comps reading - How People Learn – Chapter4. How Children Learn

1.Theoretical framework of infants’ learning:
(1)Jean Piaget: the world of young infants is an egocentric fusion of the internal and external worlds and that the development of an accurate representation of physical reality depends on the gradual coordination of schemes of looking, listening, and touching.
(2)Vygotsky (1978): the active role of learner; zone of proximal development

2.Language acquisition cannot take place in the absence of shared social and situational contexts because the latter provide information about the meanings of words and sentences structures (Chapman, 1978). The child uses meaning as a clue to language rather than language as a clue to meaning (MacNamara, 1972).

3.Learning in children:
(1)Children have less memory capacity than adults.
(2)Children and adults have roughly the same mental capacity, but with development, children acquire knowledge and develop effective activities (i.e. strategies, e.g. rehearsal, elaboration, summarization, clustering).
(3)Metacognition

4.Three key finding concerning “Multiple strategies, strategies choices” emerging from studies: (P.98-100)
(1)discoveries are often made not in response to impasses or failures but rather in the context of successful performance
(2)short-lived transition strategies often precede more enduring approaches
(3)generalization of new approaches often occur very slowly, even when children can provide compelling rationales for their usefulness (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Kuhn, 1995; Siegler and Growley, 1991)

5.One of the applications of “multiple intelligences (proposed by Gardner, 1983, 1991: the existence of seven relatively autonomous intelligences: linguistic, logical, musical, special, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, (and intrapersonal, naturalistic 1997))” to education is the attempt to modify traditional curricula.

6.Children’s early understanding of the perceptual and physical world may jump-start the learning process, even making learning possible, but one should look with caution for ways in which early knowledge may impede later learning.

7.Children are both problem solvers and problem generators.

8.Children exhibit capacities that are shaped by environmental experiences and the individuals who care for them (e.g., caregivers, parents, playing the role of more capable facilitators, concept and application of “zone of proximal development”)