed. This is your key tool for understanding an individual child's growth, development and learning.

Developing your skills of observation is one of the most important parts of your training and development as an early years practitioner. Through careful observation, you can:

• get to know each child as an individual
• understand each child's development
• think about each child's particular styles of play and learning, their interests and strengths
• think about how to support children's needs and extend their learning
• gather information to share with parents, and show how you value parents' observations of their children
• gain an understanding of how children experience life in the setting.

There are many different ways of recording observations of children which can be useful for different purposes. The case studies in the following articles in this 12-part series will use narrative approaches to observation, which record what is seen and heard as it is observed.

Reading

To extend your knowledge of developmental theory, you need to read. Starting with magazine articles such as this is great, but you then need to look at the suggested books at the end of articles and read further and in more depth.

If you are a student on a course, your tutor will suggest books for you. If not, your manager/mentor/colleagues will be able to recommend and maybe even lend you reading that they have found useful. Most effective settings will have a set of books in the staff area that you can borrow.

Develop a reading habit; this is as important for qualified and experienced practitioners as it is for newcomers to the field. Having a regular time and reading little and often seems to work for a lot of people.

Talking to colleagues, parents and children

To better understand your observations and to learn more about an individual child or child development in general, you need to talk to parents and colleagues.

You will then benefit from their different perspectives, maybe seeing things you might have missed, understanding an aspect of behaviour or learning differently to you or agreeing with your analysis and confirming your ideas.

Of course the other people to talk to are the children! Looking at photos, pictures or models together gives children the opportunity to explain and to think more about what they are doing and gives you the opportunity to gain more insight into the child's world.

What a privilege!

FURTHER READING

Bee, H and Boyd, D (2011) (13th edition) The Developing Child. MA. USA: Harper Collins

Berk, L E (2012) Child Development. USA: Pearson Education

Bruce, T, Meggitt, C and Manning-Morton, J (6th edition forthcoming) (2016) Childcare and Education. London: Hodder & Stoughton

Karmiloff-Smith, A (1994). Baby it's You. London: Ebury Press

Mukherji, P and Dryden, L (2014) (Eds) Foundations of Early Childhood: Principles and Practice. London: Sage

Keenan, T and Evans, S (2009) (2nd ed) An Introduction to Child Development, London: Sage Publications

Lindon, J (2012). (3rd edition) Understanding Child Development: 0-8 Years: Linking Theory and Practice. London: Hodder Education

http://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/early-years-pioneers

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