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Environmental influences child development
Environmental influences child development
Environmental influences child development
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As a person matures in age, especially earlier in his life, he matures in other aspects of himself as well. Physical attributions advance, behavioral habits change, and mental capacities develop. For the first two, it is quite apparent which factors contribute to this growth and in what respects do they do so. For instance, a teen’s muscular growth can easily be observed as an effect from daily visits to the gym, just as his lack of etiquette around a table can be derived from watching his family eat dinner. Intelligence, as the ability to learn and the aptitude to retain learned knowledge, however, is a harder trait to measure the growth of. Many factors play into the extension of the mind such as family upbringing, environmental observations, and natural curiosity. While a child is still young, he sends most of these factors through a school to be cultivated and enriched. At an early point in many people’s lives, the educational system takes on an enormous responsibility to develop the intelligence of its constituents. Its role in promoting the growth of intelligence is one that is not only positive but also the greatest one on the matter.
A large part of the educational system’s role in the intelligence of its students is providing continued motivation for those students. In a child’s world, dominated by instant gratification, it is difficult to focus and partake in learning; a tree that takes at the very least ten years to see the fruit of. Carol Dweck wrote about this in the magazine Scientific American. She created in her article, “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids”, a boy who was stereo typical of many young students. Dweck wrote that this boy became depleted suddenly of all curiosity towards learning and came to a decisio...
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... the role that the education system plays in developing intelligence is greatly underestimated. School is taken lightly by lazy students and is compared as ineffective with regards to the internet. The schooling system goes unnoticed as one of the biggest factors that play into the growth of intelligence in a person. The tools inherited through this system are endlessly used, knowingly or not, in both an occupation and in everyday life. The positive function that the education system serves in developing the youths’ intelligence is of a tremendous and important magnitude.
Works Cited
Dweck, Carol S. "The Secret to Raising Smart Kids." Scientificamerican.com. 12 Aug. 2009. Web.
Johnson, Steven. "Watching TV Makes You Smarter." New York Times 2005. Web.
Rushkoff, Douglas. "The Decade Google Made You Stupid." Thedailybeast.com. 13 Dec. 2009. Web. 14 Dec. 2009.
In Carol Dweck’s article titled, “Brainology” Dweck discusses the different mindsets that students have about intelligence. Some where taught that each person had a set amount of intelligence, while others were trained that intelligence is something they could develop and increase over time. in Dweck’s article she writes, “ It is a belief that intelligence can be developed that opens students to a love of learning, a belief in the power of effort and constrictive, determined reactions to setbacks” (Dweck pg. 2). Dweck is talking about a growth mind-set in which is how students perceive the growth of knowledge and that no one person is born with a certain amount of intelligence, it too can be trained and developed over time. By introducing Dweck’s ideas of a growth mind-set to students, students will enjoy learning and be less devastated by setbacks, because they know they can develop intelligence. Dweck also writes that students with a growth mind-set, “believe that intelligence is something that can be cultivated through effort and education. They
Both were given a workshop with skills on how to study, but one was also given lessons on what a growth mindset was and how to develop one. The group given the lessons on growth mindset was extremely fascinated by the thought that they could control how much knowledge they were capable of learning. Overall, the growth mindset group excelled while the control group continued to not do so well. After receiving these results, Dweck was so inspired that she developed a growth mindset computer program called “Brainology,” that would be available to students all around the world. Dweck concluded that it’s extremely important to teach students that it takes hard work to achieve
Also, in Carol Dweck’s research article “Brainology”, she states the subtitle “Transforming Students’ Motivation to Learn”. She dishes mindsets and achievement, how do students learn these mindsets, and so on… … Dweck suggests, “Many students believe that intelligence is fixed, that each person has a certain amount, and that’s that. We call this a fixed mindset, and, as you will see, students with this mindset worry about how much of this fixed in intelligence they possess”. Many students believe that the challenge encountered in learning is a threat to their growth path. She put forward two different minds of the ideological study contrast, the finds showed that students studied with a growth mindset were more interested in learning and
The definition of intelligence can be personalized to one’s culture. While some studies look to examine intelligence in an age bracket, an important feature that is not taken into account is how culture influences intelligence and development (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2004). Stereotypes of race state Asians are proficient in mathematical areas, African-Americans are musical and artistic, and European-Americans are skillful in scientific areas. While these stereotypes may hold a small level of truth, they box each culture into a small section of intelligence while leaving out the cultural focus. Our daily behavior has influence over our intelligence, and our daily behavior is based around the culture in which we are raised (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2004). This is the beauty of the cultural context. It allows culture to be incorporated as a major influence in intellectual development (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2004 pp. 369).
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid." July/August 2008. The Alantic Magazine. 20 February 2012 .
In Carol Dweck’s “Brainology” the article explains how our brain is always being altered by our experiences and knowledge during our lifespan. For this Dweck conducted a research in what students believe about their own brain and their thoughts in their intelligence. They were questioned, if intelligence was something fixed or if it could grow and change; and how this affected their motivation, learning, and academic achievements. The response to it came with different points of views, beliefs, or mindset in which created different behavior and learning tendencies. These two mindsets are call fixed and growth mindsets. In a fixed mindset, the individual believes that intelligence is something already obtain and that is it. They worry if they
When Gerald Graff was younger he and his friends would have various debates about sports including what team had the best pitcher in baseball. Graff pointed out that while having these arguments with his friends, they would have evidence to support their thoughts whether it be using statistics to find batting averages or using their argumentative abilities in general to support their opinion. This proves that even people who do not do the best in school are capable of brilliant things, the school system just needs to encourage students to use their hobbies to enhance their academics. Instead of dividing the different forms of intelligence, book and street smarts could merge and grow into a more detailed educational system that can help not just with academics, but with life itself. While it is good to know proper grammar, knowing about dating, sports, or cars can actually get people farther than anticipated in life. Graff thought that in the school system, street smarts is perceived as less than compared to “book smarts” which are encouraged in school. If the two forms of intelligence were to merge instead of separate, the educational system can transform into something
In composing “Is Google Making Us More Stupid” Nicholas Carr wants his audience to be feared by the internet while at the same time he wants his work to seem more creditable. Nicholas Carr uses many different types of evidence to show us that we should be scared and feared as well as his credibility. Carr’s audience is people who think like him, who find themselves getting lost on the internet while reading something, someone who is educated and uses the internet to look up the answers to questions or to read an article or book.
Human intelligence is an eel-like subject: slippery, difficult to grasp, and almost impossible to get straight [3]. Many scientist and psychologist have made numerous attempts to come up with an explanation for the development of human intelligence. For many years, there has been much controversy over what intelligence is and whether it is hereditary or nurtured by the environment. Webster's dictionary defines intelligence as "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge; which includes a sensing an environment and reaching conclusions about the state of that environment [7]. In this paper I am going to examine the factors, which make up ones intelligence. I will be investigating whether or not intelligence is fostered by genetic heritance or nurtured by ones environment.
The education system has been a controversial issue among educators. Requirements of school do not let students choose what they want to study for their future. It’s a big issue to force students to study specific curriculums, which don’t help them improve, and what they like to create. Educators choose a general system of education for all students based on general knowledge. Intelligent or genius students have to be in that system of education, which doesn’t let them improve their creativity.
A number of aspects can influence one’s mind and its relationship with the world, and how it grows and flourishes. Both genetic and environmental traits have a contribution to the development of cognition and intelligence. Biologically, a person is born with the same number of brain cells they will ever possess, however, a person’s complete brain function capacity and strength will take years to solidify as neural networks grow more complex (Hank, 2014). Biological maturation will allow for such growth processes, and it enables orderly changes in behavior to take place. Cognitive development refers to how thought, intelligence, and language processes change as people mature (King, 2017). The development of thought processes, including memory, problem-solving, and decision-making, expand from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. Jean Piaget (1896-1980), proposed his theory on how children actively construct and seek to
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a psychologist who developed a theory that was completely unlike any other psychologists at that time. His idea, called Cognitive Development, stated that the actual chronological age of an adolescent is not as important as the age they experience things, or the experiential age. Cognitive is defined as “the ability to reason, make judgments, and learn” (Gorman & Anwar, 2014). Piaget goes on to describe the importance of coping with the ever-changing environment as an integral part of intelligence, and the next level of developmental stage cannot be obtained until one completes the current stage. Piaget’s Developmental Theory involves four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operations.
Intelligence by definition is “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills” (Oxford Dictionary, 2014). However, many psychologists argue that there is no standard definition of ‘intelligence’, and there have been many different theories over time as psychologists try to find better ways to define this concept (Boundless 2013). While some believe in a single, general intelligence, others believe that intelligence involves multiple abilities and skills. Another largely debated concept is whether intelligence is genetically determined and fixed, or whether is it open to change, through learning and environmental influence. This is commonly known as the nature vs. nurture debate.
The study of IQ and how it operates in the education field has been argued through various theories. Theorist such as Howard Garner, R...
The dichotomy between the view that intelligence levels are affected by situational factors and the view that intelligence is genetically transmitted has dominated psychological debates on IQ throughout decades. The statements made by many commentators that intelligences depends on genetic factors has been ...