Social Contexts of Development: Peers and the Sociocultural World Schools, Achievement and Work
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A Topical Approach to
Life-Span Development 6e
John W. Santrock
Chapter Sixteen:
Schools, Achievement, and Work
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Schools
- Constructivist and direct instruction approaches
- Constructivist approach
- Emphasizes child’s active construction of knowledge and understanding; reflection and critical thinking
- Teacher provides support for students exploring
their world and developing knowledge
- Today: opportunities and collaboration stressed
- Criticisms: not enough discipline, too relativistic and vague
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Schools
- Constructivist and direct instruction approaches
- Direct instruction approach
- Structured, teacher-centered/controlled
- Criticisms: creates passive learners, few critical thinking challenges
- Many recommend: effective teachers use direct and constructivist instruction together
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Schools
- Accountability
- State-mandated tests have taken on a more powerful role — No Child Left Behind
- Critics argue that they lead to
- Single score being used as sole predictor
- Teaching to test; use of memorization
- Tests don’t measure important skills like creativity and social skills
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Schools
- Schools and developmental status
- Early childhood education
- The norm in many states, private and publicly funded
- Many ways young children are educated
- The child-centered kindergarten
- Emphasizes the whole child
- Physical, cognitive, socioemotional development
- Needs, interests, and learning style
- Emphasizes learning process
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Schools
- Schools and developmental status
- Montessori approach
- Originally developed for MR children, then for poor
- Teacher is facilitator
- Children encouraged to be early decision makers
- Fosters independence and cognitive development skills
- De-emphasizes verbal interactions
- Criticisms vary
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Schools
- Developmentally Appropriate and Inappropriate Education
- Developmentally appropriate practice
- focuses on age/individual (uniqueness) appropriateness
- Recently: more focus on sociocultural factors
- Developmentally inappropriate practice
- direct instruction, extensive use of drill/practice, relies on paper-and-pencil activities given to large groups
- Children show slower development
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Schools
- Education for disadvantaged children
- 1965 – Project Head Start
- U.S. programs vary for low-income children
- Proven positive and quality experiences
- Not all U.S. programs created equal in quality
- Most successful: well-designed and well-implemented
- Controversies in early childhood education
- Include both academic and constructivist approaches
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Schools
- Elementary education
- Change from “home-child’’ to “school-child”
- New roles and obligations
- Too often, early schooling has more negative feedback; lowers child’s self-esteem
- Teachers often pressured to cover curriculum;
- Tight scheduling; may harm children
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Schools
- Educating adolescents
- Transition to Middle or Junior High School
- Independent from parent monitoring; more choices
- Physical and bodily image changes, cognitive changes
- Impersonal structure, multiple teachers, stressful times
- “Top dog phenomenon”
- Benefits
- More opportunities, friends, challenges, feel grown up
- More subject choices, intellectual work challenges
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Schools
- Effective schools for young adolescents
- Fears: junior highs being “watered-down” high schools, mimicked curriculum, schedules
- There are biological, psychological differences
- Carnegie report:
- U.S. middle schools: massive, impersonal, and lacking
- Recommended complete overhaul and changes: more flexible curriculum, more fitness-health programs
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Schools
- Effective schools for young adolescents
- High School
- Concerns about education and students
- Needs pathway to student identity achievement
- Graduate with inadequate skills
- Enter college needing remediation classes
- Student drop out rates decreasing today
- Ethnic and racial differences
- Gender differences
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Schools
- Effective schools for young adolescents
- Effective programs that discourage high school dropping out include
- Bill and Melinda Gates foundation funding
“I Have A Dream” program
- Projects adopt entire public grade level or cohorts in housing projects; gives college tuition to high school grads
- Reading, tutoring, counseling, mentoring programs
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Schools
- College and Adult Education
- Transition to College
- Replays the top-dog phenomenon
- Many of same benefits found in high school
- Movement to a larger, more impersonal school
- Interact with peers of more diverse backgrounds
- Increased focus on achievement and assessment
- More opportunities to explore lifestyles and values
- Many experience more stress and depression
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Schools
- College and Adult Education
- Adult education includes
- Literacy training, community development
- University credit programs, on-the-job training
- Continuing professional education
- Women — the majority of adult learners
- Occurs in many forms, offered by many sources
- Individual reasons for attending adult ed/college vary
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Schools
- Educating children with disabilities
- Approximately 13.5% (ages 3 to 21) in United States receive special education or related services
- Learning disability:
- Difficulty learning/understanding/doing math
- Gender differences: “Referral bias”?
- Boys are 3x more diagnosed as girls
- Diagnosis difficult; guidelines vary among states
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Schools
- Educating children with disabilities
- Dyslexia:
- Severe impairment in ability to read and spell
- Brain scans used; difficulty integrating information
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
- Inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity; onset in childhood
- Definitive causes unknown; in DSM-IV
- Medication is common treatment; other treatments vary
- Stricter behavioral school rules “illuminate” these
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Schools
- Educating children with disabilities
- Autism spectrum disorders
- Autistic disorder: severe; onset in first three years
- Asperger syndrome: mild impairments: obsessiveness
- No proof of being caused by family socialization
- Affects about 1 million children today
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Schools
- Educating children with disabilities
- Public Law 94-142, Education for All Handicapped Children Act; renamed as IDEA in 2004
- Individualized education plan (IEP) — written program tailored to child with disability
- Least restrictive environment (LRE) — child with disability educated in setting similar to where other children educated
- Inclusion — educating child with special education needs in regular classroom
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Schools
- Socioeconomic status and ethnicity
- Low-income, ethnic minority children face more difficulties in school
- Schools in poor areas
- Underfunded, low test scores and graduation rates
- Young inexperienced teachers, largely segregated
- Rote learning promoted
- More minorities put in remedial/special education classes, suspended from school
- Asians and Whites more likely put in advanced classes
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Schools
- SES and ethnicity
- Improving relationships among ethnically diverse
- Turn class into jigsaw classroom
- Positive personal contact with diverse other students
- Engage in perspective taking; reduce bias
- View school and community as a team
- Comprehensive school plan, assessment strategy, and staff development plan
- Mental health/support team
- Parents’ program
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Achievement
- Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation
- Extrinsic
- Activity is means to an end
- Often motivated by rewards and punishment
- Intrinsic
- Activity is an end in itself
- Self-determination and personal choices
- Personal responsibility for behavior encouraged
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Achievement
- Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation
- Developmental shifts
- Intrinsic motivation increases with age for most
- Decreases in early high school
- Greatest extrinsic increase and intrinsic decrease between sixth and seventh grade
- Blamed on impersonalization experiences, increased evaluations (standardized tests) and competition
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Achievement
- Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation
- Conclusions
- Create stimulating cognitive environments
- Promote more self-responsibility for student learning
- Some rewards can undermine learning; rewards most effective with high interest
- Rewards convey mastery information
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Achievement
- Mastery motivation and mindset
- Mastery Motivation
- Mastery orientation — task-oriented; concerned with learning strategies
- Helpless orientation — one seems trapped by difficulty and attributes one’s difficulty to a lack of ability
- Performance orientation — achievement outcomes; winning matters
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Achievement
- Mastery motivation and mindset
- Mindset
- Cognitive view of oneself
- Fixed mindset: “carved in stone”
- Growth mindset: belief in change
- Promotes optimistic or pessimistic outlook
- Shaping begins due to interactions with others
- Growth mindset shows higher achievement results
- Self-Efficacy
- Belief that one can master a situation/have good results
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Achievement
- Goal-Setting, planning, and self-monitoring
- Self-efficacy and achievement improve when individuals set goals that are
- Specific
- Proximal (short-term)
- Challenging
- Can set both long and short-term goals
- Expectations linked to outcomes/efforts
- Setting highest standards that can be achieved is best
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Achievement
- Goal-Setting, planning, and self-monitoring
- Purpose
- Accomplish something meaningful to one’s self; contribute something to the world beyond one’s self
- Teachers, parents convey importance of goals; should discuss where goals lead to (long-term picture)
- Negative influences
- Some TV/media, violent models of aggression/video games, unrealistic views of the world, passive learning, stereotyping, and other distractions
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Achievement
- Goal-Setting, planning, and self-monitoring
- Purpose
- Technology concerns for children, emerging adults
- Computer and Internet
- Online social environments (MySpace, Facebook)
- Proper use, restrictions can be beneficial
- Internet and aging adults
- Fastest growing population of users
- Search for information, use for fast communication
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Achievement
- Ethnicity and culture
- Aging and culture
- Good life based on health, security, kinship network
- Collectivistic cultures (e.g. China, Japan) have high respect for older persons than individualistic cultures like United States
- Possess valuable knowledge, control key family resources, remain “useful,” aging role changes have greater capacity, integrated extended family, role continuity throughout life span
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Achievement
- Ethnicity and culture
- Socioeconomic status (SES)
- Grouping by occupational, educational, and economic similarities
- SES differences are proxy for material, human, and social capital within and beyond the family
- SES variations in neighborhoods
- Affect children’s adjustment: disadvantages/advantages
- Crime and isolation linked to low self-esteem, distress
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Achievement
- Ethnicity and culture
- SES differences
- Lower-SES parents
- More concerns with child conformity to society, home of strong parental authority, corporal punishment use and more directive than interactive communication
- Higher-SES parents
- Concerned with delayed gratification, discipline rules discussed with children, less physical punishment, more interactive conversation
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Achievement
- Ethnicity and culture
- Poverty
- Challenges of poverty have impact on adult lives
- 2006: 17% of children under age 18 in poverty
- U.S. poverty level demarcated by family structure and ethnic lines; minorities overrepresented
- Psychological impact
- Powerless, less financial resources, alternatives are restricted; environmental inequities is damaging
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Achievement
- Ethnicity and culture
- Families and poverty
- Links between economic well-being, parental behavior, and social adjustment
- Feminization of poverty
- Programs that have made an positive impact
- Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP)
- New Hope Program
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Achievement
- Ethnicity and culture
- SES, poverty, and aging
- Older adults in poverty linked to increased physical and mental health problems
- Poverty among older minorities 2 to 3 times higher
- Retirement forces reduced income and spending
- Expenses, cost-of-living increases
- Social security for those over 65 years
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Achievement
- Ethnicity
- United States is more ethnically diverse than ever before
- Immigration
- High rates impact on ethnic population growth
- Special stressors for immigrants (language, changed SES, support system separation, struggle to adapt but preserve ethnic identity)
- Acculturation: parents and children often at different stages of the process
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Achievement
- Ethnicity and SES
- Research unclear due to methods used
- Ethnicity and families
- Ethnic group variations in size, structure, composition, kinship network, levels of education and income
- Highest risks of poverty
- Single or uneducated parents
- All parents face childrearing challenges
- Greatest harm to children
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Achievement
- Ethnicity and culture
- Differences and diversity
- Historical, economic, and social experiences produce differences between minority groups
- Stereotyping of perceived deficits are harmful
- Great diversity between groups seen as “one”
- Latinos: experiences of Cubans and Puerto Ricans
- Asians: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Thai
- Ethnicity and aging
- Face problems of racism, ageism, and sexism for women
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Careers, Work, and Retirement
- Career Developmental Changes
- Young children
- Idealistic fantasies about what to be when they grow up
- High school
- Serious career decisions as different options explored
- College
- Choose major/specialization leading to work in a field
- Early adulthood
- Start full-time occupation
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Careers, Work, and Retirement
- Career Development
- Match personality type to career
- Realistic: prefer solitude, being outdoors
- Investigative: interested in ideas, intellectualist
- Artistic: creative, innovative ways for self-expression
- Social: helping orientation, desire to be with people
- Enterprising: dominating, good at persuasion
- Conventional: detail-oriented, prefer highly structured situations
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Careers, Work, and Retirement
- Career Development
- Important aspect of choosing a career — match career to one’s values
- Monitoring the Occupational Outlook
- Labor force participation of women increasing
- Work in Adolescence
- 90% receive high school diplomas
- 75% work part-time and attend school
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Careers, Work, and Retirement
- Work in Adolescence
- U.S. high school students
- 75% work part-time and attend school
- Most work 16-20 hours per week
- Most work in service jobs
- Work more than in other developed countries; less than developing countries
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Careers, Work, and Retirement
- Work
- Emerging adulthood
- Many variations of work patterns exist in merging roles of student and worker
- Co-op programs, some dropouts, most graduate
- Transition strongly influenced by level of education
- Special concern: many attending community colleges but drop out or don’t finish
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Careers, Work, and Retirement
- Work
- Adulthood
- The work landscape
- National survey: 55% less productive due to stress; 52% considered or made a career change because of stress in the workplace
- Unemployment
- Dual-career couples
- Males assuming more home responsibilities
- Women assuming more ‘breadwinner’ roles
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Careers, Work, and Retirement
- Work
- Middle Adulthood
- Midlife time of evaluation, assessment, and reflection
- Recognizing limitations in career progress
- Deciding whether to change jobs or careers
- Rebalance family and work
- Planning for retirement
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Careers, Work, and Retirement
- Work
- Late Adulthood
- Percentage of older adults who work part-time steadily increased since 1960s
- Good health
- Strong psychological commitment to work
- Distaste for retirement
- Cognitive ability is best predictor
- Many participate in unpaid work
- Age affects many aspects of work
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Careers, Work, and Retirement
- Retirement
- Option to retire late twentieth-century phenomenon in United States
- Today’s workers will spend 10 to 15% of their lives in retirement
- Flexibility is key factor in adjustment
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Careers, Work, and Retirement
- Retirement
- Many return to work after retirement — about 7 million in 2006
- Adjustment to retirement varies according to life changes and circumstances
- Retirement planning includes more than successful financial planning
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The End