Question

1)Describe the different varieties of early education.

2)Describe the newest threat to children’s safety and identify what experts believe is the most reliable safeguard.

3)Describe what recent research reveals regarding the effect of praise on a child’s self-esteem and how this praise may impact a child’s interest in tackling complex challenges.

4)Briefly explain how an adolescent’s thinking is different from that of younger children.

Answer 1

1) Early education involves teaching young children till the age og eight. It involves experiences and activities that aims towards the developmental changes in children. It is kind of an educational program that aids the children in their early years and aids towards their personal growth in future when they enter in an elementary school.

The different ways in which early eduction can be given to children include:

Kindergarten: It is an all day educational care where children go and they are under the supervision of teachers who teach them, guide them and indulge in different play activities.

Homebased services: It involves teaching by teachers in a home environment, which could be the child's home or the teacher's home. This foster's learning in a homely set up and may also involve learnings in group. It could be full-time or part time.

Daycare centers: These are the centers where children are left for the day, mostly of working parents. Children spend majority of their time there due to it and that becomes the source of various early learnings.

Parent-led services: The primary caretakers or the parents with whom the child stays in his/her early years tend to become the main source of learning for the child. Therefore parents teach their child various things, various behaviors in the child's early years which develop into a habit forming their personality.

Playgroups: Children also learn from the peers of same age group. When they sit together, play together, they tend to imitate each other's actions and behaviors which can carve their learning too.

2) The newest threats to children's safety include:

Physical abuse: The child can be physically abused easily by the caregiver or another outside person because a child is a weak target who cannot express anything in words and cannot fight back.

Sexual abuse: Most of the children get sexually abused in their early years and are unable to express anything, and suffer an overwhelming mental trauma.

Disturbing family enviornment: When there are any family issues such as fights between parents, loss of a loved one, these instances effect the psyche of the child.

It is important to keep a good family environment for the positive mental health of the child and important to keep a check of the child's whereabouts and the company in which he/she stays.

3) Researches have proven that there is a positive correlation between praise and self esteem of a child. Praise is a motivator (a positive reinforcement). It helps in increasing the desirable behavior of a person. When children are praised, they get a sense of accomplishing something nice which make them feel happy and boost up their confidence. It helps them feel worthy, which in return increases their self-esteem.
An increase in self-esteem of a child helps the child to shape up a confident personality. When the child is praised for something, he/she feels confident about the work for which he/she was praised, also he/she feels the sense of pride and acceptance by others. Praise is a positive verbal attention that the child gets, therefore it also encourages him/her to indulge into tackling complex challenges too. For example: If the child is praised for solving a puzzle, he would feel happy and encouraged and it would interest him to solve more complex puzzle to gain more praises of others.

4) Cognitive development refers to the ability of the child to think and reason. The growth happens differently at different ages.
According to Jean Piaget there are four stages of development.

(i) Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)
(ii) Pre-operational stage (age 2-7)
(iii) Concrete operational stage (7-11)
(iv) Formal operational stage ( age 11- adolescence)

Adolescents, who come under the formal operational stage develop very strong abstract thinking which lacks in the younger children. They can use symbols logically which are related to abstract concepts like science and maths. Unlike younger children, adolescents are capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning. They do not require concrete objects any longer to form rational judgements. The logics fall much into place when children reach adolescence.