Pasnak, R., Monica, S.G., Ferguson, E.O. & Levit, K.
2006, "Applying Principles of Development to Help At-Risk Preschoolers
Develop Numeracy", The Journal of psychology, vol. 140, no. 2, pp.
155-73.
Numeracy is
necessary for all children to learn, and will improve skills to solve many
problems that arise in the classroom. There are different tests created and
curriculum activities provided that caters for all levels of ability. Children
of a more advanced level find the basic numeracy program easy to understand and
pick up new tasks, while some children struggle to understand the new concepts
and find it difficult to connect the skill to the definition.
This article
discusses a test created to help children develop numeracy from the ‘at-risk’
category into a positive and improved ability. Each of the children from the
Head Start childcare was given an extra piece of skill learning for 10 minutes with
outstanding results. The experiment was conducted to see if the addition of
this extracurricular activity in preschools would improve numeracy levels in
all children and how different these results were specific to numeracy
learning.
Results from
this test were measured by primarily cognitive actions as opposed to verbal or
quantifying results, due to the test subjects being young children. Two varied
forms of tests were created and studied as ‘learning to learn’ and the second
was to pick abilities that focused primarily on reasoning as this is high
priority when entering early childhood centres. Every small piece of learning even
occupying such a short amount of time will benefit children’s understanding and
ability to grasp more information. Skills will improve and knowledge will grow
with the exposure to new ideas and methods to learn. Children act as sponges
and require new knowledge in order to learn more, so the best way to provide
new knowledge is to offer tests and activities where children can educate
themselves and learn.
This article places the numeracy
under the title of literacy along with reading and writing; claiming that the
methods used to teach these subjects has changed dramatically over the time of
schools evolving. Methods used to teach literacy in early schools have
progressed to four different perspectives that have high correspondence to the
society in which we live and relate our past beliefs to the current and new
knowledge we are learning. Individual experiences all contribute to the rate at
which we understand literacy education as well as the impact we have when we
are teaching it as parents or teachers.
Maturational
The theorist Gesell said in 1954 that
children would only have the developmental maturity to learn to read once they
have reached a specific age mentally. This age is generally school age students
after they have completed a series of tests to prove whether they were ‘ready’
or not to receive an official education. They say the official education only
began when the child reached school and parents did not have any role in
helping or preparing any knowledge of reading or writing beforehand, with
children effectively starting with a clean slate and no influences.
Developmental
This theory agrees with children
entering school when they are mentally ‘ready’ for formal education and as
described by Thorndike the process of being mentally ready can have small influences
from home to help assist and prepare the children for the things they will
learn. The kindergarten has a higher responsibility in creating specific
programs to assist the students in preparing themselves for a confident
learning environment where they have started to learn the basics of reading and
writing. The schools have not yet given the parents the role of teaching their
children but have given the kindergartens and pre education institutes the role
of using workbooks and basic instructions to aid in a faster understanding of
basic literacy.
Emergent
Piaget convinces us that numeracy and
literacy are not only subjects that need to be taught specifically but basic
skills learnt at an early age and continues throughout life. The child is an
active member of this learning and best learns when immersed in an environment
of constant activity. This occurs for most children, indicating that most
children have access and will learn a variety of routines using literacy and
numeracy subjects that are intertwined and connected in experiences from the
family life. All people involved in the child’s life will play a role in
creating and defining the beginning processes of learning. Learning rich
environments will need to have high levels of written text and different forms
of language in order to maintain a high level of curiosity and integrate all
forms of “reading, writing, speaking and listening.”
The method of teaching children
authentic language with specific skills in reading and writing is labelled as
the ‘whole language’ approach to understanding how children learn and make
decisions. The opposite method titled ‘process writing’ encourages children to
be in charge of their own learning and make decisions based around the
understanding of spelling.
Socio-cultural
This theory followed on from Piaget’s
emergent views and was developed by Bourdieu claiming it to be a “cultural
capital” which is education that can be enhanced into knowledge and succession.
This method was thought to assist children through their schooling to heighten
each of their progress, measured by wealth and status. Literacy comes in many
different forms as we have already discussed and is unanimous amongst the
different theories; however it is said to have many different methods of
teaching and learning these literacy skills. The different forms of literacy
across a child’s lifetime come in two categories being the small skills that
parents value, whilst schools think are insignificant and the skills that
schools teach and class as important values for life lessons. Within the school
environment competition levels between students are high, as knowledge about
language can alter amongst schools and progress levels are varied between lower
socio economic schools and formal teaching spaces.
The following table shares a
condensed version of these four perspectives and theorists views on the
comparisons between how literacy is perceived in schools. All agree that
literacy is important in a child’s growth but each have their positives and
negatives on methods of teaching literacy to the early age levels. Constant
expansion and improvements in not only the methods of teaching but the child’s
basic skill level from the home environment with technology on the rise. Social
and cultural contexts are varied greatly but have the same end goal of teaching
children reading and writing that they will use to expand their horizons and
become educationally successful in language.
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