Chapter 7 Human Growth and Development Guided Reading Answers

The first part of this course consists of nine lessons that cover child and adolescent development and its impact on learning. This first lesson provides an overview of this topic. The rest of the course addresses individual differences and identifying and accommodating student disabilities and developmental issues.

Consider the following learning objectives to orient yourself to the content of this lesson:

Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to...

• define human growth and development and how it impacts teaching and learning;
• become familiar with the theories of child development and how the research that supports those theories can be applied to improve your teaching and your students' learning;
• state at least eight learning goals that you have for this course.
  

Discussion

Children and adolescents change and grow in many ways: physically, socially, emotionally and intellectually. It is a fact of life. Change and growth -- development -- can be stressful, so it is important that teachers are aware of the changes so they can design instruction and instructional environments that facilitate learning, despite the stress of change.

The important points to glean from this lesson include an idea of what human growth and development entails, and what we learn from different types of educational research. In addition, you will consider the differences between experienced and beginning teachers (so that you can develop professional development goals for your teaching practice), the role of learning theories in instruction, and your own personal learning goals for this course.

To start with, a study of human growth and development involves the study of all kinds of people, to determine how and why they change or remain the same over time. It is true that everyone experiences birth and death, but what other commonalities and differences are there in the human experience? How do these similarities and differences effect how and how well we learn? Researchers in human growth and development attempt to answer such questions, and their work is highlighted in the readings for this lesson.

When teachers understand the results of research in human growth and development, they are better equipped to understand and teach the children and adolescents with whom they work. Additional research related to teaching and learning is carried out by educational psychologists. Educational psychology is the division of psychology which encompasses the nature of learning, development, motivation, diversity, and assessment, as these topics relate to classroom practice.  It is the field that applies psychological theories and principles to instructional practice to provide a theoretical basis for what is done in the classroom.  In some ways, the strategies and principles that educational psychologists propose seem like common sense. However, research has shown that many of the strategies that teachers or students use are not effective, or that strategies that they believe to be ineffective actually are effective. For example, many students believe that taking notes during a lecture interferes with their learning more than it helps.  However, research has shown that taking notes helps students to store information into memory more effectively and provides them with something to review and reinforce their learning at a later time.

Research

What kind of research is used in human development and educational psychology?  There are descriptive studies that describe phenomena.  Researchers may survey teachers to see what types of classroom management techniques they use in their classrooms.  Or they may videotape a classroom interaction and analyze it.  One type of descriptive study is the ethnography which is borrowed from anthropology and uses methods such as interviews, audio and videotapes, and journals to understand the meaning that certain events have to people involved.  An example of an ethnographic study relevant to this course is one where the researchers analyzed the differences between expert and beginning teachers.  Other types of descriptive studies include participant observation , where the researcher is part of the group that he or she is studying, and in-depth case studies where a researcher closely follows one or two subjects.

Very often correlational studies are done.  A correlation is a statistical relationship between two variables.  Your text, for example, states the correlation between height and weight is about .70 (a strong relationship) and between height and the number of languages spoken is .00 (no relationship).  Correlations range from +1.00 to -1.00.  The closer the correlation is to +1.00 or -1.00 the stronger the correlation.  With positive correlations, when one factor increases or decreases the other factor does the same. With negative correlations, as one factor increases or decreases the other factor does the opposite.  The important thing to realize is that you can find correlations between almost any type of variables. CORRELATIONS DO NOT PROVE CAUSE AND EFFECT.

For example, there is probably a strong correlation between drinking milk as a child and becoming a murderer, but that does not mean one leads to the other.  Correlations help you to know that a certain action might occur when a variable is present, but not that the variable causes that action.  For example, there is a high correlation between transitions in the classroom and behavior problems.  However, with some classes of students you do not have problems; demonstrating it is not a cause and effect relationship.  With other classes of students, you will have problems, and you can alleviate those problems by realizing that transitions are a risky period of time and preparing for them in advance.

Besides descriptive studies, there are experimental studies that allow researchers to make statements about cause and effect.  Investigators try to control as many variables as possible, use both a control group of subjects and an experimental group, and assign subjects randomly.  The experimental group gets the experimental treatment and the control group does not, so that the results of the two groups can be compared.  Statistical tests are usually conducted and if the differences are statistically significant, then that means they didn't happen by chance but were most likely due to the experimental treatment.

It sounds pretty simple when laid out this way, but it is much more complicated in the real world of the classroom.  For example, experimental studies can be done to determine what reading program is better for students.  Group A does one program, Group B does another, then their reading scores are compared at the end of the program to determine which program might be better.  If only it was so simple!  Consider that Group A's teachers might be better teachers, thus influencing the student outcomes.  Or, Group B might do reading in the afternoon when students are tired and don't pay as much attention as they probably would have in the morning.  Whenever you are reading about experiments, you need to keep your eyes open to other influences on the results.

All research should be read with a bit of skepticism.  You were not there when the research was done.  You are reading an article or a one-sentence summary of what someone has decided the research has shown.  You do not know all of the problems that have been dealt with, how they have been solved, what may have been changed during the research, or even, in some cases, how the subjects were obtained.  We have learned a lot through the quality research that has been conducted through the ages, but there have also been many studies used to mislead us.  (Case in point, see https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/abusing-research/ )

Expert and Beginning Teachers

One thing research has demonstrated is that there is a difference between the way expert and beginning teachers think.  Because expert teachers have developed systems of knowledge, (not only of their subject matter, but of classroom management, assessment and motivation), they can more easily draw from this pool of knowledge to handle a situation.  They are usually more reflective.  Beginning teachers, however, are still trying to remember the management strategies or teaching methods they have read about but rarely or never tried. Their knowledge is more segmented and not integrated into a functioning whole.  But time will allow for that to happen.  Time and reflection.  Ideally, you will take time to reflect daily about your instruction and classroom management issues: what worked and didn't work, your feelings about the day, what you might do again, questions you have, answers to previous questions, and other reflective topics.  Write these things down so that you can look at them later and learn from them.

Learning Theories

Learning theories are another result of research. Learning theories provide a basis for learning in this course and for considering how you might teach.  These theories have evolved from differing opinions on how people learn, and each of the more popular theories have a strong following.  For example, be haviorists believe that learning results in a change in the learner's behavior, and that learning is a process of forming connections between stimuli and responses.  Behaviorists focus on the outputs of the learning process.

Social Learning theorists believe that learning occurs through a modeling of behavior, dependent on environmental factors.  Social learning theorists focus on the learning that occurs within a social context.

Cognitivists believe that learning cannot always be described in terms of a change in behavior because it occurs whether or not there is an observable change in the learner. They consider learning a change in mental processes.  Cognitive theorists believe that an instructor can facilitate learning by transferring information to learners and helping them to organize it in such a way that they are able to recall it later.  Cognitivists focus on the inputs of the learning process.

Constructivists believe that learning is an active process that uses existing knowledge to build new knowledge and that all knowledge is constructed from previous knowledge. Constructivists focus on the construction of knowledge, or "meaning-making."  You will be learning about each of these learning theories in more detail in this course.

What are you hoping to learn from this course?  It is important for you to set some goals so that while you are reading your text and articles you will have a purpose to your learning.  The goal of this course is to help you become a better teacher by providing you with a foundation of research and theory for the decisions you make in the classroom.  Each lesson will focus on information that will assist you as a teacher and provide reinforcement for what you are doing right, and cause for reflection for those activities which are not working.

Take this time to write down your goals for this course.  Remember the following topics will be covered.  What do you hope to achieve in each?

Human Growth, Development & Learning

Physical Development

Learning Theories Related to Student Behavior

Intellectual Development and Learning

Family, Peers & Society

Emotional & Social Development

Learning Theories Related to Emotional & Social Development

Moral Development

Language Development

Learning in a Culturally Diverse Classroom

Accommodating Learner Differences with Differentiated Instruction

Accommodating Gifted Students

Reaching Students with Disabilities & Developmental Issues

Motivation

Where can I find out more?

The research on how we learn has been summarized and written in a readable form in the National Research Council 1999 report How People Learn (also in a book by the same title, Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 2000). To view or download this free PDF of How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School: Expanded Edition, please download as a guest, or create a free MyNAP account.

Use five to seven double-spaced pages to write a synthesis paper that covers the following three items, below. Your assignment document should be named with your PID and "humgro1" (example: smith07_humgro1.doc).

1. Personal Introduction - Address the following six (6) bulleted items related to your practice and your goals for this course:

• About Me - Introduce yourself and state how long you have been teaching (either formal or informal teaching), and describe any background experiences you've had that are related to or that impact your teaching. If you are not presently teaching, tell us where you hope to teach and in what field of study you will be teaching.
• About My Practice - Indicate what grade and subject you teach or intend to teach.
• About My School & Students - Explain a bit about the school at which you teach or where you would like to teach, such as demographics, school culture, rural, suburban or urban school, etc. (Do not provide any details, such as colleagues' or students' names, or any other confidential information.)
• My Goals - Write your learning goals for this course and provide a justification for why you have chosen them.
• How Human Development & Learning Impacts My Practice - Briefly express your beliefs about human development and how students learn, and how these factors impact (or should impact) your practice.
• Maintaining a Reflective Practice - As you contemplate these points, you are engaging in reflective practice. What measures could you take to ensure that you continue to reflect on and improve your teaching?

2. Theories of Child Development - List and briefly describe the seven (7) theories of child development covered in your textbook. Then, pick two (2) that you feel are most applicable to your teaching situation and use two to three paragraphs to describe how you see their application to your classroom.
3. How Developmental Changes Impact Instruction - Your text mentions many factors that impact a person's development and learning, including the context of their lives (nature and nurture), both common and individual developmental periods and changes, and qualitative and quantitative changes in development. Using the charts in your text, use two to three paragraphs to describe how the developmental changes characteristic of the age group you teach impact the way you design and deliver your instruction.
4. Writing & Naming Your Assignment - Write your synthesis paper as an Microsoft Word document and save it with the filename of:

[your PID ]_humgro1.docx (example: smith07_humgro1.docx)

Use the rubric provided below to guide the development of your paper and be sure to check your finished paper for proper spelling, grammar, and sentence structure.

5. Submitting Your Assignment - On or before the due date: Complete your assignment and submit it for a grade using the Student Assignment Submission Interface (SASI). Submit this worksheet using the name:
   [yourPID]_humgro1.docx
   
   Click here if you need additional information regarding submission of your assignment.
   

Rubric for Lesson 1 Assignment Worksheet (worth 40 points)

To obtain all possible points for this assignment, your submission must include complete and substantive answers to all the points listed above. Your synthesis paper will be graded according to the following rubric.

Worksheet Criteria for Lesson 1	Standard for Full Credit	Points Awarded / Points Possible
PART 1: Personal Introduction Clarity and Completeness	Synthesis includes a clear and complete personal introduction, background experiences related to teaching, and length and type of teaching experience.	/2
	Includes a clear and complete description of the grade and/or subject taught (or targeted grade and/or subject).	/1
	Includes a clear and complete description of the school including demographics, school culture, rural, suburban or urban school, and other information (providing details that identify the school are not necessary).	/1
	Includes clear and complete personal course learning goals with a justification for their selection, for at least 8 of the 14 course topics listed in this lesson.	/8
Reflective statement of beliefs about learning and how students learn	Includes a thoughtful and reflective statement of personal beliefs about human development and learning and how students learn, and how these factors impact (or should impact) teaching practice.	/5
Thoughtful and thorough action plan for reflective practice	Includes a clear explanation of a professional development action plan with measures to promote reflective practice and continuous improvement of teaching.	/5
Part 2 - Theories of Child Development Seven theories of childhood development & application of two theories	Correctly lists and describes the seven theories of childhood development covered in the textbook, and uses two to three paragraphs to describe how two of those theories can be applied to the participant's classroom. (theories: Biological, Behaviorism & Social Learning, Psychodynamic, Cognitive-developmental, Cognitive process, Sociocultural, Developmental Systems)	/7
Part 3 - How Developmental Changes Impact Instruction Impact of developmental changes on teaching	Uses two to three paragraphs to describe how the developmental changes characteristic of the age group taught impact the participant's design and delivery of instruction.	/6
Mechanics and Formatting	The writing is logical and clear, uses proper grammar and correct spelling, and uses proper APA format for in-text citations and end-of-paper references when appropriate.	/5
	Total Points Earned/Total Points Possible for Assignment Worksheet Comments:	/40

Berger, K.S. (2006). The developing person: Through childhood and adolescence. New York: Worth.

McDevitt, T.M., & Ormrod, J.E. (2020). Child development and education. (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Woolfolk, A. (2004). Educational psychology. (9th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Chapter 7 Human Growth and Development Guided Reading Answers

Source: https://www.itma.vt.edu/courses/humgro/lesson_1.php

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