An Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition) - Chapter 18

Pedagogy refers to any aspect of theory or practice related to teaching. In the 1960s, there was a shift toward a child-centred education. Piaget emphasised the role of the teacher for providing the best physical environment for children to overcome their egocentrism and start to understand conservation. Discovery learning is encouraging children to learn by discovering information for themselves. Based on constructivism, many learning activities involve discovery learning. The most efficient way of learning is guided discovery, where children are the centre of their learning, but a teacher provides feedback as they develop their understanding.

Piaget argued that egocentrism could be overcome via interaction with peers because this shows the child different perspectives. Peers are more important than adults because they are more proximate and credible than adult helper. Peers provide the ideal source of socio-cognitive conflict, where two opposing egocentric views result in a cognitive conflict. Through these conflicts, children question their own understanding, leading to a resolution of the conflict and cognitive advance. Peers are an important influence on the child’s own construction of knowledge and their cognitive development.

There are strong peer facilitation effects. The pairing of two children can have a positive impact on children’s later individual performance. Children perform better on classic Piagetian tasks in pairs than alone. The social interaction required to reach a common understanding forces the child to examine their own understanding and compare it to that of the other child, helping the child overcome their own egocentrism. Peer effects are relatively long-lasting. The benefits of peer interaction are sometimes only observed after a delay. This could happen because the changes in thinking promoted by sociocognitive conflicts help children benefit from subsequent learning experiences. Besides these cognitive effects of peer interaction, there is also an increase in cooperation and social skills, which could also benefit the child later in life.

Positive peer interaction effects are not restricted to very young children on Piagetian-based tasks. It also occurs on more complex problem solving and positive peer interaction-effects are not bound to the physical environment, but can also occur while working together on a computer.

There is strong evidence for the efficacy of peer collaboration, but the positive effects are not certain to arise. Conflict resolution will take place in peer collaboration, but this is not necessarily in the direction of cognitive advancement. There is an effect of children’s popularity on the outcomes of peer collaboration. The pairing of two peers is important. Social skills are important and superior social skills can be useful in resolving the cognitive conflict. Same-sex peer pairings are also more efficient at a younger age than mixed-sex pairings because there is more tension and antagonism in mixed-sex pairings. Mixed-sex pairings can work out well if positive collaboration is actively promoted and encouraged. Cognitive advancement is more likely to occur if the more developed peer is the girl.

According to Vygotsky, knowledge exists intermentally between individuals before it can exist intramentally, within an individual. The zone of proximal development is the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving with the help of a more capable individual. The child’s intermental ability becomes intramental because of appropriate interaction. Scaffolding is the means by which adults structure and simplify the environment to facilitate children’s learning and to guide them through their zone of proximal development.

There are five types of support given (scaffolding) in the pyramid building task by Wood:

1. General verbal prompts
   Action is suggested but not specified.
2. Specific verbal instruction
   Action is specified, but only verbally.
3. Indicates materials
   Pointing out the exact materials.
4. Preparation
   Everything is set up, the child only has to perform the action.
5. Demonstrating
   The action is demonstrated to the child.

Wood proposed that any failure of the child in performing the right action should be met by increasing the level of control. If a child performs the correct action, the level of control should decrease. To be effective teachers, adults need to make an accurate assessment of the child’s current level of functioning and of their potential level of functioning. It is important that the process of scaffolding is interactive. Scaffolding should also be tailored to the individual child and continually adjusted. There are two key principles of scaffolding: fading (less support with an increased understanding) and transfer of responsibility.

Children can provide scaffolding to less developmentally advanced peers and guide them through their zone of proximal development. The pairings should be two people of mixed ability and actively share their ideas with each other. The higher-ability child should focus just above the lower-ability child’s level, otherwise, the advancements for the lower-ability child won’t be significant.

The student teams achievement divisions (STAD) is a method used to show how cooperative learning can work. Children are allocated to work in small groups comprising children of varying ability, gender and ethnic backgrounds. The teacher introduces a topic and the group members discuss this until they agree that they fully understand the topic.

Attainment targets are descriptions of the knowledge that children should have acquired as they work their way through the education system. The attainment targets at key stages provide the benchmark for assessment of children’s performance throughout their school lives.

Most scholastic tests are norm-referenced, they provide a measure of how well children do compared to other children. There are tests that are criterion-referenced and they give a measure of a child’s performance relative to a specified criterion. The advantage of criterion-referenced tests is that teachers know where their efforts should be concentrated on, because the tests give a description of what the child knows, rather than how well he performs compared to others. The disadvantage of criterion-referenced testing is that it puts a lot of stress on students and that children may develop at a different pace of each other and this puts pressure on them to reach the attainment targets before a certain age. Dynamical assessment of a learner’s potential could be useful next to standard measurement methods, such as tests. Dynamical assessment is a good predictor of cognitive potential.