Child Development and Pedagogy: Using Theory to Read Classroom Behaviour
Child Development and Pedagogy carries 30 marks in both Paper I and Paper II. It tests whether you can connect developmental theory to classroom decisions: how children think at different ages, how learning is constructed, how individual differences and disabilities appear, and how assessment should guide teaching.
Core concepts
- Piaget: development moves through sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stages. The preoperational child is egocentric and not yet conserving; the concrete operational child conserves and classifies but still needs tangible examples.
- Vygotsky: learning is social. The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is the gap between what a child can do alone and what the child can do with help; scaffolding is temporary support that is withdrawn as competence grows.
- Kohlberg: moral reasoning moves from punishment/obedience and self-interest toward social contract and universal principles. Young children are typically preconventional.
- Assessment: formative assessment informs teaching, summative assessment reports achievement, and diagnostic assessment locates a specific difficulty.
Worked example
A Class III child watches water poured from a short wide glass into a tall narrow glass and says the tall glass has “more water”. The reasoning: the child centres on height and ignores width, which is the classic non-conservation response of the preoperational stage. The teacher should not simply say “wrong”; she should offer two identical glasses and let the child pour back, so the child begins to decentre.
Traps that cost marks
Do not label a child “slow” when the response is developmentally normal. Do not confuse Piaget’s stages with Vygotsky’s ZPD, or formative with summative assessment. Avoid claiming that all children reach formal operations at the same age, and do not treat a disability as low intelligence.