Family and Consumer Science, Research Paper Example

Introduction

There are five domains of development, placing this into context with Family and Consumer science and that of child development:

1. Fine Motor
2. Gross Motor
3. Social Emotional
4. Language
5. Cognitive

Fine and Gross Motor Skills

It is the concept of pretend play that gives children the opportunity in order to build both their Fine and Motor skills. The activities of running, jumping and climbing provide the necessary stamina and endurance in building strength. Fine Motor skills are developed through the ability of the child to explore and experiment. This makes the children refine and expand their skills over time with increased dexterity. Research has shown that this activity has improved both fine and gross motor ability. (Barrett, N.C. 2006)

Social and Emotional

The concept of ‘pretend play’ helps the children to build an improved level of social understanding and relationship with their peers. This is a trial and error approach where the children get to experiment and can reject those approaches that do not work. This way they get to improve relationships and make them sustainable. This also helps the children to grow in confidence and build their self-esteem.

It is also important to develop effective listening skills. Teachers can adopt differing strategies in order to support the learning of listening skills. A common approach is that of the top down method. They get the student to listen to the main idea of what is being heard. For example: Going to a restaurant. What might they predict or infer from this experience e.g. they will meet friends, order wine, order food, listen to music, pay the bill etc. Summarizing is bringing together the collective learning points from what they have heard. This is a great way for improving language vocabulary, using grammar in the right context and developing language comprehension skills.

It is also important to support the concept of listening for meaning. That is to get the student to extract the interpretation or meaning from what is heard. In simplistic terms this follows four basic steps: (1) Understand the reason for listening (2) The ability to focus on specific events so as to narrow the amount of information to retain at one time (3) Develop a top down or bottom up approach to listening (4) Check your comprehension whilst you are listening, jot down any words that are not understood.

Language Development

Children use play in order to control their own language development. This being guided by their peers. One approach might be to get the students involved in the development of a song. This is particularly effective for beginner students. Songs have always been an integral part of our language learning capability. This invokes two types of processes in the language teaching process. The first is termed a bottom up approach where the listener builds words into sentences and meaning. The other termed the top down approach get the listener to observe background knowledge in order to decipher the meaning of a message. Both of these skills and observations are useful in the development of comprehension skills. (Schoepp, K. 2012).

Cognitive Development

This is where the imagination of the child can help in the determination of imagery i.e. shape, size, space etc. This assists in the development of the mathematical functions of the child and helps in the development of academic learning. As children apply their though process to solving problems it makes them more creative and imaginative. This also improves their symbolic language learning capabilities.

It is perhaps Donald A Schon that has made one of the most significant contributions to both the theory and practice of learning. It was in the 1970’s that Schon published his works on the loss of the stable state and considered that both society and its institutions are in a continuous state of transformation and as such in order to manage these changing states we must place ourselves in a continued state of learning. In this sense Schon was a visionary thinker that has helped to manifest new ideas and concepts in the teaching profession. Schon can be placed in context with other important learning and motivational theories and how these, by way of example, have influenced Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and the defining of a personal theory of practice.

During the 1970’s and 80’s trends moved to the Cognitive model in the area of psychological thinking. Moving on from behavioural considerations and stimuli the focus was switched to mental processes and the concept of how memory structured and restructured data or information in the brain. It is interesting to note that this was the time that computer information technology started to gain a foothold and as such the man vs. machine interface was vogue in understanding how concepts of automation could be linked to the overall learning process. This model went through a number of different phases of development lasting well into the 1990’s. (J.Piaget, 1964)

References

Barrett, J. P. (2006). The relationship between fine and gross motor ability, and self worth in children and adolescents. Human Movement Science Vol 25(1), 65-75.

J.Piaget. (1964). Part I: Cognitive development in children: Piaget development and learning. Journal of Research in Science and Teaching Vol 3(2), 176-186.

Schoepp, K. (2012, 1 29). Reasons for Using Songs in the ESL/EFL Classroom. Retrieved from Internet TESL Journal: http://iteslj.org/Articles/Schoepp-Songs.html