The focus in this chapter will be on how primary cognition influences and is influenced by formal schooling.

1. Schooling across cultures

1. Schooling varies from one society to another
2. Schooling is not a universal part of childhood
3. In some communities, schools emphasize competition and individual achievement, while in others, competitiveness is rare
4. In schools of all societies, children are evaluated in some way and their achievements and behaviors are labeled right or wrong, good or bad
5. This means that, in all communities where there are schools, some children are successful and others are not

1. IQ Tests

1. How well children do in school is, in part, a function of their overall intelligence
2. One approach to assessing children's intelligence is to give a test that measures their innate mental capabilities
3. Two of the most commonly used tests are the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scales
4. Intelligence tests are standardized, meaning they are administered to large samples of children
5. In grading these tests, an individual child's scores are compared to the scores of other children of the same age
6. Scores on an intelligence test are usually expressed as an intelligence quotient (IQ)
7. An individual's IQ is computed by dividing the person's mental age by his or her chronological age
8. Mental age is determined by performance on the test
9. Uses of IQ tests in school

1. IQ tests are sometimes given to school-age children as part of an assessment to diagnose learning problems or to identify special needs
2. Fortunately, using a single test score to make such important decisions about children's lives is rare today

1. Analysis and Multicultural critique of IQ testing

1. Multiple intelligences

1. Many believe that there is not a single, general intelligence but multiple intelligences
2. Sternberg and Wagner have proposed that there are three different kinds of intellectual functioning, that vary among individuals
3. The first is componential intelligence, whish is related to basic processes of thinking, attending, and remembering
4. The second is contextual intelligence, which is responsible for adapting thinking processes to changes in the environment
5. A third type of intelligence, experiential intelligence, allows humans to use previous experience in learning
6. Howard Gardner argues that at least seven distinct intellectual competencies can be identifies: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal (social understanding), and intrapersonal (self-understanding)
7. Each form of intelligence is independent and is related to functioning in a particular area of the brain
8. An important element of Gardner's theory is that different cultures appreciate and enhance different intelligences

1. IQ test content and cultural bias

1. In the US during the 1960s and 1970s, a growing body of research showed that IQ tests favored middle-class Euro-American children
2. IQ tests favor the learning styles, competencies, values, and motivations of the dominant culture
3. Since the 1970s, IQ tests have been standardized with more representative samples of children
4. The Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC), for example, has been standardized using a highly representative sample which includes all cultural groups as well as gifted, emotionally disturbed, and learning-disabled children
5. Separate norms are established for African-American and Euro-American children, so scores are based on what is expected for same-aged children of their own cultural group

1. Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

1. Piaget was not as concerned with the outcomes of intellectual development-as measured by scores on IQ tests-as with the processes of intellectual development
2. He sought to describe the specific steps children go through mentally to learn and to become competent adults
3. Assimilation and Accommodation

1. Piaget believed that learning and cognitive advancement at any age is the result of assimilation and accommodation
2. *Assimilating integrates new knowledge into previous understandings
3. * Adjusting an idea about something by adding a new feature or adapting a view is accommodation
4. Learning is internal and personal
5. The child must play an active role in constructing knowledge; the teacher serves only as a facilitator

1. Concrete Operational Thought

1. In this stage children gain freedom from some of the cognitive limitations of previous developmental periods, but they still display some cognitive characteristics of preschool-age children
2. Decentration

1. Children in the concrete operational stage are able to coordinate two ideas at once
2. They no longer center on just one aspect of the problem
3. Piaget used the word decentration to describe this kind of thinking

1. Reversibility

1. Children in the concrete operational stage can reverse operations; they can mentally or physically reverse the steps of a process to go back to a starting point

1. Causality

1. In the primary years, children begin to understand cause and effect more accurately
2. They can often see connections between actions-both their own and others'-and consequences
3. This is called causality
4. Even at this age, great care must still be taken so that children do not misinterpret events

1. Piaget's theory and traditional school subjects

1. The advancements in cognition described by Piaget allow concrete operational children to gain greater understanding of traditional subjects in school, such as social studies, mathematics and science
2. The Social Studies

1. In the social studies, an increased knowledge of concepts of time and space allows the early study of history or geography
2. In the concrete operational stage, children begin to accurately reflect on the past
3. They can understand that time is continuous from past to present to future and can distinguish the long ago from the present
4. Abstract history lessons that require the memorization of dates or complex historical interpretations are beyond the grasp of children of this age
5. During the late preschool and early primary years, children think about space in terms of their own movements or actions through it
6. Their thinking goes, "I know about this space because I walk this way to get to the park" or "I know about this space because I can crawl under it"
7. This conception has been referred to as action space

1. Mathematics

1. Children in the concrete operational stage are able to sue reason to overcome misleading perceptions
2. Only in the later primary years do children exclusively use counting and number concepts to solve problems
3. Another mathematics-related competence described by Piaget is seriation, the ability to order objects by length
4. Seriation is the foundation for important later math skills, such as transitive reasoning
5. If A is greater than B, and B greater than C, then A must be greater than C

1. Science

1. When a cloud floats by, preschool children believe it must have been moved by someone or something living, or "Mommy makes night time so people can sleep"
2. As children enter the concrete operational stage, however, they begin to overcome this limitation in thinking
3. They are able to think logically about what causes rain or how and why seeds travel from one place to another
4. A second advancement in scientific thinking is multiple classification
5. Children in the preoperational stage center on only one dimension when they are asked to categorize objects
6. Concrete operational children can think about two attributes at once
7. They can classify by both shape and color, placing all red triangles in one pile and all blue triangles in another
8. Thais ability to categorize phenomena in a hierarchical structure contributes to later understanding of the standard scientific classifications, such as genus and species

1. School and Concrete Living

1. Children of this age still need the support of concrete objects in order to learn, and attempts to teach classification or number in an abstract way without real objects would be futile and even harmful
2. Attempts to move young children too quickly into abstract thought have been found to lead to a great deal of stress

1. Analysis and Multicultural Critique of Piaget's Theory

1. Underestimates of Competence

1. A number of studies have found that children can acquire concrete operational thinking at an earlier age than Piaget proposed
2. Researchers have also shown that primary children can think at higher levels than Piaget suggested
3. In several studies children were found to engage in propositional logic, an advanced kind of thinking that Piaget believed only adolescents or adults could use
4. Propositional logic involves the interpretation of if/then statements

1. Culture and Cognitive Abilities

1. There is great individual variation in children's cognitive competence in the primary years
2. Some children are more advanced; others develop more slowly
3. One factor that contributes to this variation is culture

1. Vygotsky's View of Language and Social Interaction

1. A criticism of Piaget's work has been that it does not place great enough emphasis on language and social interaction, processes which Vygotsky has argued play a crucial role in school learning
2. Language, according to Vygotsky, helps to direct children's attention and organize their understandings
3. Both self-directed speech and the language of others are useful
4. Children of some cultural groups may require greater social interaction than others in learning

1. Memory, Metacognition, and Schooling

1. School success requires not just acquiring knowledge but retaining it for significant periods of time
2. Memory is critical for long-term success in school
3. Several types of memory have been identified
4. Types of Memory

1. Sensory memory refers to brief recollections of experiences involving the senses
2. Short term memory-in this type of memory, experiences are stored in the brain for a short period of time
3. Children organize, make sense of, or in other ways process new information in short-term memory
4. They can consciously retrieve and reflect on the information at some other time
5. The most important type of memory is long-term memory, in which certain images, facts, or concepts are drawn from short-term memory and are permanently stored
6. Over time, this information is organized and refined

1. Metacognition and Memory

1. Children gradually acquire theories of the mind
2. They come to understand internal emotional states, motives, and thinking processes
3. The ability to think about and regulate internal cognitive processes is called metacognition
4. Rehearsal

1. Children become aware in the primary years that they can remember information for longer periods through rehearsal

1. Labeling and organization

1. Another way to remember new information is through labeling and organizing it in some way in the mind as it is being learned

1. Paying attention

1. With age, children become better at paying attention to certain important stimuli in the environment
2. This ability significantly enhances children's ability to remember

1. Teaching metacognition in school

1. Teachers can help children acquire matacognitive abilities by making informal suggestions for how to remember things
2. For example, they can suggest rehearsal strategies with statements like :If you say the names of these plants over and over, you'll never forget them

1. Memory and Culture

1. What children remember varies from one culture to another
2. Memory problems in schoolchildren may result, in part, from a curriculum that is not wholly relevant to children of diverse backgrounds
3. Children of various cultures may even rely on different senses to remember

1. Culture and School success

1. Cognitive development is not the only factor in school success
2. Cultures with high rates of school failure tend to be those with the highest poverty levels
3. Clashes in Cognitive Style

1. Children of different cultures have different cognitive styles-for example, some are field sensitive or are more social in their learning, others less so
2. Unfortunately, it may be that school success depends, in part, on whether a child's cultural style matches that of the dominant culture

1. Poor Schools and teaching

1. One explanation for poor academic performance by some children is that their schools are ineffective
2. Professionals who work with young children should carefully monitor their interactions for bias and inequitable distribution of attention

1. Family attitudes toward school

1. One widely held belief is that children of historically under-represented groups perform poorly in school because their families do not value education
2. Research has shown that parents of all cultural groups value schooling and encourage their children to perform well

1. Children with Special needs in school

1. Learning Disabilities

1. The most common yet least understood of cognitive disorders among primary-grade children are learning disabilities (LD)
2. Learning disabilities are generally described as impairments in some specific aspect or aspects of learning, such as writing, speaking, or mathematics

1. Academic Difficulties

1. Children with LD usually have difficulties in one or more academic areas

1. Perceptual-motor difficulties

1. Children with learning disabilities sometimes have perceptual challenges
2. They may have difficulty accurately interpreting auditory or visual stimuli
3. They may not hear accurately or may misinterpret a graph
4. They may become puzzled about direction, confusing left from right or may show no regular use of either the left or right hand
5. Children with LD are sometimes awkward and show poor motor coordination

1. Language and Speech Delays

1. Some children with learning disabilities have language or speech delays

1. Faulty memory or thinking

1. Children with LD will sometimes have trouble remembering or paying attention in class, organizing their work, or following tasks or instructions in order
2. On occasion, children with LD become distracted by one small part of a whole, and are therefore unable to see the entire field or the big picture
3. Some children with LD have difficulty with change and become upset or angry if routines are disrupted

1. Hyperactivity/attentional Deficits

1. Some experts believe that LD and ADHD are essentially the same disability
2. This is because the two conditions so regularly accompany one another
3. Research has shown that ADHD can exist with or without LD
4. Some characteristics of ADHD are common among younger children
5. Wiggly, inattentive, difficulty following directions, sue less mature syntax and grammar
6. Some LD characteristics may be indicators of other disorders, such as underachievement, emotional disturbance, and even mental retardation
7. Whether a child has LD or some other disorder or is simply immature must be determined by careful observation and assessment
8. If a child's challenges do not greatly affect school success or social relationships, immaturity could be the cause

1. Gifted and Talented Children

1. Giftedness is another exceptionality that is associated with cognition
2. Children said to be gifted and talented if they display a superior intellect and/or talents that are advanced for their chronological age
3. They often are extremely competnet in language, and may grasp complex ideas quickly
4. One trait of gifted and talented children is unique learning style
5. Children who are gifted and talented face many challenges
6. They do not always get along well with peers; often they seek the companionship of older children or adults
7. Gifted children tend to be highly sensitive and introverted
8. They are not always good students; in fact, underachievement is common
9. A number of approaches to meeting the needs of children who are gifted and talented have been proposed
10. Acceleration of the content and pacing of the curriculum is one promising method
11. Early entrance into kindergarten or skipping grades are extreme examples
12. This strategy appears to work well, especially for girls
13. Because gifted and talented children seek the company of older peers, skipping even two or more grade levels ahs been found to be effective
14. Developing special gifted classes before, during, or after school is another strategy
15. Eliminating rote memory tasks and timed tests-standard fare in most classrooms-and integrating computer technology into the curriculum are strategies which are believed to support the academic achievement of gifted, learning-disabled children
16. Teachers must use alternate means to determine giftedness among children of diverse cultural backgrounds
17. Children who show a high degree of competence in movement and the performing arts on the playground or in the neighborhood could be gifted
18. A child who displays exceptional story-or joke-telling ability may be gifted as well
19. Observations of interactions at church, in the community center, or in work around the home or apartment may be more useful in identifying gifted children from historically underrepresented groups