As teachers, we naturally focus on a child’s cognitive development due to many people’s expectations of our role. This means we tend to hone in on the development of their information processing, learning of language and aspects of brain development.
However, with a class full of developing children, there is more than one way to ensure healthy development. It has been found in countries such as Sweden who do not introduce formal education until around the age of 7 that educational achievement standards are considerably high compared to the UK, who, apart from Northern Ireland, have one of the youngest ages in which compulsory education begins. There are thought to many reasons for this and many people believe it is due to a lack of social skills formed at an early age through things such as family interaction.
In their first seven years, children are experiencing the most rapid period of growth in their life. Physical development is important in its own right, but it is also extremely important children develop things such as body awareness, coordination and control. This growth ensures that new behaviours will be possible, and essentially determines the future experiences of the child.
Throughout their lives, children are compared to national norms. As teachers, we need to be aware of what stages children should be at in certain periods of their life. This can be things such as knowing language should start becoming more fluent at age 4, and between the ages of 6 and 8 fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination should increase. We also have to be aware that not all children are the same, and some will develop much faster than others.
There are many debates out there about the pace of development of children. The Maturational Viewpoint Debate argues that a success in a new behavioural task at a certain age is linked to the maturation of a new region within the brain. The Experiential hypothesis agrees with “A Theory of Experience” by Dewey (1938); whom agrees that practice is fundamental and there is very little need for any theory. The Dynamic Systems theory emphasises the boundaries that we believe to be fixed within development, but are actually just poorly defined.
Our role as teachers is to encourage development, not only within the classroom. Being passionate about sport and physical education, I believe physical education to be of extreme importance. If a child does not get the chance to experience something such as hand-eye coordination when they are younger, they will struggle when it comes to raquet games later in their life. By experiencing this at a young age, they are more likely to be successful in these areas when they are older.
Young children’s develop is cephalocaudal, meaning they learn to use their upper limbs before their lower limbs. This is noticeable as babies are fans of grasping onto things tightly, such as fingers! After this, they begin to develop movement in their lower extremities, such as learning to coordinate crawling. Locomotor skills are the basic ways in which we move. Not all children are physically ready when starting primary school, some start not having developed their locomotor skills as well as their peers, which is important to consider especially when teaching early years. I believe as teachers we have a duty to try and improve this, through basic physical education, to involve them in activities that will encourage the development of both their fine and gross motor skills. We, as adults, have an important role to help these children become aware of their body and the way it works.
I believe it is important teachers are aware of the normal course of physical development, ensuring their class are not lacking in this essential part of development. This specific area influences other aspects of children’s development affecting it in a positive way, so the emphasis on it is obviously important. Therefore, we should not only focus on a child’s cognitive development which expected and also important, but we should also consider the development of “the whole child”, not just one or two areas.
