Concrete operational stage
Piaget's third stage, extending from about 7 to 11 years, in which thought becomes logical, flexible, and organized in its application to concrete information.
Decentration
The ability to focus on several aspects of a problem at once and relate them.
Reversibility
The ability to go through a series of steps in a problem and them mentally reverse direction, returning to the starting point.
Seriation
The ability to order items along a quantative dimesion-mentalilly.
Transitive inference
The ability to seriate-or order items along a quantitative dimension-mentally.
Cognitive maps
Mental representations of familiar, large-scale spaces, such as school or neighborhood.
Production deficiency
The failure to produce a mental strategy when it could be helpful.
Control deficiency
The inability to control, or execute, a mental strategy consistency.
Utilization deficiency
The inability to improve performance despite consistent use of a mental strategy.
Effect strategy use
Consistent use of a mental strategy, leading to improvement in performance.
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
A childhood disorder involving inattention, impulsivity, and excessive motor activity, often resulting in academic failure and social problems.
Rehearsal
A memory strategy that involves repeating information to oneself.
Organization
A memory strategy that involves grouping related items, which dramatically improves recall.
Elaboration
A memory strategy that involves creating a relationship, or shared meaning, between two or more pieces of information that are not members of the same category.
Cognitive self-regulation
The process of continuously monitoring progress toward a goal, checking outcomes, and redirecting unsuccessful efforts.
Whole-language approach
An approach to beginning reading instruction that parallels children's natural language learning through the use of reading materials that are whole and meaningful.
Phonics approach
An approach to beginning reading instruction that emphasized coaching children on phonics, the basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds.
Triarchic theory of successful intelligence
Sternberg's theory, which identifies three broad, interacting intelligences - analytical, creative, and practical - that must be balanced to achieve success according to one's personal goals and the requirements of one's cultural community.
Theory of multiple intelligences
Gardner's theory, which proposes at least eight independent intelligences on the basis of distinct sets of processing operations that permit individuals to engage in a wide range of culturally valued activities.
Emotional intelligence
A set of emotional abilities that enable individuals to process and adapt to emotional information.
Stereotype threat
The fear of being judged on the basis of a negative stereotype, which can trigger anxiety that interferes with performance.
Dynamic assessment
An approach to testing in which an adult introduces purposeful teaching into the testing situation to find out what the child can attain with social support.
Metalinguistic awareness
The ability to think about language as a system.
Traditional classroom
An elementary school classroom in which the teacher is the sole authority for knowledge, rules, and decision making and students are relatively passive learners who are evaluated in relation to a uniform set of standards.
Constructivist classroom
A classroom in which students are active learners who are encouraged to construct their own knowledge, the teacher guides and supports in response to children's needs, and students are evaluated by considering their progress in relation to their own prior
Social-constructivist classroom
A classroom in which children participate in a wide range of challenging activities with teachers and peers, with whom they jointly construct understandings.
Reciprocal teaching
A teaching method in which a teacher and two to four students from a cooperative group, within which dialogues occur that create a zone of proximal development.
Communities of learners
Classrooms in which both teachers and students have the authority to define and resolve problems, drawing on the expertise of one another and of others as they work toward project goals, which often address complex, real-world issues.
Educational self-fulfilling prophecies
Teachers' positive or negative views of individual children, who tend to adopt and start to live up to these views.
Cooperative learning
Collaboration on a task by a small group of students who resolve differences of opinion, share responsibility, consider one another's ideas, and work toward common goals.
Inclusive classrooms
Classrooms in which students with learning difficulties learn alongside typical students in a regular educational setting.
Learning disabilities
Specific learning disorders that lead children to achieve poorly in school.
Gifted
Displaying exceptional intellectual strengths, including high IQ, creativity, and talent.
Creativity
The ability to produce work that is original yet appropriate - something that others have not thought of but that is useful in some way.
Divergent thinking
Thinking that involves generating multiple and unusual possibilities when faced with a task or problem; associated with creativity.
Convergent thinking
Thinking that involves arriving at a single correct answer to a problem; emphasized on intelligent tests.
Talent
Outstanding performance in a specific field.
What are the major characteristics of concrete operational thought?
During the concrete operational stage, children can reason logically about concrete, tangible information. Mastery of conservation indicates that children are capable of mental actions that obey logical rules, including decentration and reversibility. The
Discuss recent research on concrete operational thought.
Specific cultural practices, especially those associated with schooling, promote mastery of Piagetian tasks. In cultures where children seldom attend school, certain informal, nonschool experiences foster operational thought in everyday situations.
Inform
Cite basic changes in information processing, and describe the development of attention and memory in middle childhood.
Brain development contributes to gains in information-processing speed and capacity during the school years. Gains in inhibition also occur, supporting information processing by preserving space in working memory for the task at hand.
During middle childh
Describe the school-age child's theory of mind and capacity to engage in self-regulation.
Metacognition expands over middle childhood as children better understand the process of thinking and the factors that influence it. School-age children regard the mind as an active, constructive agent. Their understanding of sources of knowledge expands.
Discuss current perspectives on teaching reading and mathematics to elementary school children.
Skilled reading draws on all aspects of the information-processing system. Research shows that a combination of whole-language and and phonics approaches is most effective for teaching beginning reading. Whole language keeps reading meaningful, while phon
Describe major approaches to defining intelligence.
During the school years, IQ becomes more stable and correlates well with academic achievement. Most intelligence tests yield an overall score as well as scores for separate intellectual factors. The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition, and t
Describe evidence indicating that both heredity and environment contribute to intelligence.
Heritability estimates and adoption research reveal that intelligence is a product of both heredity and environment. Studies of African-American children adopted into economically well-off white homes indicate that the black-white IQ gap is substantially
Describe changes in metalinguistic awareness, vocabulary, grammar, and pragmatics during middle childhood.
Schooling, especially reading, contributes greatly to metalinguistic awareness and other complex language competencies. Vocabulary continues to grow rapidly, and children have a more precise and flexible understanding or word meanings. Grasp of complex gr
What are the advantages of bilingualism in childhood?
Children who learn two languages in early childhood separate the two language systems from the start and acquire each according to a typical timetable. When school-age children acquire a second language after mastering the first, they take 3 to 5 years to
Describe the impact of class size and educational philosophies on children's motivation and academic achievement.
As class size declines, academic achievement improves. Older students in traditional classrooms have a slight edge in academic achievement. Those in constructivist classrooms tend to be critical thinkers who are advanced in social and maturity and have mo
Discuss the role of teacher-student interaction and grouping practices in academic achievement.
Teaching that encourages high-level thinking and that creates a warm, stimulating, demanding academic climate fosters children's interest, involvement, and academic achievement. Educational self-fulfilling prophecies, which are most likely to occur in cla
Describe educational benefits of computer use as well as concerns about computers.
Educational software that permits children to practice basic skills and solve problems results in achievement gains. Word processing frees children to write longer, higher-quality text. Computer programming promotes a variety of complex cognitive skills.
Under what conditions is placement of mildly mentally retarded and learning disabled children in regular classrooms successful?
U.S. and Canadian legislation has led to increasing use of inclusive classrooms, where students with learning difficulties (both those with mild mental retardation and a larger number who have learning disabilities) learn alongside typical students, often
Describe the characteristics of gifted children and current efforts to meet their educational needs.
Giftedness includes high IQ, creativity, and talent. Tests of creativity that tap divergent thinking rather than convergent thinking focus on only one of the complex cognitive ingredients of creativity. People usually demonstrate expertise and creativity
How well are North American children achieving compared with children in other industrialized nations?
In international studies, young people in Asian nations are consistently top performers. Canadian students generally score high, whereas U.S. students typically display average or below average performance. A strong cultural commitment to learning in fami