Student Development

Development refers to long-term personal changes that have multiple sources and multiple effects.

Some human developments are especially broad and take years to unfold fully; a person's ever-evolving ability to “read” other's moods, for example, may take a lifetime to develop fully. Other developments are faster and more focused, like a person's increasing skill at solving crossword puzzles. The faster and simpler is the change, the more likely we are to call the change “learning” instead of development. The difference between learning and development is a matter of degree.

Students’ development matters for teachers, but the way it matters depends partly on how schooling is organized. In teaching a single, “self-contained” grade-level, the benefits of knowing about development will be less explicit, but just as real, as if you teach many grade levels.

If you teach multiple grade levels, as often is true of specialists or teachers in middle school or high school, then your need for developmental knowledge will be more obvious because you will confront wide age differences on a daily basis. You will need to know something not only about how your students are unique, but also about general trends of development during childhood and adolescence.

Physical development during the school years

Although it may be tempting to think that physical development is the concern of physical education teachers only, it is actually a foundation for many academic tasks.

In first grade, for example, it is important to know whether children can successfully manipulate a pencil. In later grades, it is important to know how long students can be expected to sit still without discomfort—a real physical challenge. In all grades, it is important to have a sense of students’ health needs related to their age or maturity, if only to know who may become ill, and with what illness, and to know what physical activities are reasonable and needed.

Cognitive development: the theory of Jean Piaget

Cognition refers to thinking and memory processes, and cognitive development refers to long-term changes in these processes. One of the most widely known perspectives about cognitive development is the cognitive stage theory of a Swiss psychologist named Jean Piaget. Piaget created and studied an account of how children and youth gradually become able to think logically and scientifically.

After observing children closely, Piaget proposed that cognition developed through distinct stages from birth through the end of adolescence. By stages he meant a sequence of thinking patterns with four key features:

1. They always happen in the same order.

2. No stage is ever skipped.

3. Each stage is a significant transformation of the stage before it.

4. Each later stage incorporated the earlier stages into itself. Basically this is the “staircase” model of

development mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Piaget proposed four major stages of cognitive development, and called them (1) sensorimotor intelligence, (2) preoperational thinking, (3) concrete operational thinking, and (4) formal operational thinking. Each stage is correlated with an age period of childhood, but only approximately.

Social development: relationships,personal motives, and morality

Social development refers to the long-term changes in relationships and interactions involving self, peers, and family. It includes both positive changes, such as how friendships develop, and negative changes, such as aggression or bullying. The social developments that are the most obviously relevant to classroom life fall into three main areas: (1) changes in self-concept and in relationships among students and teachers, (2) changes in basic needs or personal motives, and (3) changes in sense of rights and responsibilities. As with cognitive development, each of these areas has a broad, well-known theory (and theorist) that provides a framework for thinking about how the area relates to teaching.

Moral development: forming a sense of rights and responsibilities

Morality is a system of beliefs about what is right and good compared to what is wrong or bad. Moral

development refers to changes in moral beliefs as a person grows older and gains maturity. Moral beliefs are related to, but not identical with, moral behavior: it is possible to know the right thing to do, but not actually do it. It is also not the same as knowledge of social conventions, which are arbitrary customs needed for the smooth operation of society. Social conventions may have a moral element, but they have a primarily practical purpose.