Cognitive Development

Over the past four weeks, my knowledge of child, adolescent and brain development has expanded. I have read about Nature versus Nurture and how cognitive development grows as the body does. The readings have taken me through the stages of biological growth and the effects of environment and heredity on intelligence. I have looked at Piaget’s stages of development and Kohlberg’s moral reasoning stages. Finally, this week I read about memory and theories on how anything may be stored in the brain (Pressley & McCormick, 2007).

When I was a teen, I firmly believed that proper nurturing is all one needed to succeed. I did not believe there was a nature component, save for the truly unique individuals like Kim Peek’s brain. I believe anyone can have a Harvard brain with effort and drive. When my daughter was born, I learned quickly that she came with a personality and drive and no amount of nurturing could change her essence. According to the research consolidated by Pressley et.al., contends that everyone has and intelligence range given to them by their heredity and how that person is nurtured and the environment they are in determines where in that range a person will aspire to. I do not like that statement. It politely tries to tell me that some people will never be smart. It stands in the face of why I want to teach. I want to have high-achieving classrooms. Everyone can learn what I teach. I will endeavor to make my class interesting, interactive, vibrant, spaces to learn for every hereditary background.  

I enjoyed reading about Piaget’s four stages of development and appreciated the organization of it. It made sense of my daughter’s growth, however, my students will be firmly planted in adolescence and I did not find Piaget’s growth as applicable. Piaget’s moral development would be mildly more pertinent if I were to discuss cheating on tests. My reading transitioned to information processing models which I found immensely interesting. Short-term memory has a limited capacity and duration. My students might be able to hold around seven things there. It also takes an extremely long time to commit something to long term memory, like years. However, if the initial presentation is memorable, for lack of a better all-inclusive word, the mind will be more likely to store it. This gives me license to make my class and my content memorable with big demos, costumes, scents, labs, games, mnemonics, etc. I learned that students will “chunk” my new content in with prior knowledge and related information so to reduce the strain on the short term memory, I need to link my content to as many bits of prior learning as possible. I can also reduce strain on the short term memory by having the students take or provide notes. Finally, the best way to sink something into memory is to repeat, repeat, repeat it.

Pressley, M. & McCormick, C. B. (2007). Child and adolescent development for educators. New York, NY: Guilford Press.