A teacher’s aptitude for identifying additional support needs to ensure healthy development in children is to understand the sequence of development, milestones and when they are expected to be reached and recognise disabilities.

Motor skills evolve sequentially but do vary greatly from child to child.  Motor development proceeds in a cephalocaudal direction meaning the nerves and muscles mature in a downward direction.  This is evident in all infants who first learn use their head and neck then move on to developing more complicated movements such as rolling, crawling then walking. The other pattern of development and maturation is proximodistal direction meaning skills develop in the middle of the body then radiate outwards. For example infants first learn to use their hands then acquire fine motor skills such as the pincer grip.

Basic trends in locomotive skill development include a maturation viewpoint.  This is a genetic programme sequence of events, where nerves and muscles mature in a downward and outward direction. Advocates of the experiential or practice hypothesis believe that opportunities to practice motor skills are also important.  Theorist, Kolb (1984) is someone I have been researching for another module and his four stage cycle adequately fits with this hypothesis: experience, reflection, conceptualisation, experimentation.  Dynamical systems theorists view motor skills as active improvements of previously mastered abilities that are undertaken to find more efficient ways of exploring the surroundings or other objectives.

There are factors that affect growth and development that educators will need to be aware of. Poverty, environment, family structure and disability can hinder or affect a child’s development. Fine motor skills are evident in some form at every age and usually by age 6 or 7 children have confidence to use fine motor skills such as hopping, skipping and balancing.  If this is not the case, we as educations, need to look at how to develop the child holistically as progress in one area affects progress in another.