David Elkind and His Influence in the Field of Early Childhood Education - Coursework Example

David Elkind I have chosen David Elkind as a of this paper and I would outline several factors that illustrate his influence in the field of early childhood education. David Elkind is an important researcher in the field of child and adolescent development. He has authored numerous research studies, articles and books that explored the growth and development of children. One of his most notable work include his studies on children’s conception of God and argued that they followed the general cognitive developmental stages outlined by Jean Piaget. The cognitive developmental strand was concerned with the nature of knowledge and with the structures and processes by which it is acquired. Elkind credits Piaget with creating a new discipline, genetic epistemology, which he termed an “experimental philosophy, which seeks to answer epistemological questions through the developmental study of the child.” (cited in Kennedy, p. 26) Elkind’s articles on Piagetian developmental psychology are influential in setting Piaget’s theories in proper perspective. Elkind’s works, while they made no attempts to suggest what should be taught or how the teacher should help the child, they deepened the understanding of teachers and enabled them to interpret the behavior of young children with greater accuracy. Here, Elkind is, in effect, not just an interpreter of Jean Piaget because he has attempted not only to grasp and communicate Piaget’s difficult theory but also to build upon and extend it to different spheres. Elkind’s discourse on Piaget’s child development theories, illustrated how religion is a natural result of mental development. He suggested that there are four basic sequential components of intelligence – conservation, search for representation, search for relations, and search for comprehension – are critical in religious development, and that this sequence parallels with the cognitive stages described by Piaget. (Spilka, et al., p. 77) Elkind was crucial in introducing the US psychologists to Piagetian work on cognitive-development models of religious cognition through his studies of children that came from different faith traditions. Elkind’s research has spawned several themes in child education. For instance, children’s religious thinking showed stage-like change from more concrete and egocentric to more abstract and socio-centric thought. The emergence of these trends has inspired a number of further research about religious cognition and stage-based cognitive-developmentalism. Religious cognition is really nothing special, however, it is a specific case of a generic conceptual and representational process and that Elkind helped demonstrate how children think about concepts and this is very important in child education. Besides supporting and explaining much of Piaget’s theories on child development, Elkind had other implications in child development. He presented an arguable case that there exists a fourth contemporary outlook which he labels as the ‘competent enfant.’ Here, he argued that babies and the young children have more capacity to learn academic skills than older children, regardless of background. (cited in Slee, p. 21) One result of this, is the introduction of what Elkind called as “cognitive conceit”, which is both an extension and also a refinement of earlier infantile fantasies of omnipotence. At this stage, writes Nicholas Tucker (1990), children who are discovering that they too can sometimes argue things out for themselves may also get the idea that this makes them the equal of even the superior of adults when it comes to tackling most problems and situations. (p. 105) Elkind, while acknowledging these variables, warned against over-emphasizing the competencies of children. He stressed that the prevailing concept of concept of childhood which emphasizes so much on wonders of children’s abilities distorts the true nature of young children and how they really grow. In effect, we are ignoring the children’s true potential. Elkind has further enlightened us with the different stages of societal growth and change that dictates how we raise and educate our children. According to him: The child as growing organism with its own emergent identity and the child as malleable material awaiting society’s imprinting – abide with us, representative of two discrete social economies, agricultural and industrial, of our past and present. (p. 24) Elkind also contributed the idea that children should be not be taught as much and as soon as possible just because they are growing rapidly. What he meant in this area is that even if the child has this capacity of learning he or she learns best through direct interaction with the environment. In Elkind’s stages of development, children are simply not capable of the level of reasoning being required by the formal instruction in reading and mathematics before a certain age. Elkind argued against what he termed as “hurried child,” stressing the high level of anxiety with which children have to live with because we tend to push them to grow up and cope with things that should be beyond their years. Conclusion After reflecting on David Elkind’s works, one sees how they empower educators to make a difference in the schooling process. His metaphor that children are growing organism envision the school as a farm instead of factories wherein living things grow freely, each according to his or her own rhythm and season. He addressed the problem in regard to the tendency of the educators and school administrators to use the isolationist approach as they perennially view the world – their own individual classroom, grade level or building site - in an extremely narrow and limited perspective. The implications of what Elkind outlined to us in terms of child development is that teachers must get out of there – out from their safe zones. Public school servants must interact with the community so that they would be able to understand change and the responsibilities and challenges that go with it. This way, educators are more responsive to a child’s learning needs. And also educators, school administrators and the academic curriculum view the school as less of an assembly-line product that is predictably fashioned and quantitatively measured. By focusing essentially on his own studies, research and clinical observations, Elkind – the clinician, researcher and educator – was able to sensitize Piagetian principles. More than that, he has extended and further refined and the defined the significance and utility of the latter’s visions and ideas in understanding child development. References Elkind, D. (1981). The Hurried Child. Massachusetts: Addison-Weekly Publishing Co., Inc. Kennedy, M. (2006). Theorizing Composition. IAP. Slee, P. (2002). Child, Adolescent and Family Development. Cambridge University Press. Spilka, B., Hood, R., Hunsberger, B. and Gorsuch, R. (2003). The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. Guilford Press. Tucker, N. (1990). The Child and the Book: A Psychological and Literary Exploration. CUP Archive. Read More