SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDYING CHILD DEVELOPMENT TO TEACHERS.
Teachers’ activities aim at imparting effective education to their learners. The duty of educating needs much to have clear knowledge that would help the learner to achieve the intended goals aimed to him/her. The teacher should know well his/her learners; therefore, s/he must know the basis of the learners. It is therefore very important for the teacher to know well child development that will help him/her to meet the specific goals of imparting education. Before we look at the importance of studying child development to teachers, let us study the definition of the terms child, development and child development.
A Child is a young human being between birth and puberty while Development refers to how people grow, become accustomed and change over the way of their life span, through physical, personality, socio-emotional, cognitive and language improvement. Child development refers to the biological and psychological changes between birth and the end of adolescence as an individual progress from dependency to increased independence.
A variety of factors influences child development. Heredity guides every aspect of physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and personality development. Family members, peer groups, the school environment, and the community influence how children think, socialize, and become self-aware. Biological factors such as nutrition, medical care, and environmental hazards in the air and water affect the growth of the body and mind. Economic and political institutions, the media, and cultural values all guide how children live their lives. Critical life events, such as a family crisis or a national emergency, can alter the growth of personality and identity.
Most important of all, children contribute significantly to their own development. This occurs as they strive to understand their experiences, respond in individual ways to the people around them, and choose activities, friends, and interests. Thus, the factors that guide development arise from both outside and within the person, which is why it is very important for a teacher to study child development.
A teacher is a model of the society and therefore s/he should study child development to achieve the following goals of providing better education to his/her learners and the nation at large.
Assist children with special needs: Child development helps educators to assist children with special needs such as emotional or learning difficulties. Studying child development helps to detect abnormalities and health problems related to child development in the learning process. Child development in acquiring knowledge can be affected by abnormality or health problems like diseases, disability and malnutrition. The study of child development enables the teacher to take measures in order to rectify these problems.
Support healthy growth: Child development enables teachers and the society to support healthy growth. Understanding early brain development, for example, means that teachers and parents can provide better opportunities for intellectual stimulation and society can reduce or eliminate obstacles to healthy brain growth. In addition, it enables them to understand the roles played by heredity and environment in the development of a child. Hereditary diseases like sickle cell, asthma, epilepsy and nervous disease can affect the development of a child or by environmental factors, which includes climate conditions, malfunction and effects of illness, psychological and social factors.
Determine unique cognitive abilities: Studying child development helps to determine unique cognitive abilities among the children. The study of child development enables the teacher to know and understand the cognitive ability of his/her children and therefore get more efficiency in testing the cognitive behavior and emotional side of a child.
Solving Problems related to learning process: It helps to solve Problem related to learning process in school; the children who experience difficulty in growth and development mostly have problems in learning hence the study of child development helps the teacher to determine the type of teaching to be used in order to meet the educational needs of a child.
Practical guidance: Child development provides practical guidance for parents, teachers, child-care providers and others who care for children.
Self-understanding. Through studying child development, we know ourselves better by recognizing the influences that have made us into the people we are today.
Evaluate the achievement of learning: Studying child development helps to evaluate the achievement of learning at school level. The study of child development helps teachers to get more information concerning child’s achievement and performance in school; therefore teachers make different ways in which the child can most effectively brought into successful interaction with materials learned.
Many abilities and characteristics developed in childhood last a lifetime. Some developments in behavior and thought are very similar for all children. Around the world, most infants begin to focus their eyes, sit up and learn to walk at comparable ages. Children begin to acquire language and develop logical reasoning skills at approximately the same time. These aspects of individual growth are highly predictable. Other aspects of development show a much wider range of individual differences. Whether a child becomes outgoing or shy, intellectually advanced or average, or energetic or subdued depends on many unique influences whose effects are difficult to predict at the child’s birth.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
severe and multiple disability
The term Severe and multiple disabilities have referred as a low incidence that is in the society only few people can have it. There is no widely acceptable definition of severe and multiple disabilities, most definition includes three criteria’s, which are.
· Test of intellectual function,
· Developmental progress, and
· Extent of education needs.
The IDEA defines multiple disabilities as
“Concomitant impairment (such as mental-blindness, mental retardation orthopedic impairment e.t.c) such combination of which causes such severe educational problems that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for one of the impairments. The term does not include deaf-blindness”
The group of my choice is the children/learners with mental retardation and blind. There level of severity is mild mental retardation and low vision, there level have been determined by assessment in the adaptive behavior as in Tanzania we don’t have clear and acceptable I.Q assessment.
Mild mental retarded children have been divided in to two terms especially in the school setting these are “educable mental retardation which refers to students whose abilities were adequate for them to profit from an academically oriented curriculum and trainable mental retardation refers to students whose program emphasized the training of basic functional skills like self help skills” (smith, 2002) in this group of children with mild mental retardation and blind they need all kinds of program that will educate and train them this is because the level of their disabilities is mild and there fore they can acquire knowledge and trained to live in the society independently.
The program that can suit children with mild mental retardation and low vision is personal social skills this skills include play skills, interaction skills, group participation, sexual behavior, self direction, responsibility, leisure activities, and expression of emotions.
This program can help a learner or a child to interact with other people in the society, it also teach how a child can express his/her emotions especially when he/she is angry happy unhappy or sad, then through this program a child can know his/her self direction and responsibilities in the society just because children with mild mental retardation and blindness are educable they can learn and live independently in the society.
Moreover these skills can help a child to participate in-group activities like playing with his/her peers and other activities given by teacher like classroom activities, how to draw pictures how to write there names e.t.c. Children can learn how to follow orders given by their fellow, teacher, or their parents at home and their elders in the society.
Not Only this program that fulfill the child’s learning needs, other skills is needed like self help personal appearance skills which will teach a child how to feed themselves that is eating, drinking, and other things like dressing, toileting, brushing teeth. All this will make a child to appear smart like other people, to keep his body clean all the time and to eat or drink if he/she feel hungry.
Moreover a child also need “cognitive functioning such as pre-academics example counting, reading, writing with brail machine, numeric functions, counting money, measurements and approximation” (Heward 2006) This skill will help a child to know the basic academic skills for their daily life and this will help them in places like super market, in the kitchen, passing through the road bank and other places.
Not only that but also learners with mild mental retardation and low vision need vocational skills where they can know their work habits and attitudes, how they can search for job, how they can perform work, social vocational behavior and how they can work safely. This will help learners to move from one location to another, to plan things and perform.
Apart from that in this program my learners will benefit the following first they will be able to communicate with their fellow learners, they can communicate with every one in the society.
Then learners as they have mild mental retardation and blindness this program will help them to know the basic things in the society like how to cross the road, how to ask if they need anything, how to receive and give message, The program also educates and trains how learners can respect the elders in the society and how to respect themselves.
To sum up one can conclude by saying that children with mild mental retardation and low vision can be educated in inclusive classes although they need high care and they need to be trained or educated in communication skills how to use brail machine, how to use sign language and the teacher should be competent in all aspects and be able to interact with other professions on how to help a child’s learning.
REFERENCE.
Beine. S. Mary et al {2002}, Mental retardation, R.R. Donnelly& Sons company; New
York
Heward. William. L {2006}, An introduction to special education 8th Ed, courier
Kendallville Inc. New York.
Smith B. M. etal (2002) mental retardation 6th ed. New jersey Columbus, Ohio
· Test of intellectual function,
· Developmental progress, and
· Extent of education needs.
The IDEA defines multiple disabilities as
“Concomitant impairment (such as mental-blindness, mental retardation orthopedic impairment e.t.c) such combination of which causes such severe educational problems that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for one of the impairments. The term does not include deaf-blindness”
The group of my choice is the children/learners with mental retardation and blind. There level of severity is mild mental retardation and low vision, there level have been determined by assessment in the adaptive behavior as in Tanzania we don’t have clear and acceptable I.Q assessment.
Mild mental retarded children have been divided in to two terms especially in the school setting these are “educable mental retardation which refers to students whose abilities were adequate for them to profit from an academically oriented curriculum and trainable mental retardation refers to students whose program emphasized the training of basic functional skills like self help skills” (smith, 2002) in this group of children with mild mental retardation and blind they need all kinds of program that will educate and train them this is because the level of their disabilities is mild and there fore they can acquire knowledge and trained to live in the society independently.
The program that can suit children with mild mental retardation and low vision is personal social skills this skills include play skills, interaction skills, group participation, sexual behavior, self direction, responsibility, leisure activities, and expression of emotions.
This program can help a learner or a child to interact with other people in the society, it also teach how a child can express his/her emotions especially when he/she is angry happy unhappy or sad, then through this program a child can know his/her self direction and responsibilities in the society just because children with mild mental retardation and blindness are educable they can learn and live independently in the society.
Moreover these skills can help a child to participate in-group activities like playing with his/her peers and other activities given by teacher like classroom activities, how to draw pictures how to write there names e.t.c. Children can learn how to follow orders given by their fellow, teacher, or their parents at home and their elders in the society.
Not Only this program that fulfill the child’s learning needs, other skills is needed like self help personal appearance skills which will teach a child how to feed themselves that is eating, drinking, and other things like dressing, toileting, brushing teeth. All this will make a child to appear smart like other people, to keep his body clean all the time and to eat or drink if he/she feel hungry.
Moreover a child also need “cognitive functioning such as pre-academics example counting, reading, writing with brail machine, numeric functions, counting money, measurements and approximation” (Heward 2006) This skill will help a child to know the basic academic skills for their daily life and this will help them in places like super market, in the kitchen, passing through the road bank and other places.
Not only that but also learners with mild mental retardation and low vision need vocational skills where they can know their work habits and attitudes, how they can search for job, how they can perform work, social vocational behavior and how they can work safely. This will help learners to move from one location to another, to plan things and perform.
Apart from that in this program my learners will benefit the following first they will be able to communicate with their fellow learners, they can communicate with every one in the society.
Then learners as they have mild mental retardation and blindness this program will help them to know the basic things in the society like how to cross the road, how to ask if they need anything, how to receive and give message, The program also educates and trains how learners can respect the elders in the society and how to respect themselves.
To sum up one can conclude by saying that children with mild mental retardation and low vision can be educated in inclusive classes although they need high care and they need to be trained or educated in communication skills how to use brail machine, how to use sign language and the teacher should be competent in all aspects and be able to interact with other professions on how to help a child’s learning.
REFERENCE.
Beine. S. Mary et al {2002}, Mental retardation, R.R. Donnelly& Sons company; New
York
Heward. William. L {2006}, An introduction to special education 8th Ed, courier
Kendallville Inc. New York.
Smith B. M. etal (2002) mental retardation 6th ed. New jersey Columbus, Ohio
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