EDU110 University of California Child Observation paper Observe a child, group of children, or child/caregiver interaction for approximately 10-15 minutes.

EDU110 University of California Child Observation paper Observe a child, group of children, or child/caregiver interaction for approximately 10-15 minutes. Describe what you saw and connect them with any of the research findings or theories from the readings. (cognitive development, socio-emotional development, development in cultural context, and motivation and mindsets) 5 different citations from the readings. APA format; *Please follow the sample essay*. Child Observation
Scary spiders, black cats, witches and ghosts hanging from trees! It’s Halloween and the
neighborhood is full of ghoulish scenes. When I arrive at the home of 3 year old Anna, she is
standing by the window in awe of her neighbor’s decorations. She is both excited and fearful as
she tells me about her stroll through the neighborhood earlier that day. I have to say, my
observation of Anna was just as eventful for me, as her stroll was to her. During my observation
of her, I witnessed her cultural, cognitive and social developments in action as Anna was
learning about her world right before my eyes.
The moment I stepped in the door, I took in a display of Anna’s social development
interacting with the culture she lives in. Halloween is a cultural celebration that is observed
socially throughout the world, with a variety of beliefs surrounding its origin. As we learn from
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model, children’s social development occurs as the different layers
of a child’s world intermingle and influence their development (Rogoff p.46). Anna’s house
does not have any Halloween decorations but most of her neighbors do. As she stands in her
living room with her siblings and caregiver, she is in the presence of her microsystem, her most
direct circle of influence. When she looks outside at her neighbor’s yards and sees the Halloween
decorations she is being influenced by her macrosystem, the culture in which she resides. Her
neighbors are acting as the mesosystem that is influencing her microsystem and connecting her
to her macrosystem. I could go one step further and speculate that the decorations were
purchased at the local Halloween store, which is part of the exosystem, an influence in her
community that indirectly affects her (Rogoff p. 46-48). As Anna stands in the safety of her
home, she is able to take in the scary sights, and learn about her culture as the caregiver explains
that they are “just pretend”. In this experience Anna is developing a social and cultural
perspective of Halloween.
It’s now time to go play outside, Anna’s favorite activity. But first, she is told to put her
shoes on. Anna doesn’t want to put her shoes on herself and cries “I need help”. Her caregiver
reminds her that she can do it herself, and tells her if she wants to go outside she has to put her
shoes on. Anna is showing a lack of self-efficacy, because she doesn’t believe in her own ability
to put her shoes on. Her lack of self-efficacy has resulted in a lack of intrinsic motivation to do it
herself, most likely out of a fear of failure (Zimmerman p. 224). The caregiver’s response is an
example of reinforcement theory of motivation, the practice of using a desired stimulus to
achieve or motivate a desired behavior. The caregiver motivated Anna by making the activity of
going outside a reinforcer contingent upon putting her shoes on (Stipek p.9). Anna did put her
shoes on independently, so the reinforcer was an effective method to change Anna’s behavior
and motivate her to do something that is difficult. Once she put her shoes on, the caregiver
praised her and Anna said “I did it” then happily ran to the door.
Once outside, I could see Anna’s cognitive development at work as she enthusiastically
played in the yard. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is a stage based approach that
separates stages by approximate ages, along with the developmental milestones that are achieved
in each stage. According to his theory, Anna is in the preoperational stage of cognitive
development. In this stage we see huge strides in language development. Anna is talking about
everything she sees, connecting words as symbols for objects, just as she should be in this stage
of cognitive development (Ormond p.314). She looks up and says “I see clouds”. She picks up a
ball and throws it saying “I throw the ball”. Some of her speech is directed at others and some is
self-talk, which coincides with Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development. Vygotsky proposed
that language at first is only a means of communicating wants and needs, but with development,
language and thoughts become interdependent. As children learn to connect their thoughts to
words, they often engage in self talk. (Ormond p.331) Anna seems to be in a stage of practicing
this new skill of expressing her thoughts, since she is talking about everything she sees and does.
Piaget and Vygotsky both believed that children learn by exploring their environment.
Anna was touching everything in sight. She gathered sticks then banged them together, poked
them in the ground, banged them against the fence and eventually she made a “witches potion”
in a bucket and stirred it with a stick. As Piaget would say, she is “interacting with the physical
environment” an important part of cognitive development (Ormond p. 311). She is using logic
and reasoning to experiment with the stick. She discovers the different sounds it makes as it is
tapped against the fence, then against the toy car. Then she adds function to the stick and uses it
as a tool to dig in the ground. Eventually she incorporates the stick into pretend play and uses it
to stir her witches potion created out of rocks and dirt. What looks like play here, is actually a
science experiment conducted by a three year old.
Along with the witches’ potion, Anna is also drawing attention to a spider in the yard,
and seems to be processing the Halloween decorations in her neighborhood. Anna is afraid of
spiders, and now there are big, black decorative spiders on the neighbor’s lawn that she sees
every time she looks out her living room window. The caregiver told her that she shouldn’t be
afraid of them because they are just pretend and they won’t hurt her. Anna seems to be
assimilating this new knowledge of pretend spiders that won’t hurt her, to make accommodation
for her previous knowledge that spiders can hurt you (Ormond p. 311). As Anna plays she keeps
coming back to look at a spider on the wall. She says “The spider won’t hurt you” then walks
away and plays. After a few minutes she returns and says “Daddy killed a spider”. Another time
she says “We don’t eat spiders”. All of her quotes are examples of her transferring of knowledge,
as she is drawing on past knowledge to make sense of new knowledge (Ormond p. 392). If her
parents have taught her not to touch spiders because they can hurt you and now she is being told
not to fear the spiders across the street, this could be an example of negative transfer. Because
her previous knowledge is conflicting with the new knowledge, this creates a disequilibrium
which is motivating her to reevaluate what she believes about spiders and make modifications to
what she believed about fearing spiders (Ormond p. 326,333). In other words, she’s not sure
what to believe and she is trying to sensibly connect these two sources of knowledge. This is a
typical reaction to new information that actually encourages healthy development. (Ormond) In
the case of the spiders, it may be more difficult for her to accommodate, because there is a fear
stimulus involved, thus the transfer involves more than knowledge, it is also associated with an
emotional stimulus (Ormond p.396, 399).
While outside Anna’s 5 year old brother is playing too. Anna and her brother are
engaging in parallel play (Slavin p.56). They are playing in the same vicinity, often side by side,
but there is no structure to their play and limited interaction. She often imitates her brother’s
actions. When he picks up a ball, she runs and picks up a ball too. Then he throws his ball in the
air and she throws her ball too. When her brother hops on a bicycle, Anna says “I want to ride”
and gets on a bicycle with training wheels. Anna is not able to ride a two wheel bicycle so having
training wheels is appropriate for her zone of proximal development (Ormond p. 332). Most 3
year olds are not developmentally able to balance a two wheel bicycle yet, but they are
potentially close to this developmental milestone, which puts riding a bicycle in their zone of
proximal development (Ormond p.332). The training wheels act as appropriate assistance,
however in Anna’s case, she still needed an adult to help her ride the bike. This is called
scaffolding, when a child can complete a task just beyond their ability with adult assistance.
When Anna asked for help, the caretaker positioned Anna’s feet on the pedals, then gently
pushed the handlebars to help Anna move the bicycle forward. Vygotsky believes that children
can learn best when they are presented with tasks beyond their ability and given assistance to
perform them (Ormond p. 335).
In my observation of Anna, she showed me that an enormous amount of development
occurs in the routine life of a 3 year old. As I watched the simple act of playing in the backyard, I
witnessed her making sense of the world. She had a variety of toys to choose from in her yard,
but instead she picked sticks up from the muddy ground. The caregiver could have told her to put
the dirty sticks down, but instead she allowed her the freedom to experiment and learn from her
environment. It was fascinating to see her connecting her knowledge of spiders and developing
an understanding of Halloween in the context of her culture. So much was happening as I
watched. The brain of a three year old really is remarkable!
References
Ormond, J. E. “Human learning.. NJ: Merrill.” (1999).
Rogoff, Barbara. The cultural nature of human development. Oxford University Press, 2003
Slavin, Robert E., and Nicola Davis. “Educational psychology: Theory and practice.” (2006).
Stipek, Deborah J. Motivation to learn: Integrating theory and practice. Allyn & Bacon, 2002.
Zimmerman, Barry J. “Self-efficacy: An essential motive to learn.” Contemporary educational
psychology 25.1 (2000): 82-91.
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SCHOOL MATTERS
Brainology
Transforming Students’ Motivation to Learn
Carol S. Dweck
Winter 2008
T
his is an exciting time for our brains. More and more research is
showing that our brains change constantly with learning and
experience and that this takes place throughout our lives.
Does this have implications for students’ motivation and learning? It
certainly does. In my research in collaboration with my graduate students, we
have shown that what students believe about their brains — whether they see
their intelligence as something that’s fixed or something that can grow and
change — has profound effects on their motivation, learning, and school
achievement (Dweck, 2006). These different beliefs, or mindsets, create
different psychological worlds: one in which students are afraid of challenges
and devastated by setbacks, and one in which students relish challenges and
are resilient in the face of setbacks.
Photoillustration: Michael Northrup
How do these mindsets work? How are the mindsets communicated to students? And, most important, can they
be changed? As we answer these questions, you will understand why so many students do not achieve to their
potential, why so many bright students stop working when school becomes challenging, and why stereotypes
have such profound effects on students’ achievement. You will also learn how praise can have a negative effect
on students’ mindsets, harming their motivation to learn.
Mindsets and Achievement
Many students believe that intelligence is fixed, that each person has a certain amount and that’s that. We call this
a fixed mindset, and, as you will see, students with this mindset worry about how much of this fixed intelligence
they possess. A fixed mindset makes challenges threatening for students (because they believe that their fixed
ability may not be up to the task) and it makes mistakes and failures demoralizing (because they believe that such
setbacks reflect badly on their level of fixed intelligence).
Other students believe that
intelligence is something that can be
cultivated through effort and
education. They don’t necessarily
believe that everyone has the same
abilities or that anyone can be as
smart as Einstein, but they do believe
that everyone can improve their
abilities. And they understand that
even Einstein wasn’t Einstein until he
put in years of focused hard work. In short, students with this growth mindset believe that intelligence is a potential
that can be realized through learning. As a result, confronting challenges, profiting from mistakes, and persevering
in the face of setbacks become ways of getting smarter.
It is the belief that intelligence can
be developed that opens students to
a love of learning, a belief in the
power of effort and constructive,
determined reactions to setbacks.
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To understand the different worlds these mindsets create, we followed several hundred students across a difficult
school transition — the transition to seventh grade. This is when the academic work often gets much harder, the
grading gets stricter, and the school environment gets less personalized with students moving from class to class.
As the students entered seventh grade, we measured their mindsets (along with a number of other things) and
then we monitored their grades over the next two years.
The first thing we found was that students with different mindsets cared about different things in school. Those
with a growth mindset were much more interested in learning than in just looking smart in school. This was not the
case for students with a fixed mindset. In fact, in many of our studies with students from preschool age to college
age, we find that students with a fixed mindset care so much about how smart they will appear that they often
reject learning opportunities — even ones that are critical to their success (Cimpian, et al., 2007; Hong, et al.,
1999; Nussbaum and Dweck, 2008; Mangels, et al., 2006).
Next, we found that students with the two mindsets had radically different beliefs about effort. Those with a growth
mindset had a very straightforward (and correct) idea of effort — the idea that the harder you work, the more your
ability will grow and that even geniuses have had to work hard for their accomplishments. In contrast, the students
with the fixed mindset believed that if you worked hard it meant that you didn’t have ability, and that things would
just come naturally to you if you did. This means that every time something is hard for them and requires effort, it’s
both a threat and a bind. If they work hard at it that means that they aren’t good at it, but if they don’t work hard
they won’t do well. Clearly, since just about every worthwhile pursuit involves effort over a long period of time, this
is a potentially crippling belief, not only in school but also in life.
Students with different mindsets also had very different reactions to setbacks. Those with growth mindsets
reported that, after a setback in school, they would simply study more or study differently the next time. But those
with fixed mindsets were more likely to say that they would feel dumb, study less the next time, and seriously
consider cheating. If you feel dumb — permanently dumb — in an academic area, there is no good way to bounce
back and be successful in the future. In a growth mindset, however, you can make a plan of positive action that
can remedy a deficiency. (Hong. et al., 1999; Nussbaum and Dweck, 2008; Heyman, et al., 1992)
Finally, when we looked at the math grades they went on to earn, we found that the students with a growth
mindset had pulled ahead. Although both groups had started seventh grade with equivalent achievement test
scores, a growth mindset quickly propelled students ahead of their fixed-mindset peers, and this gap only
increased over the two years of the study.
In short, the belief that intelligence is fixed dampened students’ motivation to learn, made them afraid of effort, and
made them want to quit after a setback. This is why so many bright students stop working when school becomes
hard. Many bright students find grade school easy and coast to success early on. But later on, when they are
challenged, they struggle. They don’t want to make mistakes and feel dumb — and, most of all, they don’t want to
work hard and feel dumb. So they simply retire.
It is the belief that intelligence can be developed that opens students to a love of learning, a belief in the power of
effort and constructive, determined reactions to setbacks.
How Do Students Learn These Mindsets?
In the 1990s, parents and schools decided that the most important thing for kids to have was self-esteem. If
children felt good about themselves, people believed, they would be set for life. In some quarters, self-esteem in
math seemed to become more important than knowing math, and self-esteem in English seemed to become more
important than reading and writing. But the biggest mistake was the belief that you could simply hand children
self-esteem by telling them how smart and talented they are. Even though this is such an intuitively appealing
idea, and even though it was exceedingly well-intentioned, I believe it has had disastrous effects.
In the 1990s, we took a poll among parents and found that almost 85 percent endorsed the notion that it was
necessary to praise their children’s abilities to give them confidence and help them achieve. Their children are
now in the workforce and we are told that young workers cannot last through the day without being propped up by
praise, rewards, and recognition. Coaches are asking me where all the coachable athletes have gone. Parents
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ask me why their children won’t work hard in school.
Could all of this come from well-meant praise? Well, we were suspicious of the praise movement at the time. We
had already seen in our research that it was the most vulnerable children who were already obsessed with their
intelligence and chronically worried about how smart they were. What if praising intelligence made all children
concerned about their intelligence? This kind of praise might tell them that having high intelligence and talent is
the most important thing and is what makes you valuable. It might tell them that intelligence is just something you
have and not something you develop. It might deny the role of effort and dedication in achievement. In short, it
might promote a fixed mindset with all of its vulnerabilities.
The wonderful thing about research is that you can put questions like this to the test — and we did (Kamins and
Dweck, 1999; Mueller and Dweck, 1998). We gave two groups of children problems from an IQ test, and we
praised them. We praised the children in one group for their intelligence, telling them, “Wow, that’s a really good
score. You must be smart at this.” We praised the children in another group for their effort: “Wow, that’s a really
good score. You must have worked really hard.” That’s all we did, but the results were dramatic. We did studies
like this with children of different ages and ethnicities from around the country, and the results were the same.
Here is what happened with fifth graders. The children praised for their intelligence did not want to learn. When we
offered them a challenging task that they could learn from, the majority opted for an easier one, one on which they
could avoid making mistakes. The children praised for their effort wanted the task they could learn from.
The children praised for their
intelligence lost their confidence as
soon as the problems got more
difficult. Now, as a group, they
thought they weren’t smart. They also
lost their enjoyment, and, as a result,
their performance plummeted. …
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