COURSE MODULE Don Carlos Polytechnic College

Module week 14

Poblacion Norte, Don Carlos, Bukidnon

College of Education
EDUC 1: The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles
Semester of A.Y. 2020-2021

Introduction

This module will explore the Socio- Emotional development.

Intended Learning Outcomes

A. Understand the Cognitive Development of Intermediate Schoolers.

Activity

Brief Lecture: with the aid of a powerpoint with narration

Panel discussion via zoom on the topics

Discussion

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLERS

Around the age of 11 or 12, children learn to think about abstract concepts. They complete what
Piaget termed the concrete operational period and enter the formal operation period. The hallmark
achievements of concrete operations is that children display logical thinking, can seriate (arrange in a
series) without trial and error, are able to conserve number, mass, and volume, and demonstrate a
more strategic and methodical approach to problems. 

During the formal operations period, which continues into adulthood, children develop logical
thought, deductive reasoning abilities, and improved memory and executive function skills. Suggest
some tough deductive problems. While not all people, and not all cultures, achieve formal
operations, children become increasingly competent at adult-style thinking as they advance. During
the course of formal operations, children learn to use deductive logic, meaning they can be given a
general principle which they can apply to a specific situation. For example, if told that objects drop
to the ground at the same rate, they will be able to predict the outcome of a marble and tennis ball
being dropped. See if your child can use the principals of tic, tac, toe with a 3-D board. Hypothetical

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COURSE MODULE reasoning like this allows children to move beyond concrete experiences and begin to think
Module week 14

abstractly, reason logically, and draw conclusions. Children in formal operations are able to think
like a scientist, devise plans and systematically test solutions. 

Children this age are able to demonstrate abstract thinking. For example, they can understand shades
of gray, wrestle with abstract concepts like love or justice, and formulate values based on thinking
and analyzing as opposed to only by feeling or experiencing. They are able to classify items by many
different features, such as organizing books by height while also grouping them by topic. To foster
your child’s logical thinking and categorization abilities, ask her to try this online game.

During the early teen years, adolescent egocentrism emerges. Adolescent egocentrism is the belief
that others are highly invested in and attentive to their appearance and actions (imaginary audience)
and that their experiences and emotions are unique and known only to and by them (personal fable).
Egocentrism at this age is the root of self-consciousness, and it also fuels the teen’s sense of
themselves as uniquely powerful and invincible. While a tween or teen realizes other people have
different points of view (in contrast to the preschooler who displays egocentrism), he uses that
knowledge to become preoccupied with other people’s perceptions of him. To help balance your
child’s sense of being “the only one in the world,” have him spend some time on this site.

The reasons cited for these changes are many-fold, but recent research from studies at the National
Institute of Mental Health (NIH) points to the surge of production of gray matter in the brain before
puberty. The majority of the changes take place in the frontal lobe, which is “control center” for
executive functions, including the ability to think, plan, maintain short-term memory, organize
thoughts, control impulses, problem solve, and execute tasks (try this for more on the role of
executive function skills on impulse control). Along with these changes, are changes in the way the
brain processes rewards and pleasure, intensifying the feeling associated with each. An unfortunate
by-product to this shift is an increase in risky, sensation seeking behaviors over the teen years.

Mental development seems to drop off during the teen years, suggesting that less new skill are
learned as children integrate what has already been learned. For example, further development of
executive function skills mitigates risk-taking behaviors in teens, but such developments occur
gradually and are not complete until children are in their mid-20’s. During this time, the pleasure
seeking system and the impulse regulation system learn to work together to better coordinate feeling
with thinking, allowing better long-term impulse control. 

Memory abilities increase with the onset of formal operations, which is believed to be a result of
unproved executive functions and increased experience with particular strategies. For example, if a
child successfully uses mental imagery (e.g., visually recalling a book they need to bring to school),
the strategy and the experience are linked in long-term memory to be utilized in various situations
across time. Similarly, children will use their developing selective attention skills to perform better in
important environments, such as school. Being able to focus attention allows children to ignore
unimportant information. For example, discarding misleading information in a math problem, or
ignoring other conversations while chatting in the cafeteria. Children this age learn to multitask (e.g.,
talking to someone while playing a video game, kicking a ball while running), a skill that stems from
the automaticity of certain skills freeing up the mind to process other information. To practice
selective attention abilities, have your child try these online experiments: the Interactive Stroop
Effect Experiment, the Interactive "Directional Stroop" Effect Experiment, or the Switchball
game. What allows this selective attention to develop? In specific, myelination of the neurons of the

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brain allows them to fire more quickly, allowing children to more rapidly take in and process
information. However, this process, like all others, is a slow one and children may show inconsistent
skill over the time it takes to develop. 

Tweens and teens also display strong metacognition skills. Metacognition is the ability to think about
thinking. Children display this ability through an awareness of knowledge (children understand what
they know and what they still need to learn), an awareness of thinking (they understand the task
being tried and are able to select strategies to succeed), and an awareness of thinking strategies (they
are able to self-assess, ask themselves questions, revise their thinking, and direct their own learning).
Support this development by modeling your own thinking and problem solving aloud! Scaffold their
thinking by helping them to notice their own strategies and discovering together if they used words
or did not, if they are worth retaining or if new strategies are necessary. Facilitate your child’s
metacognitive skills by providing her low risk situations for her to notice her own thinking. Ask your
child what strategy she uses to accomplish simple tasks, and then harder tasks. The goal is that she
sees similar strategies with more complex tasks. Use this free app to talk about and develop strategy
(and metalinguistic thinking) in your child.

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN: CONCLUSIONS

AND NEW DIRECTIONS
Kurt W. Fischer and Daniel Bullock
What is the nature of children's knowledge? How does their knowledge change with development? In
pursuing these fundamental questions in the study of cognitive development, researchers often
expand their focus to include a range of children's behaviors extending far beyond the standard
meaning of knowledge.
In the two primary cognitive-developmental traditions, the questions typically take different forms.
In the structuralist tradition, influenced strongly by the work of Jean Piaget, Heinz Werner, and
others, the questions are: How is behavior organized, and how does the organization change with
development? In the functionalist tradition, influenced strongly by behaviorism and information
processing, the question is: What are the processes that produce or underlie behavioral change? In
this chapter we review major conclusions from both traditions about cognitive development in
school-age children.
The study of cognitive development, especially in school-age children, has been one of the central
focuses of developmental research over the last 25 years. There is an enormous research literature,
with thousands of studies investigating cognitive change from scores of specific perspectives.
Despite this diversity, there does seem to be a consensus emerging about (1) the conclusions to be
reached from research to date and (2) the directions new research and theory should take. A major
part of this consensus grows from an orientation that seems to be pervading the field: It is time to
move beyond the opposition of structuralism and functionalism and begin to build a broader, more
integrated approach to cognitive development (see Case, 1980; Catania, 1973; Fischer, 1980; Flavell,
1982a). Indeed, we argue that without such an integration attempts to explain the development of
behavior are doomed.
The general orientations or investigations of cognitive development are similar for all age groups—
infancy, childhood, and adulthood. The vast majority of investigations, however, involve children of
school age and for those children a number of specific issues arise, including in particular the

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relationship between schooling and cognitive development.

This chapter first describes the emerging consensus about the patterns of cognitive development in
school-age children. A description of this consensus leads naturally to a set of core issues that must
be dealt with if developmental scientists are to build a more adequate explanation of developmental
structure and process. How do the child and the environment collaborate in development? How does
the pattern of development vary across traditional categories of behavior, such as cognition, emotion,
and social behavior? And what methods are available for addressing these issues in research?
Under the framework provided by these broad issues, there are a number of different directions
research could take. Four that seem especially promising to us involve the relationship between
cognitive development and emotional dynamics, the relationship between brain changes and
cognitive development, the role of informal teaching and other modes of social interaction in
cognitive development, and the nature and effects of schooling and literacy. These four directions are
taken up in a later section.

Patterns Of Developmental Change

One of the central focuses in the controversies between structuralist and functionalist approaches has
been whether children develop through stages. Much of this controversy has been obscured by fuzzy
criteria for what counts as a stage, but significant advances have been made in pinning down criteria
(e.g., Fischer and Bullock, 1981; Flavell, 1971; McCall, 1983; Wohlwill, 1973). In addition,
developmentalists seem to be moving away from pitting structuralism and functionalism against each
other toward viewing them as complementary; psychological development can at the same time be
stagelike in some ways and not at all stagelike in other ways. As a result of these recent advances in
the field, it is now possible to sketch a general portrait of the status of stages in the development of
children.

The General Status Of Stages

Children do not develop in stages as traditionally defined. That is, (1) their behavior changes
gradually not abruptly, (2) they develop at different rates in different domains rather than showing
synchronous change across domains, and (3) different children develop in different ways (Feldman,
1980; Flavell, 1982b).
Cognitive development does show, however, a number of weaker stagelike characteristics. First,
within a domain, development occurs in orderly sequences of steps for relatively homogeneous
populations of children (Flavell, 1972). That is, for a given population of children, development in a
domain can be described in terms of a specific sequence, in which behavior a develops first, then
behavior b, and so forth. For example, with Piaget and Inhelder's (1941/1974) conservation tasks
involving two balls or lumps of clay, there seems to be a systematic three-step sequence (see Hooper
et al., 1971; Uzgiris, 1964): (1) conservation of the amount of clay (Is there more clay in one of the
balls, even though they are different shapes, or do they both have the same amount of clay?), (2)
conservation of the weight of clay (Does one of the balls weigh more?), and (3) conservation of the
volume of clay (Does one of the balls displace more water?). The explanation and prediction of such
sequences is not always easy, but there do seem to be many instances of orderly sequences in
particular domains.
Second, these steps often mark major qualitative changes in behavior—changes in behavioral
organization. That is, in addition to developing more of the abilities they already have, children also

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seem to develop new types of abilities. This fact is reflected in the appearance of behaviors that were
not previously present for some particular context or task. For example, in pretend play the
understanding of concrete social roles, such as that of a doctor interacting with a patient, emerges at a
certain point in a developmental sequence for social categories and is usually present by the age at
which children begin school (Watson, 1981). Likewise, the understanding of conservation of amount
of clay develops at a certain point in a developmental sequence for conservation.
More generally, there appear to be times of large-scale reorganization of behaviors across many (but
not all) domains. At these times, children show more than the ordinary small qualitative changes that
occur every day. They demonstrate major qualitative changes, and these changes seem to be
characterized by large, rapid change across a number of domains (Case, 1980; Fischer et al., in press;
Kenny, 1983; McCall, 1983). Indeed, the speed of change is emerging as a promising general
measure for the degree of reorganization. We refer to these large-scale reorganizations as levels. We
use the term steps to designate any qualitative change that can be described in terms of a
developmental sequence, regardless of whether it involves a new level.
Third, there seem to be some universal steps in cognitive development, but their universality appears
to depend on the way they are defined. When steps are defined abstractly and in broad terms or when
large groups of skills are considered, developmental sequences seem to show universality across
domains and across children in different social groups. When skills of any specificity are considered,
however, the numbers and types of developmental steps seem to change as a function of both the
context and the individual child (Bullock, 1981; Feldman and Toulmin, 1975; Fischer and Corrigan,
1981; Roberts, 1981; Silvern, 1984). For large-scale (macrodevelopmental) changes, then, there
seem to be some universals, but for small-scale (microdevelopmental) changes, individual
differences appear to be the norm. The nature of individual differences seems to be especially
important for school-age children and is discussed in greater depth in a later section.

Large-Scale Developmental Reorganizations

In macrodevelopment there seem to be several candidates for universal large-scale reorganizations—
times when major new types of skills are emerging and development is occurring relatively fast.
Different structuralist frameworks share a surprising consensus about most of these levels, although
opinions are not unanimous (Kenny, 1983). The exact characterizations of each level also vary
somewhat across frameworks. Our descriptions of each level, including the age of emergence, are
intended to capture the consensus.
Between 4 and 18 years of age—the time when many children spend long periods of time in a school
setting—there seem to be four levels. The first major reorganization, apparently beginning at
approximately age 4 in middle-class children in Western cultures, is characterized by the ability to
deal with simple relations of representations (Bickhard, 1978; Biggs and Collis, 1982; Case and
Khanna, 1981; Fischer, 1980; Isaac and O'Connor, 1975; Siegler, 1978; Wallon, 1970). Children
acquire the ability to perform many tasks that involve coordinating two or more ideas. For example,
they can do elementary perspective-taking, in which they relate a representation of someone else's
perceptual viewpoint with a representation of their own (Flavell, 1977; Gelman, 1978). Similarly,
they can relate two social categories, e.g., understanding how a doctor relates to a patient or how a
mother relates to a father (Fischer et al., in press).
The term representation here follows the usage of Piaget (1936/1952; 1946/1951), not the meaning
that is common in information-processing models (e.g., Bobrow and Collins, 1975). Piaget

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hypothesized that late in the second year children develop representation, which is the capacity to
think about things that are not present in their immediate experience, such as an object that has
disappeared. He suggested that, starting with these initial representations, children show a gradual
increase in the complexity of representations throughout the preschool years, culminating in a new
stage of equilibrium called ''concrete operations'' beginning at age 6 or 7.
Research has demonstrated that children acquire more sophisticated abilities during the preschool
years than Piaget had originally described (Gelman, 1978), and theorists have hypothesized the
emergence of an additional developmental level between ages 2 and 6—one involving simple
relations of representations. The major controversy among the various structural theories seems to be
whether this level is in fact the beginning of Piagetian concrete operations or a separate
reorganization distinct from concrete operations. Many of the structural approaches recasting Piaget's
concepts in information-processing terms have treated this level as the beginning of concrete
operations (Case, 1980; Halford and Wilson, 1980; Pascual-Leone, 1970).
For Piaget (1970), the second level, that of concrete operations, first appears at age 6-7 in middle-
class children. In many of the new structural theories, concrete operations constitute an independent
level, not merely an elaboration of the level involving simple relations of representations (Biggs and
Collis, 1982; Fischer, 1980; Flavell, 1977). The child comes to be able to deal systematically with
the complexities of representations and so can understand what Piaget described as the logic of
concrete objects and events. For example, conservation of amount of clay first develops at this level.
In social cognition the child develops the capacity to deal with complex problems about perspectives
(Flavell, 1977) and to coordinate multiple social categories, understanding, for example, role
intersections, such as that a man can simultaneously be a doctor and a father to a girl who is both his
patient and his daughter (Watson, 1981).
The third level, usually called formal operations (Inhelder and Piaget, 1955/1958), first emerges at
age 10-12 in middle-class children in Western cultures. Children develop a new ability to generalize
across concrete instances and to handle the complexities of some tasks requiring hypothetical
reasoning. Preadolescents, for example, can understand and use a general definition for a concept
such as addition or noun (Fischer et al., 1983), and they can construct all possible combinations of
four types of colored blocks (Martarano, 1977). Some theories treat this level as the culmination of
concrete operations, because it involves generalizations about concrete objects and events (Biggs and
Collis, 1982). Others consider it to be the start of something different—the ability to abstract or to
think hypothetically (Case, 1980; Fischer, 1980; Gruber and Voneche, 1976; Halford and Wilson,
1980; Jacques et al., 1978; Richards and Commons, 1983; Selman, 1980).
Recent research indicates that cognitive development does not stop with the level that emerges at age
10-12. Indeed, performance on Piaget's formal operations tasks even continues to develop throughout
adolescence (Martarano, 1977; Neimark, 1975). A number of theorists have suggested that a fourth
level develops after the beginning of formal operations—the ability to relate abstractions or
hypotheses, emerging at age 14-16 in middle-class Western children (Biggs and Collis, 1982; Case,
1980; Fischer et al., in press; Gruber and Voneche, 1976; Jacques et al., 1978; Richards and
Commons, 1983; Selman, 1980; Tomlinson-Keasey, 1982). At this fourth level, adolescents can
generate new hypotheses rather than merely test old ones (Arlin, 1975); they can deal with relational
concepts, such as liberal and conservative in politics (Adelson, 1975); and they coordinate and
combine abstractions in a wide range of domains.
Additional levels may also develop in late adolescence and early adulthood (Biggs and Collis, 1980;
Case, 1980; Fischer et al., 1983; Richards and Commons, 1983). At these levels, individuals may

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able to deal with complex relations among abstractions and hypotheses and to formulate general
principles integrating systems of abstractions.
Unfortunately, criteria for testing the reality of the four school-age levels have not been clearly
explicated in most cognitive-developmental investigations. There seems to be little question that
some kind of significant qualitative change in behavior occurs during each of the four specified age
intervals, but researchers have not generally explicated what sort of qualitative change is substantial
enough to be counted as a new level or stage. Learning a new concept, such as addition, can produce
a qualitative change in behavior; but by itself such a qualitative change hardly seems to warrant
designation as a level. Thus, clearer specification is required of what counts as a developmental level.
Research on cognitive development in infancy can provide some guidelines in this regard. For infant
development, investigators have described several patterns of data that index emergence of a new
level. Two of the most promising indexes are (1) a spurt in developmental change measured on some
continuous scale (e.g., Emde et al., 1976; Kagan, 1982; Seibert et al., in press; Zelazo and Leonard,
1983) and (2) a transient drop in the stability of behaviors across a sample of tasks (e.g., McCall,
1983). Research on cognitive development in school-age children would be substantially
strengthened if investigators specified such patterns for hypothesized developmental levels and tested
for them. Available evidence suggests that these patterns may index levels in childhood as well as
they do in infancy (see Fischer et al., in press; Kenny, 1983; Peters and Zaidel, 1981; Tabor and
Kendler, 1981).
In summary, there seem to be four major developmental reorganizations, commonly called levels,
between ages 4 and 18. Apparently, the levels do not exist in a strong form such as that hypothesized
by Piaget (1949, 1975) and others (Pinard and Laurendeau, 1969). Consequently, the strong stage
hypothesis has been abandoned by many cognitive-developmental researchers, including some
Piagetians (e.g., Kohlberg and Colby, 1983). Yet the evidence suggests that developmental levels
fitting a weaker concept of stages probably do exist.

Relativity And Universality Of Developmental Sequences

One of the best-established facts in cognitive development is that performance does not strictly
adhere to stages. On the contrary, developmental stages vary widely with manipulations of virtually
every environmental factor studied (Flavell, 1971, 1982b). Developmental unevenness, also called
horizontal decalage (Piaget, 1941), seems to be the rule for development in general (Biggs and
Collis, 1982; Fischer, 1980). During the school years it may well become even more common than in
earlier years. By the time children reach school age they seem to begin to specialize on distinct
developmental paths based on their differential abilities and experiences (Gardner, 1983; Horn, 1976;
McCall, 1981). Some weak forms of developmental stages—what we have called levels—probably
exist, as we have noted, but they occur in the face of wide variations in performance.
Since developmental unevenness has been shown to be pervasive, it seems inevitable that
developmental sequences will vary among children and across contexts. Unfortunately, there have
been few investigations testing for variations in sequence. Most of the studies documenting the
prevalence of decalage are designed in such a way that they can detect only variations in the speed of
development on a fixed sequence, not variations in the sequence itself. The dearth of studies testing
for individual differences in sequence, apparently arises from the fact that cognitive
developmentalists have been searching for commonalities in sequence, not differences.
Nevertheless, a few studies have expressly assessed individual differences, and their results indicate

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that different children and different situations do in fact produce different sequences (Knight, 1982;
McCall et al., 1977; Roberts, 1981). A plausible hypothesis is that developmental sequences are
relative, changing with the child, the immediate situation, and the culture.
To examine this hypothesis researchers must face an important hidden issue—the nature and
generality of the classifications used to code successive levels or steps of behavioral organization.
Indeed, when issues of classification are brought into the analysis, it becomes clear that universality
and relativity of sequence are not opposed. With a general mode of analysis, children can all show
the same developmental sequence in some domain, while with a more specific mode of analysis they
can all demonstrate different sequences in the same domain.
Figure 3-1 helps show why. The arrows and solid boxes depict developmental paths taken by two
children, boy X on the left and girl Y on the right. The letters in the boxes indicate the specific
content of the behaviors at each step, and the hyphens connecting letters indicate that two contents
have been coordinated or related. The word step is used to describe a specific point in a sequence
without implying how that step relates to developmental levels such as those described above.

Figure 3-1
Two developmental sequences demonstrating both commonalities and individual differences.
Depending on how these sequences are analyzed, they can demonstrate either commonalities or
individual differences—that is, that both children move through the same sequences or that each
child moves through a different sequence. When viewed in terms of the specific steps each child
traverses, the figure shows different developmental sequences. At step 1, child X can control skill or
behavior F, and at step 2 he can control skills F and M separately but prefers F. Finally he reaches
step 3, where he can relate F to M. Child Y at step 1 can control skill M, and at step 2 she can control
both M and F but prefers M. Finally she reaches step 3, where she can relate M to F. For example, in
social play, F might represent the social category for father, M the social category for mother, F-M
an interaction in which the father dominates, controlling what the mother does, and M-F an
interaction in which the mother dominates, controlling what the father does. Thus, all three steps
clearly differ for the two children.
Such plurality would seem to contradict the idea of a universal developmental sequence, since the
two children are demonstrating different sequences for similar content. Yet when the specific steps

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are characterized more generally, it is possible to see these different paths as variations on a common
theme. Analysis in terms of the social categories present, for instance, leads to the conclusion that
steps 2 and 3 are the same in the two children: At step 2 both children comprehend the two separate
categories of mother and father, and at step 3 they both understand how a mother and a father can
interact.
In a still more general classification, the steps can be defined in terms of social category structure
rather than the particular categories. Then, steps 2 and 3 remain equivalent for the children, and, in
addition, step 1 becomes equivalent, since both children control similar structures, a single category
(mother or father). In addition, skills that deal with markedly different contents can also be
considered equivalent. An interaction between a doctor and a patient is equivalent structurally to the
interaction between mother and father at step 3, since both interactions involve a social role relation
between two categories.
When cognitive-developmental theorists posit general developmental levels, they are defining
developmental sequences even more abstractly—in terms of highly general, structural classes of
behaviors. For the level of concrete operations, for example, the conservation of amount of clay can
be considered structurally equivalent to the intersection of social categories (Fischer, 1980).
Conservation of clay involves the coordination of two dimensions (length and width) in two balls of
clay, and the intersection of categories involves the coordination of two social categories for two
people (such as doctor/father with patient/daughter).
These considerations lead to a reconceptualization of the controversy over whether developmental
sequences are relative or universal. For highly specific classes of behavior, universality would seem
impossible, relativity inevitable. At the extreme, even the social category of mother is not the same
for the two children, since the behaviors and characteristics that each child includes in the category
undoubtedly differ. As a result of such variations, no two randomly chosen children could be
expected to show the same specific developmental sequences. Even identical twins exposed to, say, a
common mathematics curriculum would follow developmental paths for mathematics that differed in
detail. Thus, a useful analysis must distinguish irrelevant from relevant detail and generalize over the
latter.
Of course, what counts as relevant detail depends on the researcher's purpose. And care must be
taken to avoid trivialization of the issue of universality in a second way—by using overly general or
ill-defined classes. It is important that what counts as an equivalent structure be specified with some
precision. For example, all instances of two units of something cannot be counted as equivalent
unless there is a clear rationale for classifying the units as equivalent. With social categories, it would
seem unwise to treat "mother" as structurally equivalent to "corporation president." One of the
primary tasks for cognitive developmentalists is to devise a system for analyzing structural
equivalences across domains (Flavell, 1972, 1982a; Wohlwill, 1973).
Assuming an opposition between relativity and universality, then, is too simple, because at times
individual differences may usefully be seen as variations on a common theme. Many of the current
disagreements among researchers about universality and relativity in sequences could be clarified by
consideration of the nature of the structural classifications being used. In practice, investigators can
use a straightforward rule of thumb: They can construct their classes at an intermediate degree of
abstraction—neither so specific as to miss valid generalization nor so general that they serve only the
purpose of imposing order.
How the controversy about relativity and universality will be resolved rests in part on whether the

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structures and processes of developmental reorganization can be usefully regarded as similar across
different domains of cognition and across children who differ in their achievements within domains.
Can the growth of linguistic skill be usefully described in the same terms as the growth of
mathematical skill? Or are there distinct linguistic and mathematical faculties whose development
remains fundamentally dissimilar in any useful system for classifying sequences (Gardner, 1983)? Is
the difference between a retarded child and a prodigy a difference of sequence or a difference in the
speed of mastering what can usefully be considered the same sequence (Feldman, 1980)? These
questions are just beginning to be addressed in a sophisticated manner.

Processes Of Development
Many of the questions about the nature of developmental stages, their universality, and the extent of
individual differences would be substantially clarified by a solid analysis of the processes underlying
cognitive development. However, the best way to conceptualize the results of the extensive research
literature on developmental processes is very much an open question. No emerging consensus is
evident here, except perhaps that none of the traditional explanations is adequate. Three main types
of models have dominated research to date.
The first type of model grows out of Piaget's approach. The developing organization of behavior is
said to be based fundamentally in logic (Piaget, 1957, 1975). Developmental change results from the
push toward logical consistency. Stages are defined by the occurrence of an equilibrium based on
logical reversibility, and two such equilibria develop during the school years—one at concrete
operations and one at formal operations.
Tests of this process model have proved to be remarkably unsuccessful. The primary empirical
requirement of the model is that, when a logical equilibrium is reached, individuals must demonstrate
high synchrony across domains. The prediction of synchrony arises from the fact that at equilibrium
a logical structure of the whole (structure d'ensemble) emerges and quickly pervades the mind,
catalyzing change in most or all of the child's schemes. Consequently, when a 6-year-old girl
develops her first concrete operational scheme, such as conservation of number, the logical structure
of concrete operations should pervade her intelligence in a short time, according to Piaget's model.
Her other schemes should quickly be transformed into concrete operations.
Such synchrony across diverse domains has never been found. Instead, synchrony is typically low,
even for closely related schemes such as different types of conservation (e.g., number, amount of
clay, and length). Even if one allows that several concrete operational schemes might have to be
constructed before the rapid transformation occurs, the evidence does not support the predicted
synchrony (Biggs and Collis, 1982; Fischer and Bullock, 1981; Flavell, 1982b).
Efforts to study other implications of the logic model also have failed to support it (e.g., Braine and
Rumain, 1983; Ennis, 1976; Osherson, 1974). Several attempts have been made to build alternative
models based on some different kind of logic (e.g., Halford and Wilson, 1980; Jacques et al., 1978).
But thus far there have been only a few studies testing these models, and it is therefore not yet
possible to evaluate their success.
The second type of process model in cognitive-developmental theories is based on the information-
processing approach. The child is analyzed as an information-processing system with a limited short-
term memory capacity. In general, the numbers of items that can be maintained in short-term
memory are hypothesized to increase with age, thereby enabling construction of more complex skills.
The exact form of the capacity limitation is a matter of controversy, but in all existing models it

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involves an increase in the number of items that can be processed in short-term or working memory.
The increase is conceptualized as a monotonic numerical increment from 1 to 2 to 3, and so forth,
until some upper limit is reached.
This memory model has been influential and has generated a large amount of interesting research,
although it has not yet produced any consensus about the exact form of the hypothesized memory
process (Dempster, 1981; Siegler, 1978, 1983). One of the primary problems with the model seems
to be the difficulty of using changes in the number of items in short-term memory to explain changes
in the organization of complex behavior. Although analysis of behavioral organization is always
difficult, the distance between the minimal structure in short-term memory and the complex structure
of a behavior such as conservation or perspective-taking seems to be particularly difficult to bridge.
How can a linear numerical growth in memory be transformed into a change from, for example,
concrete operational to formal operational perspective-taking skills (Elkind, 1974)? Although such a
transformation may be possible, its nature has not proved to be transparent or simple (Flavell, 1984).
Moreover, how to conceptualize working memory is itself a controversial issue. Various
investigators have challenged the traditional conceptualization that there is an increase in the size of
the short-term memory store (Chi, 1978; Dempster, 1981; see also Grossberg, 1982: chs. 11 and 13).
Fortunately, ever richer developmental models involving ideas about working memory capacity have
continued to appear since Pascual-Leone's (1970) ground-breaking work (see Case, 1980; Halford
and Wilson, 1980), and perhaps one of these will be successful in overcoming the problems
mentioned.
The third common type of model assumes that development involves continuous change instead of
general reorganizations of behavior like those predicted by the logic and limited-memory models.
The fundamental nature of intelligence is laid down early in life, and development involves the
accumulation of more and more learning experiences. Behaviorist analyses of cognitive development
constitute one of the best-known forms of this functionalist model. A small set of processes defines
learning capacity, such as conditioning and observational learning, and all skills—ranging from the
reflexes of the newborn infant to the creative problem solving of the artist, scientist, or statesman—
are said to arise from these same processes (Bandura and Walters, 1963; Skinner, 1969). Any
behavioral reorganizations that might occur are local, involving the learning of a new skill that
happens to be useful in several contexts.
Some information-processing approaches also assume that the nature of intelligence is laid down
early and that development results from a continuous accumulation of many learning experiences:
The child builds and revises a large number of cognitive "programs," often called production systems
(Gelman and Baillargeon, 1983; Klahr and Wallace, 1976). Children construct many such systems,
such as one for conservation of amount of clay and one for conservation of amount of water in a
beaker. At times they can combine several systems into a more general one, as when conservation of
clay and conservation of water are combined to form a system for conservation of continuous
quantities. These reorganizations remain local, however. There are no general levels or stages in
cognitive development—no all-encompassing logical reorganizations and no general increments in
working memory capacity.
Researchers who believe in the continuous-change model tend to investigate the effects of specific
types of processes or content domains on the development of particular skills. One of the processes
emphasized within the continuous change framework has been automatization, the movement from
laborious execution of a skill or production system to execution that is smooth and without
deliberation. Several studies have demonstrated that automatization can produce what seem to be

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developmental anomalies. When school-age children are experts in some domain, such as chess, they
can perform better than adults who are not experts (Chi, 1978). More generally, many types of tasks
produce no differences between the performances of children and adults (Brown et al., 1983;
Goodman, 1980).
In research on specific content domains, the general question is typically how the nature of a domain
affects a range of developing behaviors. For example, the nature of language, mathematics, or
morality is said to produce "constraints" on the form of development in relevant behaviors (Keil,
1981; Turiel, 1977). Development in domains that involve self-monitoring, such as knowledge about
one's own memory processes (metamemory), is hypothesized to have general effects on many
aspects of cognitive development (Brown et al., 1983; Flavell and Wellman, 1977).
Within the continuous-change, functionalist framework, investigators often assume that there is some
intrinsic incompatibility between general cognitive-developmental reorganizations and effects of
specific domains or processes. Yet it is far from obvious that any such incompatibility exists. The
process of automatization can have powerful effects on developing behaviors, and at the same time
children can show general reorganizations in those behaviors (Case, 1980). The domain of
mathematics can produce constraints on the types of behaviors children can demonstrate, and at the
same time those behaviors can be affected by general reorganizations. The reason for the assumption
of incompatibility seems to be that developmentalists view the logic and limited-memory models as
incompatible with the continuous-change model.
The assumption of incompatibility between reorganization and continuous change seems to stem
from the fundamental starting points of the models: The logic and short-term memory models focus
primarily on the organism as the locus of developmental change, whereas the continuous models
focus on environmental factors. Several recent theoretical efforts have sought to move beyond this
limit of the three standard models by providing a more genuinely interactional analysis, with major
roles for both organismic and environmental influences (Fischer, 1980; Halford and Wilson, 1980;
Silvern, 1984). Approaches that explicitly include both organism and environment in the working
constructs for explaining developmental processes may provide the most promise for future research.

The Central Issues In The Field Today

The differences among the traditional approaches to development are important to understand, but
they seem much less significant today than they did 10 years ago. A pervasive change in orientation
seems to be taking place among behavioral scientists—a shift away from emphases on competing
theories toward integrating whatever tools are available to explain behavior in the whole person, in
all of his or her complexity. The present era seems to be a time of integrating rather than splitting.
Structuralism and functionalism, for example, are seen not as competing approaches but as
complementary ones, emphasizing different aspects of behavior and development. This new
orientation is evident throughout this volume.
In the study of cognitive development, this change in the field appears to be associated with attempts
to go beyond certain fundamental limitations of previous approaches and to move toward a more
comprehensive framework for characterizing and explaining cognitive development. At least three
basic questions have arisen as part of this movement toward a new, integrative framework. All three
involve efforts to avoid conceptual orientations that have proved problematic in past research. The
most fundamental of the three questions is: How do child and environment jointly contribute to
cognitive development? The other two questions involve elaborations of this question: How do
developing behaviors in different contexts and domains relate to each other? What methods are
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appropriate for analyzing cognitive development? In a general way the answers to these questions
apply to development at any age, but the answers apply in particular ways to school-age children.

The Collaboration Of Child And Environment

The central unresolved issue in the study of cognitive development today seems to be the manner in
which child and environment collaborate in development. As a result of the cognitive revolution, it is
generally accepted that the child is an active organism striving to control his or her world. But this
emphasis on the active child often seems to lead to a neglect of the environment. Contrary to the
structural approaches of such theorists as Piaget (1975) and Chomsky (1965), it appears to be
impossible to explain developing behavior without giving a central role to the specific contexts of the
child's action, including those in the school environment (see Scribner and Cole, 1981; Flavell,
1982b).
Giving context a central role does not mean merely demonstrating once again that environmental
factors affect assessments of developmental steps. Researchers have documented these effects in
thousands of studies, thus pointing out the inadequacies of the Piagetian approach to explaining the
unevenness of development. Surely Piaget, Kohlberg (1969, 1978), and other traditional structural
theorists have failed to deal adequately with the environment. It is also true, however, that the
functionalists have not produced a satisfactory alternative—an approach that both deals with the
environment's roles in development and treats children as active contributors to their own
development (Lerner and Busch-Rossnagel, 1981). An analysis of the collaboration of child and
environment in development is just as unlikely to arise from a functionalist emphasis on the
environment as from a structuralist emphasis on the child.

A Diagnosis
Why has the study of cognitive development repeatedly fallen back on approaches that focus
primarily on either the child or the environment? Why have developmentalists failed to build
approaches based on the collaboration of child with environment?
Historically, developmental psychology has been plagued by repeated failures to accept what should
be one of its central tasks: to explain the emergence of new organization or structure. These failures
have most commonly taken either of two complementary forms. In one form, nativism, the structures
evident in the adult are seen as already preformed in the infant. These structures need only be
expressed when they are somehow stimulated or nourished at the appropriate time in development. In
the second form, environmentalism, the structures in the adult are treated as already preformed in the
environment. These structures need only be internalized by some acquisition process, such as
conditioning or imitation. Typically, structuralist approaches assume some form of nativism, and
functionalist approaches assume some type of environmentalism.
Although it is common to focus on the difference between nativism and environmentalism, there is a
fundamental similarity, a common preformism.
Both approaches reduce the phenomena of development to the realization of preformed structures.
The mechanisms by which the structures are realized are clearly different, but in both cases the
structures are present somewhere from the start—either in the child or in the world (Feffer, 1982;
Fischer, 1980; Sameroff, 1975; Silvern, 1984; Westerman, 1980).
A mature developmental theory, we believe, must move beyond explanation by reduction to

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preexisting forms. It must build constructs that explain how child and environment collaborate in
development, and one of the primary tasks of such constructs must be to explain how new structures
emerge in development (Bullock, 1981; Dennett, 1975; Haroutunian, 1983).
If the future is not to be a reenactment of the past, it is important to ask why it has been so difficult to
avoid drifting toward one or another type of preformism. Why has no well-articulated, compelling
alternative to preformism been devised? Any compelling alternative to preformism must describe
how child and environment collaborate to produce new structures during development. Constructing
such a framework is an immensely difficult task. At the very least, the framework must make
reference to cognitive structure, environmental structure, the interaction of the two, and mechanisms
for change in structure. The scope of these issues makes such a framework difficult to formulate and
difficult to communicate once formulated.
Unfortunately, even approaches that have explicitly attempted to move beyond preformist views
have typically failed to do so. Piaget provides a case in point. He set out expressly to build an
interactionist position, an approach that would deal with both child and environment and thus avoid
the pitfalls of nativism and environmentalism (Piaget, 1947/1950). Yet the theory he eventually built
placed most of its explanatory weight on the child and neglected the environment.
Consider, for example, his famous digestive metaphor for cognitive development. Just as the
digestive system assimilates food to the body and accommodates to the characteristics of the
particular type of food, so children assimilate an object or event to one of their schemes and
accommodate the scheme to the object or event. Piaget seems to have chosen this metaphor expressly
as a device to avoid preformist thinking, yet he still drifted back toward preformism. In practice, the
focus for applications of the metaphor was the assimilation of experience to preexisting schemes.
The other side of the metaphor—accommodation to experience—was systematically neglected. For
example, Piaget (1936/1952, 1975) differentiated many different types of assimilation but generally
spoke of accommodation in only global, undifferentiated terms.
Similarly, the structures behind Piaget's developmental stages—concrete operations and formal
operations in school-age children—were treated as static characteristics of the child. The
environment was granted an ill-defined role in supporting the emergence of the structures, but the
structures themselves were treated as if they came to be fixed characteristics of the child's mind
(Piaget and Inhelder, 1966/1969). In a genuinely interactionist position, these structures would have
been attributed to the collaboration of the mind with particular contexts. Piaget's neglect of the
environment became particularly evident when he was faced with a host of environmentally induced
cases of developmental unevenness (termed horizontal decal-age). His response was that it was
simply impossible to explain them (Piaget, 1971:11). Because of Piaget's neglect of the environment,
even supporters of his position have argued that it is essentially nativist (Beilin, 1971; Broughton,
1981; Flavell, 1971).

Toward A Remedy
If the foregoing diagnosis is accurate, any remedy must explicitly counteract the tendency to drift
toward attributing cognitive structures to either the child or the environment. What is needed seems
to be a framework providing constructs and methods that force researchers to explicitly deal with
both child and environment when they characterize how new structures emerge in development.
What might such a framework look like? Many would recommend general systems theory, because it
views the child as an active component in a larger-scale dynamic system that includes the
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environment. To date, however, systems theory does not seem to have been successful in promoting
research explicating the interaction between child and environment in development. Many
investigators appear simply to have learned the vocabulary of the approach without changing the way
they study development. Apparently, the concepts of systems theory lack the definiteness needed to
guide empirical research in cognitive development toward a new interactional paradigm. A few
provocative approaches based on general systems concepts have begun to appear in the
developmental literature (e.g., Sameroff, 1983; Silvern, 1984), but they seem to bring to bear
additional tools that specifically promote interactional analyses.
It is in such practical tools that the proposed remedy lies. To promote interactional analyses, a
framework needs to affect the actual practice of cognitive-developmental research. We would like to
suggest that the concept of collaboration may provide the basis for such a framework.

The Collaborative Cycle

Human beings are social creatures, who commonly work together for shared goals. That is, people
collaborate. Often when two people collaborate to solve a problem, neither one possesses all the
elements that will eventually appear in the solution. During their collaboration, a social system
(Kaye, 1982) emerges in which each person's behavior supports the other's behavior and thought in
directions that would not have been taken by the individuals alone. Eventually a solution—a new
cognitive structure—emerges. It bears some mark of each individual, yet it did not exist in either
person prior to the collaboration, nor would it have developed in either one without the collaboration.
Indeed, even after the structure has developed, the individuals may be able to access it only by
reconstituting the collaboration. Of course, besides having the same two people collaborate again, it
is also possible for one of them to collaborate with a different partner (Bereiter and Scardamalia,
1982; Brown et al., 1983; Maccoby and Hartup, in this volume).
Figure 3-2 shows this developmental process as a collaborative cycle. The two left circles represent,
respectively, structures that are external and internal to an individual. Consider a girl engaged in
solving a puzzle with her father. The father provides external structures to support or scaffold her
puzzle solving by stating the goal of the task, lining up a puzzle piece to highlight how it fits in its
particular place, providing verbal hints, and so forth (Brown, 1980; Kaye, 1982; Wertsch, 1979;
Wood, 1980). The child's knowledge and skills for solving the puzzle constitute the core of the
developing internal structures.

Figure 3-2

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Development schematized as a collaborative cycle.

The collaboration of external and internal structures produces the behavioral episodes represented in
the right circle. The girl and her father work at solving the puzzle, and, as a result of the
collaboration, she can achieve a scaffolded mental state, which she could not achieve by herself as
quickly or in the same form.
The feedback arrows running from the right circle to the left ones in Figure 3-2 show the dependence
of developmental change on collaboration. By performing the task in a scaffolded interaction, the girl
learns the goal of the puzzle and how to go about solving it without her father's help. She develops
more sophisticated internal structures so that she is less dependent on the complex external structures
provided by her father. Of course, the development of this ability takes many steps: The father
constantly updates his scaffolding to fit the child's present knowledge and skill. In this way,
developmental change occurs both inside the child and outside her—an often overlooked fact to
which we will return.
In much human behavior there is indeed a collaboration between two or more individuals. Recent
socially oriented analyses of development have emphasized this process. Sometimes the emphasis is
on the joint contributions of collaborating individuals, and the process is called coregulation or
something similar (see Feldman, 1980; Markus and Nurius, Maccoby, and Weisner, in this volume;
Westerman and Fischman-Havstad, 1982). Sometimes the emphasis is on the role of the parent or
older child in supporting and advancing the child's behavior, and the process is called scaffolding or
something similar, as in Figure 3-2 (Brunet, 1982; Kaye, 1982; Laboratory of Comparative Human
Cognition, 1983; Lock, 1980; Vygotsky, 1934/1978; Wertsch, 1979; Wood et al., 1976; Wood,
1980).
Even when a child is acting alone, collaboration can occur because the nonpersonal environment can
play the role of collaborator. Because environments have structures, every environment supports
some behaviors more than others. For example, a tree that has strong branches far down on its trunk
provides strong support for climbing, a tree with only high branches provides less support, and a pole
with no branches provides little support.
Of course, much about human environments is socially constructed. Consequently, the collaboration
between child and environment often involves other people even when no other person is
immediately present, because people have constructed the physical environment to correspond with
mental structures that organize their activity. Good examples include a library with a spatial/topical
organization of its many books and a classroom with its desks, chalkboards, and wall displays all
designed to facilitate the types of interactions needed for schooling.

Implications For Research

Although the collaboration approach has not yet been fully articulated, it already seems to have
straightforward implications for research practice. If child and environment are always collaborating
to produce a behavior, explanations of that behavior must invoke characteristics of both. As a
practical procedure to encourage such explanations, investigators can use research designs that vary
important characteristics of both the child and the environment. With such designs, variations in both
child and environment are likely to affect behavior (Fischer et al., in press; Hand, 1981).
A series of studies on the development of understanding social categories illustrates how this type of
research design can lead to analyses of the collaboration between child and environment in cognitive

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development (Hand, 1982; Van Parys, 1983; Watson and Fischer, 1977, 1980). The studies were
designed to test several predicted sequences for the development of social categories such as the
social roles of doctor and patient and the social-interaction categories of ''nice'' and "mean." Each
study was designed to include variations in both the child and the environment.
The main variable involving child characteristics was age. A wide age range was included in each
study to ensure substantial variation in children's capacities to understand the social categories. Ages
ranged from 1 to 12 and thus included the relevant periods for the major developmental
reorganizations in preadolescent school-age children.
To determine the contribution of environmental characteristics, behavior was assessed under three
different conditions, which were designed to provide varying degrees of support for advanced
performance. In a structured condition—the elicited-imitation assessment—a separate task was
administered to test each predicted step in the developmental sequence. The subject was shown a
story embodying the skill required for that step and was asked to act out the story. Thus this
condition provided high environmental support for performance at every step. The other two
conditions provided less support and thus assessed more spontaneous behavior. In the free-play
condition, each child played alone with the toys, acting out his or her own stories. In the best-story
condition the experimenter returned to the testing room and asked the child to make up the best story
he or she could.
The results showed a systematic effect of environmental support on the child's performance, but the
effect varied as a function of the developmental level of the child's best performance. For the first
several steps in the developmental sequence, virtually all children showed the same highest step in all
three conditions. However, a major change occurred beginning with the first step testing the
developmental level of simple relations of representations (which typically emerges at approximately
age 4). At this step most children performed at a higher step in the structured assessment than in the
two more spontaneous conditions, and that gap grew systematically in the later steps in the
sequence. Figure 3-3 shows these results for the studies of the social roles of doctor and patient, and
parallel results were obtained in studies of the social interaction categories of nice and mean (Hand,
1982) and the self-related categories of gender and age (Van Parys, 1983).

Figure 3-3
A systematic change in the proportion of children showing the same step in elicited imitation and
free play. Adapted with permission from Watson & Fischer (1980). Copyright © American
Psychological Association.

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A similar design and method was used to test for an analogous phenomenon in adolescents. The
developmental sequence involved the moral concepts of intention and responsibility. It was predicted
that at the cognitive-developmental level of formal operations (also called "single abstractions")
subjects would show the same highest step in a structured assessment and in a spontaneous
condition. However, when they became capable of performing at the next developmental level,
relations of abstractions, a major gap would appear between performance in the structured and
spontaneous conditions. The prediction was supported. Once again, the highest developmental step
that the individual demonstrated varied systematically as a function of both the individual's capacity
and the environmental condition (Fischer et al., 1983).
In analyzing results of this sort a proponent of a noncollaborative approach would ask which
condition provides the best assessment of the child's true competence. The collaboration theorist
replies, "You've missed the point. Competence as traditionally assessed is a joint function of child
and environment." The child does not have any true competence independent of particular
environmental conditions. Competence varies with degree of support.
Even for an individual child research can be designed to investigate variations in both the child and
the environment. Cole and Traupman (1983), for example, assessed a learning disabled child's
capabilities using a range of cognitive tests and examined his performance in settings outside the
classroom. They found that, in settings involving social interactions with other people, his disabilities
were hardly noticeable because he used his social skills to compensate for them. Thus, the portrait of
the child in a standard testing situation was vastly different from the portrait in a real-life social
setting.
It is surprising how few cognitive-developmental studies have systematically varied characteristics of
both child and environment. Typically, studies examine either changes with age and ability or
changes resulting from environmental factors. In the infrequent studies that include variations in both
child and environment, the interpretations often neglect the interaction and instead focus on the child
and the environment separately. For example, many studies criticizing Piaget's work demonstrate that
variations in environmental conditions produce developmental unevenness (decalage), but they
seldom deal with the variations as a function of children's ages or abilities. Fortunately, there are a
growing number of exceptions to this characterization—studies that seriously consider the effects of
both child and environment on performance. The results of these studies are already beginning to
transform explanations of cognitive development (see O'Brien and Overton, 1982; Rubin et al., 1983;
Tabor and Kendler, 1981).

The Transformation Of Concepts Of Ability And Competence

As these research examples illustrate, analyzing development as a collaborative process leads to a
reconceptualization of many basic cognitive-developmental concepts. Since every behavior can be
seen to depend on a collaboration between child and environment, it becomes impossible to analyze
any behavior without including both organismic and environmental factors.
Cognitive developmentalists and psychometricians commonly speak of children's ability, or capacity,
or competence, as if a child possessed a set of static characteristics that could be defined
independently of any context: One child has the ability to understand conservation of water, and
another child does not. As soon as the collaborative role of the environment is introduced, these
concepts must be radically changed. Competence is not a fixed characteristic of the child but an
emergent characteristic of the child in a specific context. It is not enough to make a distinction

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between competence and performance, because in standard usage this distinction begs the question.
The assumption is made that children really do possess a set of competences, but they are somehow
prevented from demonstrating them in their performance (Overton and Newman, 1982). If concepts
such as ability and competence are to be consonant with a collaboration approach, they must be
redefined in terms of the interaction of child with environment.
Within a collaboration approach, concepts of ability and competence retain their utility, because the
child is part of the analysis, too. In certain contexts, children perform up to a certain level of
complexity and not beyond it, thus demonstrating a certain competence for those contexts. At times
children show partial knowledge of what is needed for a particular task (Brown et al., 1983; Feffer,
1982) and so demonstrate the competence for collaboration with a more knowledgeable partner.
Also, children evidence large individual differences in the facility with which they can generalize an
ability to new contexts, thus demonstrating variations in the competence to generalize. Upon the
emergence of formal operation, for example, very bright children seem to be able to use their new
capacity quickly in a wide range of tasks, whereas children of normal intelligence take much longer
to extend the capacity to many tasks (Fischer and Pipp, 1984; Webb, 1974).
The collaboration orientation poses many new questions for the study of cognitive development. It is
not enough to ask questions such as: How does the child's behavior change with age, or how does the
child's behavior change as a function of experience? Instead, questions like the following need to be
asked: Why do children often perform below capacity? How does context support or fail to support
high level performances that are known to be within the child's reach? How do specific collaborative
systems support the acquisition of particular skills in different ways at different developmental
levels? How is the nature of the child's experience jointly regulated by the child and by resources
(human and other) available in the child's environment? Later, we examine several lines of research
that show promise of contributing answers to such questions.

Integrating Across Traditional Research Categories

In the same way that scholars are coming to treat child and environment as collaborators in
development they are recognizing the need to integrate the traditional categories for categorizing
behavior. Cognition and emotion, for example, are not separate in the developing child. There seem
to be at least three reasons for this changing orientation.
First, after decades of research, developmentalists have found that a child's behavior does not fit
neatly into separate boxes labeled cognition, emotion, motivation, social skills, personality, and
physical development (see, for example, Harter, 1982, 1983; Selman, 1980). Indeed, even behavior
in more restricted, intuitively appealing categories such as perspective taking and conservation does
not fit together coherently (see Hooper et al., 1971; Rubin, 1973; Uzgiris, 1964). Behavioral
development has not proved to follow the "obvious" categories devised by developmentalists.
Second, the general movement toward integrating diverse approaches and dealing with the whole
child leads not only to an emphasis on the collaboration of child and environment but also to the
consideration of relations between behaviors in the traditional categories: How does emotional
development relate to cognitive development? How does social development relate to cognitive
development? Instead of one set of researchers studying a cognitive child, while another set studies a
social child, and still another set studies an emotional child, the field is moving toward viewing the
child as a whole—a cognitive, social, emotional, motivated, personal, biological child.
Third, during the last 20 years the cognitive-developmental orientation has become a dominant

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influence in the study of development, and it has provided a major impetus toward integration. The
central questions in the study of cognitive development involve the organization of behavior and the
processes underlying behavioral change. Because these questions are so general and fundamental,
their applicability is not limited to the traditional domain of cognitive development—increments in
knowledge about "cold" topics, such as objects, space, and scientific principles. All behavior,
including that involving "hot" topics, such as emotions and social interaction, is organized in some
way and undergoes developmental change.
The movement toward integration across behavioral categories has been promising, and many
interesting results have come from research in this new tradition. But thus far progress has been
limited by several conceptual difficulties.

Overcoming The Obstacles

One of the central conceptual problems has been the tendency to reify the traditional behavioral
categories despite the lack of evidence that children's behavior fits the categories. Thus, the most
common hypotheses about the relationship between, for example, cognitive development and social
development have assumed the validity of cognition and social skills as separate categories. This
assumption is especially clear when cognitive development is postulated as a prerequisite for social
development.
One such hypothesis that has received much attention involves the relation between cognition and
morality: Cognitive development is hypothesized to be a prerequisite for moral development (see
Kohlberg, 1969). In practice, this proposition has been taken to mean that performance on Piagetian
tasks is a prerequisite for performance on Kohlberg's moral dilemmas. Why should conservation of
amount of clay, for instance, be a prerequisite for moral reasoning based on normative concepts of
good and bad (Kohlberg's stage 3)? Is there any sense in which conservation is included in the
concepts of good and bad? Or is there any way that conservation is more fundamental to mental
functioning than concepts of good and bad? Isn't it just as reasonable (or unreasonable) to suggest
that concepts of good and bad may be a prerequisite for conservation? If evidence does not support
the division of behavior into separate categories of cognition about science problems and moral
reasoning, it cannot be meaningful to suggest that such cognition is a prerequisite for moral
reasoning (Rest, 1979, 1983).
A similar problem arises when investigators assume that the behaviors captured by the traditional
categories are totally separate, showing no relation to each other at all. One of the most neglected
topics for school-age children is emotional development, which is sometimes treated as if it is not
related at all to cognitive development. Perhaps this assumption helps explain why cognitive
developmentalists have omitted emotions from their research agenda. In a later section we suggest
some guidelines for stimulating the study of emotional development in school-age children,
especially as it relates to cognitive development.
A third, related conceptual problem has been the assumption that one variable can capture an entire
behavioral category. Self-esteem as assessed by a questionnaire is treated as measuring the core of
the developing self (Hatter, 1983; Markus and Nurius, in this volume; Wylie, 1979). The stage of
moral judgment, as assessed by reasoning about a set of moral dilemmas, is believed to assess the
fundamental nature of moral development (Rest, 1983).
This mistaken assumption is at the heart of a recent controversy about the nature of brain-behavior
relations. Several investigators have used measurements of the growth rate of children's heads as
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indexes of changes in the children's ability to learn (Epstein, 1978; Toepfer, 1979). Although no
measures of learning were used, conclusions were drawn from the head-growth data about what
children of different ages were able to learn. The relationship between brain growth and cognitive
development is an exciting topic worthy of research, as we discuss later. It is important, however,
that researchers differentiate what they are measuring from other developmental changes.
Relationships between developments in different domains cannot be assumed; they must be assessed.

Exercise

Create a reflection employing CERA.

Assessment

Reflection employing Content, Experience, Reaction and Application ( CERA) with rubrics

Critical essay ( Rubrics will be provided in the Platform- Google Classroom)

Reflection

Resources and Additional Resources

Additional Resources

https://www.slideshare.net/BSEPhySci14/cognitive-development-of-intermediate-schoolers-
40193500#:~:text=Initial%20Cognitive%20Characteristics%20%E2%80%A2%20Intermediate,compared
%20during%20their%20primary%20years.&text=Reading%20Development%20Children%20in%20this,wide
%20application%20of%20word%20attack.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK216774/

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Attachment 1

Rubrics for critical essay

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 Fair Good Excellent
(N/A) (N/A) (N/A)
COURSE MODULE Module week 14

Opening Statement Fair Good Excellent

0-19 20-24 25-30

30 points maximum Opening Good Strong opening statement.
statement opening
lacked in statement. Topical and substantive
substance. arguments.
Some strong
Opening arguments Well organized and presented
statement presented. arguments.
lacked in
clarity. Needed High level of analytical rigor.
more
Opening organization.
statement
needed Needed a
significant higher level
increase in of analysis.
analytical
rigor. Needed
more
substance.
Clarity Fair Good Excellent

0-5 6-7 8-10

10 points Maximum Arguments Could have Excellent job in this area.
lacked better
clarity. clarified Clear and intelligible arguments.
your
Many points arguments Excellent clarification of your
were for the points within the discussion.
inconsistent. group.

Did not Some

effectively arguments
clarify were not
points/argum consistent.
ents during
the Good
discussion. clarification
of your
points during
the
discussion.
Argumentation/Style Fair Good Excellent

0-5 6-7 8-10

10
23 |points
P a g emaximum Need more Good job in Excellent job in this area.
engagement this area.
with the Persuasive argumentation.
larger Argumentati
COURSE MODULE Module week 14

Attachment 2

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COURSE MODULE Reflection Evaluation Criteria (the rubric)
Module week 14

Example of one Type of Rubric for a paper

Criteria Superior (54-60 Sufficient (48-53 Minimal (1-47 Unacceptable (0

points) points) points) points)

Depth of Response Response Response Response

Reflection demonstrates an in- demonstrates a demonstrates a demonstrates a
depth reflection on, general reflection on, minimal lack of reflection
and personalization and personalization reflection on, and on, or
of, the theories, of, the theories, personalization personalization of,
(25% of concepts, and/or concepts, and/or of, the theories, the theories,
TTL Points) strategies presented strategies presented in concepts, and/or concepts, and/or
in the course the course materials strategies strategies
materials to date. to date. Viewpoints presented in the presented in the
Viewpoints and and interpretations are course materials course materials to
___/15 interpretations are supported. to date. date. Viewpoints
insightful and well Appropriate examples Viewpoints and and interpretations
supported. Clear, are provided, as interpretations are are missing,
detailed examples applicable. unsupported or inappropriate,
are provided, as supported with and/or
applicable. flawed unsupported.
arguments. Examples, when
Examples, when applicable, are not
applicable, are not provided.
provided or are
irrelevant to the
assignment.
Required Response includes Response includes all Response is Response excludes
Components all components and components and missing some essential
meets or exceeds all meets all components components and/or
requirements requirements and/or does not does not address
indicated in the indicated in the fully meet the the requirements
(25% of instructions. Each instructions. Each requirements indicated in the
TTL Points) question or part of question or part of the indicated in the instructions. Many
the assignment is assignment is instructions. parts of the
addressed addressed. All Some questions assignment are
thoroughly. All attachments and/or or parts of the addressed
___/15 attachments and/or additional documents assignment are minimally,
additional documents are included, as not addressed. inadequately,
are included, as required. Some attachments and/or not at all.
required. and additional
documents, if
required, are
missing or

25 | P a g e
COURSE MODULE Module week 14
unsuitable for the
purpose of the
assignment.
Structure Writing is clear, Writing is mostly Writing is unclear Writing is unclear
concise, and well clear, concise, and and/or and disorganized.
organized with well organized with disorganized. Thoughts ramble
excellent good Thoughts are not and make little
(25% of sentence/paragraph sentence/paragraph expressed in a sense. There are
TTL Points) construction. construction. logical manner. numerous spelling,
Thoughts are Thoughts are There are more grammar, or
expressed in a expressed in a than five spelling, syntax errors
coherent and logical coherent and logical grammar, or throughout the
___/15 manner. There are no manner. There are no syntax errors per response.
more than three more than five page of writing.
spelling, grammar, or spelling, grammar, or
syntax errors per syntax errors per page
page of writing. of writing.
Evidence Response shows Response shows Response shows Response shows
and Practice strong evidence of evidence of synthesis little evidence of no evidence of
synthesis of ideas of ideas presented and synthesis of ideas synthesis of ideas
presented and insights gained presented and presented and
insights gained throughout the entire insights gained insights gained
(25% of throughout the entire course. The throughout the throughout the
TTL Points) course. The implications of these entire course. Few entire course. No
implications of these insights for the implications of implications for
insights for the respondent's overall these insights for the respondent's
respondent's overall teaching practice are the respondent's overall teaching
___/15 teaching practice are presented, as overall teaching practice are
thoroughly detailed, applicable. practice are presented, as
as applicable. presented, as applicable.
applicable.

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