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Research indicates that children’s misconceptions about a topic are often quite resistant to change, yet sometimes misconceptions must change if children are to acquire an accurate understanding of the world around them.
Describe three different reasons why children often acquire misconceptions about the world.
Describe at least three teaching strategies that should help students change their misconceptions about the world.
Describe an understanding you had when you were younger that has changed as you have developed cognitively.
-Identity – Erikson, Marcia, Beale-Spencer, PhinneyHow Children Develop IdentityDuring infancy we begin to recognize that we are a separate being. Then we begin to realize that this self is stable. Once this sense of self develops, we can formulate a categorical self. We become aware that even though we’re separate and distinct objects or entities or beings, we also exist in the world. We exist with other objects and beings and entities, in that, each of these objects has properties, including ourselves. In early childhood, these categories that children apply themselves to are very concrete. They include our developmental age, our gender, our size, and the skills we have.The Role of Early Childhood Education and PlayWhere we truly start seeing social identities begin is within families and their culture. Where we see social identities cultivated, especially in the classroom is through play. Children develop self-identity, who they believe themselves to be, and begin to form relationships through play and peer relations which contribute to their emotional, social and cognitive development. Theories of self generally agree that an early childhood program can foster children’s self- esteem and build the foundation for future relationships with others.Early childhood is a significant period for the children’s development including the emergence of their abilities and skills in areas such as language, physical development, psychosocial development, and cognitive development. This can be greatly influenced by the nature of the educational environment that the child is exposed to in the first years of life (Bowman, Donovan and Burns, 2001). Young children’s earliest years are the foundation for their physical and mental health, emotional security, cultural and personal identity, and developing competencies (United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2005, paragraph 6 (e)).Another dynamic surrounds ‘personal’ versus ‘social’ identity. Personal identity refers to children’s subjective feelings about their distinctiveness from others, their sense of uniqueness, of individuality. Social identity refers, on the other hand, to the ways in which they feel they are (or would like to be) the same as others, typically through identification with family and/or peer culture (Schaffer, 2006). Factors like age, gender, religious background, ethnic background, interests, role models, talents, and hobbies play a part in a child’s emerging concept of self.Relationships with PeersAs children develop their identity they are influenced by interactions and relationships with others. Woodhead (2008, p.6) highlights that identity has two distinct aspects –“ that of the unique individual person and that of the shared social person”. In addition, identity is expressed through children’s subjective feelings about themselves and about others. Warin (2010) notes that identity does not exist outside the social context in which it is constructed and is something that the person carries about with them through time and through the range of social situations they participate in. This illustrates the educational importance of self-awareness and awareness of others.Friendship is of value to children as they help each other understand the world in which they live. According to Dunn (2004), the quality of children’s friendships affects their development of a sense of personal and social identity. Children with friends have better social skills and fewer adjustment problems as friends provide social support and can protect against the difficulties of starting school, victimization and bullying (Dunn, 2004). Having friends is an important resource for developing identities.Studies (George, 2007; Weller, 2007).have discussed the importance of friendship groups in relation to identity formation As Currie, D., Kelly, D. and Pomeramtz, S. (2007) note, membership of a group (or exclusion from it) can greatly inform the construction of ‘who you are’ in terms of identity- both in relation to one’s own self-identity and how others see you and how you see others. Children’s peer cultures work to influence and constrain the ways in which children construct meanings and values, act and communicate with each other; conduct aspects of identity in relation to themselves and their peers (Adler, P. Kless, S. and Adler, P., 1992)Play is crucial in Early Child Education (ECE) and families, caretakers, preschool teachers play a vital role in the early years of a child’s education. (Wood 2004). Children try to gain a sense of self and identity of their own when they associate with other people around them. During the early years of childhood (first 8 years) major development of brain occurs and lack of play activity based education can negatively impact on the child’s cognitive development during a crucial stage for identity development. Children develop self-identity and begin to form relationships. Play contributes to children’s emotional development and since play requires use of multiple motor and mental functions, children develop various skills as well. Play-based learning aids children in developing moral and social skills.There is accumulating scientific evidence of the potential of play and playfulness to enhance human capacity to respond to adversity and cope with the stressors of everyday life. In play, we build a repertoire of adaptive, flexible responses to unexpected events, in an environment separated from the real consequences of those events. Playfulness helps us maintain social and emotional equilibrium in times of rapid change and stress. Through play, we experience flow—A feeling of being taken to another place, out of time, where we have control of the environment.Neuroscientific evidence of the significance of early experience not just to individual health, but also to the long term social and economic prosperity of society as a whole is driving a new public policy agenda in early childhood development. The evidence highlights the interconnectedness of physical, intellectual, social and emotional development, and of physical and mental health. There is powerful evidence about the impact of excessive stress and adversity in the early years on the incidence of a range of chronic diseases in adulthood , creating a new emphasis on the importance of social and emotional health in early childhood and growing public policy interest in early intervention with children living in families coping with the stresses of poverty, violence, mental illness, and substance abuse. Early childhood is on the public policy agenda, and the environments where children spend time in their pre-school years are under intense scrutiny.For the child, play and playing is fundamentally about agency, power, and control. In play, children actively explore their own social and physical power, in relationship to the world, and to other children. As each child participates with other children in the social contexts of play, exploring and testing and making decisions at the edges of their own possibility, they come to understand what it means to be in control, and what it means to be out of control. When left to control their own play, they explore what it means to exert their own power over others, and take chances and physical risks. The risks that they take, are calculated risks that can be supported by early childhood professionals, who understand the need for risk-taking. It is worthy of note that the notions of participation and control are deeply embedded in the language of health promotion. Active participation in community and in particular in the decisions that affect us contributes to a sense of control over the multiple factors that influence not just our physical and mental health, but also our subjective sense of well-being and belonging.Play has the potential to contribute to social and emotional health in early childhood, which supports the idea that the power of play to make us resilient, flexible, and strong—emotionally, socially, physically, intellectually, and perhaps spiritually—may lie in its propensity to invert and subvert the order of things. Spontaneous play may provide critical opportunities for children to experience a sense of social belonging, well-being and participation in the culture of childhood, as well as to develop social and emotional awareness, control and resilience. Play helps children learn to “roll with the punches” of everyday life, and to experience the ongoing social and emotional balancing of self that is fundamental to successful participation in social life.Culture is a major factor in the constitution of the ability to develop one’s identity. As mentioned throughout , culture means the way in which individuals or groups of people handle the raw material of their social and material existence in order to develop their own specific ways of life with their own distinct forms of expression as a network of meaning. Successful identity is the result of having been enabled and empowered to pursue one’s own meaning in life in a process of constant exchange with others who are also endeavoring to build a meaningful existence for themselves.Identity PPTDownload Identity PPTMinimize File Preview Erik EriksonDownload Erik EriksonMinimize File PreviewJames MarciaMarcia’s theory descriptively categorizes four main points or stations along the continuum of identity development. These stations or points describe very different identity conditions, ranging from a diffuse and indeterminate individual identity to a precisely defined and highly specific individual identity. Similar to Erikson, Marcia believed that certain situations and events (called “crises”) serve as catalysts prompting movement along this continuum and through the various identity statuses. These crises create internal conflict and emotional upheaval, thereby causing adolescents to examine and question their values, beliefs, and goals. As they explore new possibilities, they may form new beliefs, adopt different values, and make different choices. According to Marcia’s theory, these developmental crises ultimately cause adolescents to develop a progressively greater commitment to a particular individual identity via the process of identity exploration prompted by developmental crises.Marcia used the term identity status to label and describe four unique developmental identity stations or points.These are:
identity diffusion
identity foreclosure
moratorium
identity achievement
Each identity status represents a particular configuration of youth’s progress with regard to identity exploration and commitment to the values, beliefs, and goals that contribute to identity.
ID Status
IDENTITY EXPLORATION COMMITMENT
DIFFUSION LOW LOW
FORECLOSURE LOW HIGH
MORATORIUM HIGH LOW
ACHIEVEMENT HIGH HIGH
Though the different identity statuses are in some sense progressive (in the sense that they flow one to the next), Marcia’s theory does not assume that every adolescent will pass through and experience all four identity statuses. Some youth may experience only one or two identity statuses during adolescence. Additionally, there is no assumption that a youth’s identity status is uniform across all aspects of their development. Youth may have different identity statues across different domains such as work, religion, and politics. In this sense it is possible for youth to have more than one identity status at a time. Furthermore, unlike Erickson’s stage theory, Marcia’s theory accounts for multi-directional movement between and among the various identity statuses. For instance, youth may experience a traumatic event such as parental divorce, or a violent assault, which may cause them to re-evaluate their understanding of the world and their value system. This type of crisis may cause them to retreat to a previously enacted identity status as they integrate this new information.The first identity status, identity diffusion, describes youth who have neither explored nor committed to any particular identity. Thus, this identity status represents a low level of exploration and a low level of commitment. These adolescents haven’t considered their identity at all, and haven’t established any life goals. They are reactive, passively floating through life and dealing with each situation as it arises. Their primary motivation is hedonic; the avoidance of discomfort and the acquisition of pleasure. By way of illustration, consider the example of Tyler, who stumbled his way through high school and graduated last year (but just barely). Tyler still doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. In fact, he hasn’t really given much thought at all to what he’d like to accomplish. He hasn’t applied to any colleges or technical schools. He still works part-time at the pizza shop; a job he started while in high school so that he could have a little extra spending money. He doesn’t earn enough money to live on his own so he lives with his parents, but he doesn’t pay them any rent or even pay for his own groceries. Nonetheless, he hasn’t even considered applying for a better paying, full-time job. Whenever his frustrated mother asks, “What are you doing with your life?” he just mutters, “I dunno.” Tyler hasn’t even considered this question, and has no goals or plans of any sort.The second identity status is the identity foreclosure status. This identity status represents a low degree of exploration but a high degree of commitment. At this identity status adolescents are not actively trying to determine what is important to them. They are not questioning the values and beliefs they have been taught. Instead, these youth obtain their identity simply by accepting the beliefs and values of their family, community, and culture. In a sense, they passively accept the identity assigned to them. While these youth are committed to values and life goals assigned to them, they do not question why they should be, nor do they consider any alternatives. For example, Jasmine, 17, is applying to the same college that her mother and grandmother both attended, and she has “decided” to major in elementary education. She really hasn’t thought about whether or not she wants to go to college, or what other colleges she might like to attend. Nor has she considered any other career options besides elementary school teacher. If asked about her plans she might say, “All the women in my family became elementary teachers for a few years and then stayed home with their own children. My mom and grandma seemed to do just fine, so it seems good enough for me.” Jasmine has accepted she will be just like all the other women in her family. She has not questioned whether the life path chosen by the other women in her family is acceptable to her, but simply accepts that her goal is to proceed according to the usual and customary path of the women before her.The third identity status is called moratorium. This identity status represents high degree of exploration but a low degree of commitment. At this status, youth are in the midst of an identity “crisis” which has prompted them to explore and experiment with different values, beliefs, and goals. However, they have not made any final decisions about which beliefs and values are most important to them, and which principles should guide their lives. Thus, they are not yet committed to a particular identity. They are keeping their options open. For example, Tim, 14, may suddenly begin to argue with his parents about going to the Sunday worship service at the Methodist Christian Church, even though he has attended this service with his family since childhood. Instead, he likes to spend his timing reading about all the different world religions and plans to visit several mosques, temples, and churches around the area to see what their worship services are like. Or, he may question the logic of religion altogether, and he may even wonder whether God exists at all. It is clear that Tim is not quite certain what he believes yet, but he is actively exploring and considering what values, principles, and beliefs he wants to live by.The final identity status is identity achievement. This identity status represents both a high degree of exploration and a high degree of commitment. Youth are said to have achieved their identity by a process of active exploration and strong commitment to a particular set of values, beliefs, and life goals that has emerged from this active exploration and examination. At this identity status youth will have decided what values and goals are most important to them, and what purpose, or mission will direct their life. Youth at the identity achievement status are able to prioritize what is important to them and have sorted through the many possibilities of who they want to be. They will have experimented with many different beliefs and values, and analyzed their pathway in life. To fully achieve this type of identity youth must feel positive and confident about their decisions and values. For example, Miranda cast her vote for the presidential election the very first year she was allowed to vote. But, she did so only after carefully researching all the different candidates and their positions on issues that were important to her. First, she gave a great deal of thought by considering her own beliefs and values system. Next, she figured out which issues were most important to her based on her beliefs and values. And finally, she determined which candidate best matched her beliefs and values on the issues she considered most important.As mentioned, these four identity statuses describe points along a continuum moving from an initially diffuse, undefined individual identity to a highly specific and well-defined, individual sense of self. Inherent in Marcia’s theory is the assumption that a mature and well-adjusted person possesses a well-defined and individually determined identity. This assumption reflects an implicit set of values common to many developed Western societies concerning the desirability of an individually defined identity; but, this set of values may not be universally shared. In contemporary Western cultures, there is a great value placed upon individual needs, rights, and freedoms. Therefore it is only natural that such societies would define maturity in terms of a highly evolved sense of an individual self. But some other cultures value the needs of the larger community over any single individual. In such cultures, maturity is defined by the ability to subjugate individual pursuits and desires in the service of the group’s greater good. Ironically, these cultures would consider the importance Westerners assign to individual identity an indication of immaturity.**In the following article please read the highlighted area**Margaret Beale SpencerDownload Margaret Beale SpencerMinimize File PreviewSelf-conceptPart of what is developing in children as they grow is the fundamental cognitive part of the self, known as the self-concept. The self-concept is a knowledge representation that contains knowledge about us, including our beliefs about our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well as the knowledge that we exist as individuals. Throughout childhood and adolescence, the self-concept becomes more abstract and complex and is organized into a variety of different cognitive aspects of the self, known as self-schemas. Children have self-schemas about their progress in school, their appearance, their skills at sports and other activities, and many other aspects. In turn, these self-schemas direct and inform their processing of self-relevant information (Harter, 1999), much as we saw schemas in general affecting our social cognition.These self-schemas can be studied using the methods that we would use to study any other schema. One approach is to use neuroimaging to directly study the self in the brain. As you can see in Figure 3.3, neuroimaging studies have shown that information about the self is stored in the prefrontal cortex, the same place that other information about people is stored (Barrios et al., 2008).Another approach to studying the self is to investigate how we attend to and remember things that relate to the self. Indeed, because the self-concept is the most important of all our schemas, it has an extraordinary degree of influence on our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Have you ever been at a party where there was a lot of noise and bustle, and yet you were surprised to discover that you could easily hear your own name being mentioned in the background? Because our own name is such an important part of our self-concept, and because we value it highly, it is highly accessible. We are very alert for, and react quickly to, the mention of our own name.Other research has found that information related to the self-schema is better remembered than information that is unrelated to it, and that information related to the self can also be processed very quickly (Lieberman, Jarcho, & Satpute, 2004). In one classic study that demonstrated the importance of the self-schema, Rogers, Kuiper, and Kirker (1977) conducted an experiment to assess how college students recalled information that they had learned under different processing conditions. All the participants were presented with the same list of 40 adjectives to process, but through the use of random assignment, the participants were given one of four different sets of instructions about how to process the adjectives.Participants assigned to the structural task condition were asked to judge whether the word was printed in uppercase or lowercase letters. Participants in the phonemic task condition were asked whether the word rhymed with another given word. In the semantic task condition, the participants were asked if the word was a synonym of another word. And in the self-reference task condition, participants indicated whether the given adjective was or was not true of themselves. After completing the specified task, each participant was asked to recall as many adjectives as he or she could remember. Rogers and his colleagues hypothesized that different types of processing would have different effects on memory. As you can see in Figure 3.4, the students in the self-reference task condition recalled significantly more adjectives than did students in any other condition.Although each person has a unique self-concept, we can identify some characteristics that are common across the responses given by different people on the measure. Physical characteristics are an important component of the self-concept, and they are mentioned by many people when they describe themselves. If you’ve been concerned lately that you’ve been gaining weight, you might write, “I am overweight.” If you think you’re particularly good looking (“I am attractive”), or if you think you’re too short (“I am too short”), those things might have been reflected in your responses. Our physical characteristics are important to our self-concept because we realize that other people use them to judge us. People often list the physical characteristics that make them different from others in either positive or negative ways (“I am blond,” “I am short”), in part because they understand that these characteristics are salient and thus likely to be used by others when judging them (McGuire, McGuire, Child, & Fujioka, 1978).A second aspect of the self-concept relating to personal characteristics is made up of personality traits—the specific and stable personality characteristics that describe an individual (“I am friendly,” “I am shy,” “I am persistent”). These individual differences are important determinants of behavior, and this aspect of the self-concept varies among people.The remainder of the self-concept reflects its more external, social components; for example, memberships in the social groups that we belong to and care about. Common responses for this component may include “I am an artist,” “I am Jewish,” and “I am a mother, sister, daughter.” As we will see later in this chapter, group memberships form an important part of the self-concept because they provide us with our social identity—the sense of our self that involves our memberships in social groups.Although we all define ourselves in relation to these three broad categories of characteristics—physical, personality, and social – some interesting cultural differences in the relative importance of these categories have been shown in people’s responses to the TST. For example, Ip and Bond (1995) found that the responses from Asian participants included significantly more references to themselves as occupants of social roles (e.g., “I am Joyce’s friend”) or social groups (e.g., “I am a member of the Cheng family”) than those of American participants. Similarly, Markus and Kitayama (1991) reported that Asian participants were more than twice as likely to include references to other people in their self-concept than did their Western counterparts. This greater emphasis on either external and social aspects of the self-concept reflects the relative importance that collectivistic and individualistic cultures place on an interdependence versus independence (Nisbett, 2003).Interestingly, bicultural individuals who report acculturation to both collectivist and individualist cultures show shifts in their self-concept depending on which culture they are primed to think about when completing the TST. For example, Ross, Xun, & Wilson (2002) found that students born in China but living in Canada reported more interdependent aspects of themselves on the TST when asked to write their responses in Chinese, as opposed to English. These culturally different responses to the TST are also related to a broader distinction in self-concept, with people from individualistic cultures often describing themselves using internal characteristics that emphasize their uniqueness, compared with those from collectivistic backgrounds who tend to stress shared social group memberships and roles. In turn, this distinction can lead to important differences in social behavior.One simple yet powerful demonstration of cultural differences in self-concept affecting social behavior is shown in a study that was conducted by Kim and Markus (1999). In this study, participants were contacted in the waiting area of the San Francisco airport and asked to fill out a short questionnaire for the researcher. The participants were selected according to their cultural background: about one-half of them indicated they were European Americans whose parents were born in the United States, and the other half indicated they were Asian Americans whose parents were born in China and who spoke Chinese at home. After completing the questionnaires (which were not used in the data analysis except to determine the cultural backgrounds), participants were asked if they would like to take a pen with them as a token of appreciation. The experimenter extended his or her hand, which contained five pens. The pens offered to the participants were either three or four of one color and one or two of another color (the ink in the pens was always black). As shown in Figure 3.5, and consistent with the hypothesized preference for uniqueness in Western, but not Eastern, cultures, the European Americans preferred to take a pen with the more unusual color, whereas the Asian American participants preferred one with the more common color.Cultural differences in self-concept have even been found in people’s self-descriptions on social networking sites. DeAndrea, Shaw, and Levine (2010) examined individuals’ free-text self-descriptions in the About Me section in their Facebook profiles. Consistent with the researchers’ hypotheses, and with previous research using the TST, African American participants had the most the most independently (internally) described self-concepts, and Asian Americans had the most interdependent (external) self-descriptions, with European Americans in the middle.As well as indications of cultural diversity in the content of the self-concept, there is also evidence of parallel gender diversity between males and females from various cultures, with females, on average, giving more external and social responses to the TST than males (Kashima et al., 1995). Interestingly, these gender differences have been found to be more apparent in individualistic nations than in collectivistic nations (Watkins et al., 1998).PreviousNext
