Chapter
9:
Middle Childhood
(6 – 12 Years)
Chapter
Objectives
–
To clarify the role of
friendship in helping children to learn to take the point of view of others, be
sensitive to the norms and pressures of the peer group, and experience closeness
in relationships, and to clarify the negative consequences that result from
social rejection and loneliness
–
To describe the development of
concrete operational thought, including conservation, classification skills,
combinatorial skills, and the child’s ability to understand and monitor his or
her own knowledge and understanding
Chapter
Objectives (cont.)
–
To explore skill learning,
including the presentation of a model for the process of acquisition of complex
skills such as reading and the examination of societal factors that provide the
context within which skill learning occurs
–
To analyze the development of
self-evaluation skills, including self-efficacy, and ways that social
expectations of parents, teachers, and peers contribute to a child’s
self-evaluation
Chapter Objectives
(cont.)
–
To describe a new level of
complexity in play as children become involved in team sports and athletic
competition
–
To explain the psychosocial
crisis of industry versus inferiority, the central process through which the
crisis is resolved, education; the prime adaptive ego quality of competence, and
the core pathology of inertia
–
To explore the impact of
exposure to violence on development during middle childhood
Friendship:
Family Influences on Social Competence
–
Early family experiences
contribute to a child’s sociability and social competence, the process of
becoming ready for friendship may begin in infancy
–
Children who have secure
attachments are more popular and engage more freely in social interactions
–
A parent’s discipline
techniques, the way she speaks to the child, and her parenting values are all
linked to a child’s social competence and popularity
Friendship: Three
Contributions of Friendship to Social Development
–
Perspective Taking and Cognitive
Flexibility –
•
As children interact with peers who see the world differently than they
do, they begin to understand the limits of their own points of view
•
Peers diminish one another’s self-centered or egocentric outlook
–
Social Norms and Peer-group
Pressure
•
The peer groups evolve norms for acceptance and rejection
Friendship: Three
Contributions of Friendship to Social Development (cont.)
–
Close Friends
•
Close friends occur at a more intimate level of disclosure, trust, and
supportiveness. “Best Friends” occur during these years
•
The stability of close friendships is quite variable
•
Close friendships are influenced by attractiveness, intelligence,
classroom social status, and satisfaction with and commitment to the best friend
Friendship:
Loneliness
–
With the increased emphasis on
friendship and peer acceptance comes the risk of peer rejection and feelings of
loneliness
Four social
characteristics increase a child’s experiences of loneliness
•
Peer rejection
•
Children who have trouble forming close friendships that provide
emotional closeness and companionship
•
Among the children who are unpopular or rejected by peers, those who are
withdrawn, victimized, or bullied report higher levels of loneliness than other
unpopular children
•
Children who tend to blame themselves for their lack of social acceptance
feel more lonely and are possibly less likely to believe that they can do
anything to improve their situation
Friendship: Peer
Rejection
–
Aggressive-rejected children,
often referred to as gullies, are more likely than nonaggressive children to
attribute hostile intentions to others
–
Withdrawn children tend to be
inhibited, anxious and interpersonally reserved with a negative self-concept and
these children tend to interpret negative peer reactions as resulting from their
own personal failings
Friendship: Peer
Rejection (cont.)
–
Aggressive-withdrawn children
tend to be the least well-liked of all three types of rejected children. They
exhibit anxiety, poor self-control, and social withdrawal in addition to
aggressive behavior
Concrete Operations
–
Piaget suggested that at about
age 6 or 7 a qualitatively new form of thinking develops
–
The word operation refers to an
action that is performed on an object or a set of objects
–
Piaget argued that such
transformations are built on some physical relationship that the younger child
can perform but cannot articulate
Middle Childhood (6
– 12 Years)
Figure 9.1
Three Concepts that Contribute to Conservation
Concrete Operations
–
Metacognition: a range of
processes and strategies used to assess and monitor knowledge
–
Metacognition includes the
ability to review various strategies for approaching a problem in order to
choose the one that is most likely to result in a solution
–
Metacognition develops in
parallel with other cognitive capacities
Skill Learning:
Features of Skilled Learning
–
The development of skill depends
on a combination of sensory, motor, perceptual, cognitive, linguistic,
emotional, and social processes
–
Skills are attained through the
simultaneous integration of many levels of the component behaviors
–
Limits of the human system place
constraints on an individual’s capacity to perform skilled behavior
–
Skilled behavior requires the
use of strategies
Skill Learning:
Reading
–
Reading provides access to new
information, new uses of language, and new forms of thinking
Skill Learning:
Reading (cont.)
–
Parents influence their
child’s reading ability
•
The value they place on literacy
•
The emphasis they place on academic achievement
•
The reading materials they make available at home
•
The time they spend reading with their children
•
The way they read with their children
•
The opportunities they provide for verbal interaction in the home
Skill Learning: The
Social and Cultural Context of Skill Development
–
Progress in skill development is
influenced by parental and school expectations regarding levels of performance
in a specific culture
–
Societies differ in their level
of literacy
–
The purpose of literacy varies
from one culture to the next
–
The mark of a literate person
varies by context
Self-Evaluation
–
Children strive to match their
achievements to internalized goals and external standards
–
The process of self-evaluation
is further complicated because the peer group joins the adult world as a source
of social comparison, criticism, and approval
–
Self-Evaluation takes place in
two contexts
•
Internal frame of reference
•
External frame of reference
Developing
Self-Efficacy
Figure
9.2
Four Components of Self-Efficacy
Case Study: Becca
–
Thought Questions
•
How would you describe Becca’s level of academic self-efficacy?
•
How are the four factors of enactive attainments, vicarious experiences,
verbal persuasion, and physical states contributing to her self-efficacy?
•
What would you say is missing from Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy
that is illustrated in the case of Becca?
•
What are some gender issues that may underlie this case? In what ways is
Becca’s situation made possible because of gender stereotypes?
Case Study: Becca (cont.)
–
Thought Questions (cont.)
•
How might teachers intervene to reverse this decline?
•
What might be the likely outcome for Becca if this pattern of
disengagement continues?
Self-Evaluation:
Social Expectations
–
Appraisals and expectations of
others become incorporated into one’s own self-evaluation
–
Teacher’s Expectations:
Self-fulfilling prophecy refers to the idea that false or inaccurate beliefs can
produce a personal reality that corresponds with them
–
Parent’s Expectations:
Parent’s expectations about children’s capabilities also influence
children’s perceptions of their abilities
Self-Evaluation:
Social Expectations (cont.)
–
Illusions of Incompetence: some
children who perform well on tests on academic achievement (90th percentile or
above) perceive themselves as below average in academic ability
Team Play
–
Team play is a new dimension of
childhood friendship during the middle childhood years
–
Interdependence is a condition
in which systems depend on each other, or all the elements in a system rely on
one another for their continued growth
–
Division of labor is the
splitting of activities needed to accomplish a task between participants
–
Competition is a context between
rivals
In-Group & Out
Group Attitudes
Table 9.2
The Psychosocial
Crisis: Industry versus Inferiority
–
Industry: an eagerness to
acquire skills and perform meaningful work
•
Cognitive Component
•
Behavioral Component
•
Affective Component
–
Inferiority: feelings of
worthlessness and inadequacy come from two sources: the self and the social
environment
•
Organ inferiority
•
Learned helplessness
The Central Process:
Education
–
Every culture must devise ways
of passing on the wisdom and skills of past generations to its young
–
Education is different from
schooling
The Prime Adaptive
Ego Quality
and the Core Pathology
–
Competence: the exercise of
skill and intelligence in the completion of tasks; the sense that one is capable
of exercising mastery over one’s environment
•
An outcome measure
•
Personality type
•
Motivational system
•
Composite of knowledge, skills, and abilities
•
Belief in one’s effectiveness
–
Inertia: a paralysis of thought
and action that prevents productive work
Middle Childhood (6
– 12 Years)
Figure 9.4
Students’ Use of Computers at School
Applied Topic:
Violence in the Lives of Children: Consequences of Exposure to Violence
–
Large numbers of children and
youth are victims of violent crimes, with homicide the third leading cause of
death for children ages 5 to 14 and the second leading cause of death for
adolescents and young adults ages 15 to 24 in the United States
–
The number of children who are
themselves aggressive and violent
–
The disruption it produces in
children’s cognitive functioning and mental health
Applied Topic:
Violence in the Lives of Children: Prevention Strategies
–
Prevent prenatal and perinatal
conditions that cause neurological damage and increase the biological
vulnerability for violent behaviors
–
Develop effective techniques for
educating parents and teachers about socialization practices that help develop
self-control, empathy, and perspective-taking
–
Develop effective techniques for
teaching children alternative, non-aggress strategies to handle and respond to
insults, threats, and frustration
Applied Topic:
Violence in the Lives of Children: Prevention Strategies (cont.)
–
Devise educational experiences
that help children reframe cognitions and beliefs that lead them to interpret
the behaviors of others as threatening
–
Reduce exposure to violence at
home, in the neighborhood, and on television
–
Decrease children’s access to
guns
Applied Topic:
Violence in the Lives of Children: Prevention Strategies (cont.)
–
Increase the sense of social
control and cohesion in neighborhoods so that mutual trust is higher, people
help one another more, and people are more willing too take steps to intervene
when children are acting destructively