Chapter 3 QTC

(3.1) Personal and social development can have a major influence on both individual student learning and the learning environment as a whole.  Identify a case from the CSEL guidelines* that you would like to address in your paper.  Then, examine the possible developmental factors that could be influencing your target student(s) or classroom in the case study.  Consider all dimensions of personal and social development, including cognitive, language, social, emotional, and moral development. *CSEL guidelines can be found under CSEL Artifact. Cases are included at the end of the document. Choose the case that best suits your desired grade level.

Early Childhood Education Case Study

It has been one month since the school year began and most of your 25 kindergarten students know class procedures, such as the schedule of learning activities, where they are supposed to be for each learning activity, where they are supposed to keep their personal items, and how they are expected to move about the room and the school building in order to ensure a productive learning environment.  Then there is Willard.  He must ask 20 or more times a day, “Teacher, when can we go outside to play?”  In addition, he often does not stay where he should to work on a given learning activity.  Instead, you find him wandering around the room and getting into other children’s personal things.  Three times this past week you looked up just in time to see Willard walking out of the classroom without permission.  Some of the other children in your classroom community have started making fun of Willard.  Others are beginning to become less engaged in their learning. 

1. Cognitive Development: Since nearly all of the other children grasp the daily routine just fine, I am going to state that this task is an age-appropriate activity. Since Willard has clearly demonstrated that he does not know the schedule, I am assuming that Willard is cognitively delayed in regards to the level that his peers are in. This task might not be currently in his zone of proximal development, meaning that the teacher must work with him on this task until it is something that he can fulfill independently. 
2. Language Development: Willard might come from a home that either does not speak English as a first language, or a home with taciturn parents who do not engage in conversations with Willard. Additionally, Willard might not have gone to preschool or been around many other children. All of these factors would limit his language development. 
3. Social Development: As mentioned above, Willard might not have the proper language development at this time. This would have a domino effect on his social development and cause him to act "socially inappropriate" in some situations. He might be responding to the fact that his peers are making fun of him, and he is considered as a rejected student. He might be experiencing a culture shock if he has never been in a formal schooling situation prior to beginning kindergarden. He might not know the proper way to behave in social situations.
4. Emotional Development: We never know what a child may be experiencing in his home life. Willard might need to release some emotions, and his way of doing so is playing outside. He might be trying to fulfill this prophecy by leaving the classroom in hopes to make it to the playground, or questioning the teacher about when it is time to go outside.
5. Moral Development: According to Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning, Willard would be considered to be in preconventional morality. His stage would be the punishment-avoidance and obedience stage. He might be disobeying the rules at times when he is likely to not get caught, or so he thinks. 

3.2) Check out tables 3.1 (p. 75), 3.2 (p. 83) and 3.3 (p. 91) with particular attention to the age ranges you are interested in teaching.  Identify your personal favorite ways that an educator can promote a child’s sense of self, perspective taking, and moral reasoning skills.

Grade Level K-2

1. Sense of Self: Encourage students to extend their abilities by tackling challenging tasks that they think they can accomplish. The main idea that I like about this is that children do tasks that THEY think they are capable of as opposed to something that a teacher provides for them.
2. Perspective Taking: I like the idea of having children frequently discuss their thoughts, feelings, and motives. Some children may still be in the preoperational egocentrism stage, and it is good for them to see that there are indeed other perspectives out there. Other people have feelings, thoughts, and motives, and children can only become truly empathetic by realizing this.
3. Moral Reasoning Skills: I like all of the strategies listed. I particularly like the strategies that allow the children to have autonomy in the decision making. Selfish behavior is typical in this age range, and when it occurs, prosocial behavior strategies can be modeled. When there is only one copy of a book but multiple children want to hold and read the book, the children can be responsible for developing a conflict resolution.