Chapter 2: Theoretical Frameworks Informing Child Development
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.
—Plato
Opening Vignette: I Don’t Want to Wear My Sweater
Introduction
Child development is an innately fluid process. It ebbs and flows in ways that are sometimes shared across groups and sometimes individually driven. Development can be conceived of as a series of cascading waves and cycles of development across domains (Oakes & Rakison, 2020) and over time (Tamis-LaMonda & Lockman, 2023). As children grow, their abilities, experiences, and knowledge move along various trajectories. A waterfall can be a helpful analogy to consider how context, developmental age and stage, and distinct individual characteristics influence children’s development.
Context is the ultimate driver, determining where and how the opportunities for developmental pathways exist. For example, children grow and learn within different communities informed by cultural practices, norms, and resources. Additionally, developmental age and stage is a contributor as it encapsulates the dimension of time. How an infant, a two-year-old, and a six-year-old each responds to and engages with others and their environment depends on increasing developmental growth across cognitive, physical, social, and emotional domains. Finally, individual development is also shaped by a variety of factors. A child’s individual characteristics may alter the context and the age and stage of development. If a second grader has sensory-avoiding behaviors, they would have difficulty in a loud school assembly even though most of their other classmates would seem unphased by the large gathering and appreciate the novel opportunity.
Using the waterfall analogy, we can consider how differing variables influence children’s distinct developmental pathways. Children like waterfalls are unique and responsive to their environmental contexts. Cascading models of development focus on the top of a cascade and move downward, but currents can bring waves back to the top at any point.
Figure 2.1 shows that individual development and age and stage characteristics intertwine and overlap with context. Development flows and changes as children are given opportunities to explore their world and build relationships. Like pebbles in a brook, these interactions may redirect a child to a particular activity or subsequent interaction, which then affects the child’s growth and mastery.
In this chapter, we will
examine contextual influences on development (2.1),- explore age and stage influences on development (2.2), and
- consider internal models and external influences on development (2.3).
2.1 Contextual Influences on Development
Our social and emotional growth is driven by various contextual influences. These influences have a direct impact on the child as well as on how they learn and behave. Past experiences shape how children respond to and interact in their environment. For example, a child who has learned that the “correct” way to greet an adult is by looking at the floor with a quiet and polite bow will master the greeting in toddlerhood. In contrast, a child who is taught to greet adults by kissing them once on each cheek will do this instead. Similarly, a child with an older sibling who plays a sport will master the routines, skills, and rules earlier than a child who has less exposure. In this section, we discuss three theories that rely on contextual influences to explain and understand child development: sociocultural learning theory, human ecological development, and critical pedagogy.
Sociocultural Learning Theory
Sociocultural learning theory emphasizes the capacity of the child to construct their learning within a cooperative learning context. This learning context might include peers, family members, teachers, and others who engage, support, and teach them. Vygotsky’s sociocultural learning theory is notable for focusing on what the child can do, while also suggesting that a child’s learning is supported when the right amount of instruction is provided at the right time. This theory not only focuses on the interactive nature of the child’s capabilities and experiences but also emphasizes the social aspects influencing children’s construction of knowledge (Vygotsky, 1986). Sociocultural learning theory posits that cognitive growth is a result of interactions between people, which results in children internalizing their learning. According to this theory, children learn most effectively by engaging meaningfully with someone who is more experienced.
To conceptualize how children grow and learn in community with others, Vygotsky articulated several concepts that inform our understanding. The concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is recognized as the place where learners develop abilities alongside an expert other (Vygotsky, 1986). Expert others are individuals who demonstrate proficiency with a skill or understanding the child has not yet mastered. This expert other could be another child, a family member, a teacher, or anyone who can provide support for a task.
The term scaffolding is used to refer to the supports used to guide the child within their ZPD (Figure 2.2). This term visually relates to physical scaffolds construction workers, painters, and others use when creating or reconstructing a building. In this same way, working with the support of a more experienced individual creates a bridge between what the child can currently accomplish independently and what they are learning how to do. As a child masters a task, they need less scaffolding and eventually the need for the scaffold disappears (Vygotsky, 1978). In the opening vignette, the teacher, Ms. Lin, verbalizes how Jenna might be feeling. This type of scaffolding supports Jenna’s knowledge of her physical comfort. As she continues to grow, she will be able to identify her feelings with greater accuracy and learn to express herself without prompting.
Long Description for Figure 2.2
The left section is labeled, what the student can do on their own. The right section is labeled, what the student can’t do on their own. The center section between these is labeled Zone of Proximal Development, representing what the student can do with assistance from others.
Scaffolding shifts and changes as children master tasks, such as classroom guidelines and routines (e.g., handwashing, sharing materials). Vygotsky likens children to tourists with teachers acting as tour guides supporting their explorations as they construct knowledge of their world. As children interact with their world, they learn to emphasize and master the scaffolded tasks they encounter. These opportunities are determined by the adults in their lives as well as by the wider environment around them.
Human Ecological Development
The ecological theory of human development emphasizes the contextual interrelationships that exist between individuals, families, the physical environment, the community, and the cultural norms and values of a society (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Each one of these relationships exerts contextual influence on the individual and is depicted by the concentric circles embedded within one another (Figure 2.3).
Long Description for Figure 2.3
The individual needs and development of a child are at the center of this model. A child’s interaction with the world is determined by their individual characteristics, including developmental trajectory and contextual factors. In the opening vignette, Jenna felt too warm and did not want to wear a sweater. She also brought to the interaction all of her individual characteristics, such as her language development, her physical development, and her current physical state. Jenna was hungry and tired. As she interacted with her friends and teachers (microsystem), these key individuals were also engaging with each other in the immediate environment (mesosystem). In addition, Jenna is affected by the external settings that have an indirect impact. Her preschool’s proximity to the museum and the school’s philosophy, including about field trips, determine how likely it is that she will be at the museum. All three of these are examples of the indirect impacts (exosystem) for Jenna. Finally, the wider cultural context (macrosystem) influences Jenna. This cultural context includes the expected cultural norms around behavior, policies that affect children and families, and museum accessibility. Jenna has access to educational opportunities in preschool settings because of the cultural expectation of expanding access to early educational opportunities (chronosystem).
Our perceptions of social behavior have a number of cultural aspects embedded. Expectations for behavior are deeply personal and often connected to our cultural upbringing and norms from a particular time and place. Adults can disagree on these norms of behavior even when they have had similar experiences. As Jenna was reminded to put on her sweater, she glared at Ms. Rose, who was subsequently offended, telling Ms. Lin, “Jenna gave me a dirty look and shook her head ‘no’. That was disrespectful.” Yet the other teacher felt that Jenna was not disrespectful, but instead was behaving as a child of that age might act when they are getting tired. Adults’ expectations of children are created by their contexts and paradigms. These contexts are shaped by each person’s individual development and experiences and can change over time. In Chapter 4, we will discuss other ways that teachers’ experiences shape how they interpret children’s behavior.
Critical Pedagogy
Paulo Freire (1985) explains that critical pedagogy is the ability to analyze, critique, and transform social, cultural, and political texts and contexts. Arguing for transformative educational practices, Freire advocates for embracing child-centered practices and developing children’s agency to enact and realize change in the world. Critical pedagogy offers educators a theoretical lens for reflecting on their own practices. It invites educators to consider how system policies and structures may be impeding children’s full inclusion within educational spaces. One way to apply a critical pedagogy lens is to question how educational systems allow, support, or encourage translingual children to use home languages in school contexts. When educators embrace translanguaging practices, a practice that leverages and encourages children’s full linguistic systems, they validate and encourage linguistic diversity with early learning contexts (Garcia & Wei, 2014; García–Mateus & Palmer, 2017; Yun, et al., in press).
To truly reach students, we have to consider the power dynamics implicit in our interactions. Most important, we must share this power with children. This creates educational contexts that honor the reciprocal exchange of ideas and are grounded in radical love. Freire reminds us that to truly reach young learners, we must be aware of their context and bring their voices and experiences into the classroom. We need to understand their problems, struggles, and aspirations and meet learners where they are.
Pause and Consider: Reflecting Sociocultural Learning Theory, Ecological Theory, and Critical Pedagogy
How are theoretical perspectives associated with sociocultural learning theory, ecological systems theory, and critical pedagogy reflected in the model articulated in this chapter (see the accompanying image)? How can we use these perspectives to design, facilitate, and support children within a learning community?
2.2 Age and Stage Influences on Growth
We often see behavior as a set of actions. But actions have purpose and motivation, whether this is conscious or unconscious. To understand behavior, we need to consider how a child grows and develops. A lack of awareness of the ages and stages of children can lead to misunderstandings around behavior and may result in setting inappropriate expectations (e.g., a five-year-old should be able to sit still for 30 minutes). Having a static or rigid understanding about ages and stages of children, however, can lead to a limited view of children’s abilities and a lowering of expectations (e.g., a five-year-old cannot think critically, so I will just tell them what to do instead of including them in solving problems). In this section, we will discuss how cognitive developmental theory and stages of psychosocial development can inform aspects of children’s development and their behavior at various ages.
Cognitive Developmental Theory
Cognitive developmental theory contextualizes children’s behavior by focusing on understanding (Piaget, 1962). According to Piaget, children progress through stages, developing their cognition, as they construct their understanding of the world. Accordingly, children’s ability reflects the learning they have already constructed based on their developmental level and learning opportunities.
Piaget described how we use mental structures to organize our understandings called schemas. Within our schemas, we categorize information, and then we continue to build on this information using a process of adaptation. While we are undergoing the process of building and adapting our schema, we are supported by more experienced learners who either model for us or directly help us solve our problems. In the opening vignette, Jenna demonstrated schemes for several concepts. At the age of three, Jenna knows that wide open spaces are for running, which is a category of how you use space. She knows that we wear sweaters when we feel cold, which shows that she understands some things about how clothes are used. Jenna knows that adult prompting is meant to result in action. Although she shrugged her shoulder out of the sweater and she glared at the correcting adult, she did respond to the adult directive. This also demonstrates that Jenna has a scheme suggesting that adults guide behaviors.
Piaget also developed a set of stages affiliated with age and growth. According to Piaget, normative development follows a pattern. Learning is chronological, orderly, and cumulative. These four stages, with individual substages, represent qualitative changes and reorganization at four key points in child development. Cognitive developmental theory delineates a range of expected, observable behaviors for children (Piaget, 1962). Infancy and toddlerhood correspond to the sensorimotor stage. The preschool years are associated with the preoperational stage. The elementary school years correspond to the concrete operational stage, and adolescence and adulthood both apply to the formal operational stage (Table 2.1).
| Stage | Approximate Age Range | Perspective and Orientation | Behavioral Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sensorimotor | Birth to about 2 years | Focused on the child’s immediate surroundings | Children explore items with their hands and mouths (e.g., lean over to another child and gum or bite the child’s arm) |
| Preoperational | 2 to 7 years | Focused on personal preferences and internal understandings about their world | Children may perceive that others want the same things they do (e.g., I wrapped up this toy car in tissue paper for you. I would want this as a gift. So, maybe you do, too.) |
| Concrete Operational | 7 to 11 years | Focused on following rules and do not like to bend or break rules once set | Children can tell the difference between their perspective and another person’s view (e.g., I like celery but you do not.) |
| Formal Operational | 11 years and older | Blend of personal interest, empathy, and capacity for abstract thought | Children can consider hypothetical situations (e.g., If I break a rule, will anyone even know?) |
Sensorimotor Phase
Children in the sensorimotor phase actively explore using their bodies. They look around, move toward items of interest, and listen to new and familiar noises. They put things in their mouths and use their grasping skills to bring items closer. For example, a fourteen-month-old child might lean over and attempt to yank a large button off the sweater of a teacher. Understanding that children in this stage may not always be able to clearly communicate their needs, provides important insight for early childhood teachers. Recognizing this challenge, and when it is typically present for a child, allows the teacher to utilize additional supports. For instance, teaching children sign language or using picture cards for common needs offers children additional expressive modalities to supplement verbal communication.
Preoperational Phase
When children enter the preoperational phase, they use symbolic thinking to communicate their thoughts and ideas. For example, a two-year-old will use language to ask plaintively “phone?” while also using nonverbal language to mimic holding a phone. These language advances create space for increased social interaction as well as the capacity to express needs and desires. Piaget believed children in the preoperational phase can understand things only from their own perspective, a concept referred to as egocentricity. Egocentricity influences children’s capacity to fully perceive how others are experiencing a situation. This is an important consideration for educators to keep in mind when helping children navigate their environment. If a child cannot see the perspective of others, then taking responsibility for how others are affected by their actions needs more scaffolding and support.
Concrete Operational Phase
As children move into the elementary school years, Piaget believed that children enter into the concrete operational phase. This phase is marked by the ability to mentally reverse actions. For example, a three-year-old child who has spilled a bottle of glue on their hands might cry and look to an adult to solve the problem. A six-year-old child will turn the bottle of glue right side up and then go wash their hands. This ability to mentally undo an action or operation allows an elementary school child to have a clearer concept of cause and effect.
Children at this stage have increased abilities for understanding perspective, but are also focused on “fairness,” interpreting it as everyone receiving the same thing. This interpretation sometimes results in “tattling” as children report the many instances in which they feel that someone has not followed rules or behaved in a fair manner. Although sometimes frustrating to teachers, this thinking is merely a reflection of the child’s developmental stage. Children’s perspective-taking is guided by their internalized framework that privileges the social rules about how the world is supposed to work. Their need to seek logic and create order is a reflection of their age. Our social and emotional interactions cannot be separated from our cognitive capacity to understand ourselves, others, and the world around us.
Stages of Psychosocial Development
Erikson contextualizes development using a psychosocial lens. Like Piaget, Erikson conceptualized children’s development as a series of stages (Poole & Snarey, 2011). Erikson outlined crucial tasks of each stage of development through the resolution of central conflicts. As children work through the central conflict in each stage, they acquire strengths that allow them to solve problems. Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development suggest that children need to successfully navigate each stage to move to the next stage (Table 2.2). For this to occur, adults facilitate progression through the stages by supporting children’s needs in specific ways.
| Stage | Basic Conflict | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infancy (0–1 year) |
Trust vs. mistrust | Children need to know and trust that their essential needs will be met | Children will look to a caregiver for reassurance (e.g., Hugo crawls to his teacher when the fire truck, alarm blaring, goes past the building.) |
| Toddler/Early Childhood (1–3 years) | Autonomy vs. shame/doubt | Children need to feel an increasing sense of autonomy or independence in tasks | Children will start to say, “No” in response to adult direction or attempt to complete tasks by themselves (e.g., Daneisha says, “I do it!” when the teacher attempts to button her coat.) |
| Preschool/Play(3–6 years) | Initiative vs. guilt | Children demonstrate increasing levels of initiative, and feel guilty when their effort results in an unsuccessful outcome | Children will plan strategies to get the outcome they desire (e.g., Jake stacks multiple objects to climb up and unlock the high door latch.) |
| School Age (7–11 years) | Industry vs. inferiority | Children become more aware that they experience competence in some tasks and frustration in others | Children will start self-selecting into activities that make them feel successful and avoid tasks that do not (e.g., Elena goes to the water fountain five times in a row to avoid writing in her daily journal.) |
Trust vs. Mistrust
Erikson believed this first phase was critical in shaping a child’s social and emotional development. Infants depend on their caregivers, and within caring relationships, infants develop a sense of security. For example, infants need to know that when they cry, their caregiver will typically pick them up and offer them reassurance and comfort. This caring action by an adult in their life reinforces relationship bonds grounded in trust. Similarly, when adults look at and speak to a baby as they feed them, they are reinforcing positive relationship bonds and meeting the needs of infants in the trust vs. mistrust stage, thus helping them to feel safe in the world.
Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
Children in the toddler and early childhood stage are developing a greater sense of agency. They use their advancing cognitive, physical, social, and emotional skills to demonstrate their personal independence. Children will use their increased mobility to seek out things that interest them and experiment accordingly. They will run, walk, climb, and interact with others. In this phase, children also begin to process their emotions. Caregivers support children’s growing sense of autonomy by supporting their choices rather than diminishing or questioning their decisions (e.g., mismatched clothes or wearing a cape to school every day). Caregivers also nurture children’s sense of autonomy when they allow children to feed themselves, even though it may take longer and be messier. Similarly, when a child is learning to use the toilet, accidents are common. Caregivers promote a child’s growing sense of agency over their body when they are encouraged rather than shamed if they do not make it to the bathroom in time.
Initiative vs. Guilt
The preschool stage includes children between the ages of three and six years old. Children in this stage negotiate an increased desire to explore, try new things, and confront challenges. During this stage, children are sensitive to feelings of failure. Preschoolers carry out complex plans and may feel guilty when their plans do not work out. Teachers can support children’s sense of initiative by encouraging children to try again, make new plans, and reframe “mistakes” as learning opportunities. These approaches and responses support children’s efforts and communicates confidence in their emerging capabilities. Remaining sensitive to supporting children’s successful peer relationships throughout this stage is also important because a child may become discouraged in their ability to play with friends if they are experiencing exclusion or if their ideas are dismissed during play.
Industry vs. Inferiority
Upon entering elementary school, children (ages 7–11 years old) develop a clearer understanding of themselves as complex individuals who have varying levels of mastery for particular tasks. Throughout these years, children engage in a lot of trial and error, confront new experiences, and engage in wider social circles. Elementary school children are increasingly aware of how successful they are at academic and other tasks in relation to their peers. For example, a seven-year-old can describe in detail that she loves to dance and sing, but she does not like reading. She can explain that although she can read, it takes her a long time and she is better at dancing. Throughout this phase, teachers support children’s sense of industry by nurturing their confidence and pride in their accomplishments. Teachers need to remain sensitive to children’s feelings of inferiority or inadequacy. For example, to mitigate the child’s low confidence as a reader, a teacher might integrate reading experiences that offer examples of dancers’ perseverance (e.g., Firebird by Misty Copeland) to enhance the child’s motivations to read.
Pause and Consider: Age and Stage Theories
2.3 Internal Models and External Influences
Age and stage theories are helpful for identifying typical development normed to particular windows of time. Individual development, however, follows its own trajectory based on previous and current experiences. Theories that focus on internal models and external influences help to contextualize how young children interpret and react to their world. In this section, we will discuss three theories that inform our understanding of children and their behavior: attachment theory, theory theory, and information processing.
Attachment Theory
Attachment theory focuses on the relationship between parent or caregiver and the child as they grow and develop. Infants need early scaffolding to create reciprocal relationships and experience healthy attachment. According to Bowlby (1969), young children develop organized systems of behaviors and expect predictable outcomes, based on the responses they get from adults. Children’s experiences with attachment figures influence a broader pattern of attachment for a child. In fact, Bowlby (1979) describes this process as one that characterizes humans “from the cradle to grave” (p. 129). As children grow and have consistent interactions in relationships, they internalize scripts that predict how future interactions will unfold (Bretherton & Mulholland, 2008; Cassidy, Jones, & Shaver, 2013). These scripts can be used to send signals of safety or potential threat. For example, a child who hurts his elbow may turn to his caregiver for comfort. A child who has underdeveloped scripts or disorganized attachment may find it difficult to seek comfort from an adult because doing so in the past led to violence or shaming.
Furthering the ideas of Bowlby, Ainsworth et al. (1978) conducted what is known as the Strange Situation experiment. In this study, they observed that infants use their internal schema to guide their attachment behavior in subsequent interactions. Children who exhibit secure attachment are able to seek comfort from a familiar caregiver, explore their surroundings, and demonstrate distress at being separated. Children with disorganized attachment, however, do not exhibit the same patterns. A child’s response may vary between disorganized and organized attachment profiles. This experiment indicated that babies remember how they interact with others and how others interact with them. They use this information to try to make sense of their world. As their understanding of cause and effect is developing, children are making connections and creating internal working models. These models underpin the child’s decision-making and their ability to seek comfort and self-regulate.
Theory Theory
The “theory theory” (Gopnik, 2003) suggests that infants and young children use logic and create internal structures for cause and effect beginning at birth. Children approach the world using scientific thinking, using the same mental approaches one would use to create hypotheses and draw conclusions. In fact, Gopnik (1996) goes on to say that scientists are actually like big children, underscoring the idea that even if adults do not understand the logic or function of a child’s play, there is intentionality and purpose behind it. Children create and transform their mental representations based on their concrete experiences, working through a series of trials and experimentations.
Part of this cognitive mapping is trying to understand and make sense of social expectations and getting emotional needs met. Infants as young as five to seven months of age have an awareness of the negative emotions of adults, although it is unclear to which degree they are noticing the broad effect vs. the specific emotion (Repacholi & Meltzoff, 2007). By 10 months, an infant demonstrates the ability to have expectations about the emotional responses that follow negative events (Ruba, Meltzoff, & Repacholi, 2020) and can infer a person’s desires (Wellman et al., 2016). Children as young as 15 months can not only infer but also regulate their behavior to avoid making adults angry (Repacholi et al., 2014). In the following video clip, you can see a 15-month-old child reacting to an “emoter” who enters the room and exhibits strong disapproval for the sound of a loud toy (Repacholi et al., 2014).
Pause and Consider: Toddlers Regulate Behavior
Video 2.1: Toddlers regulate their behavior to avoid making adults angry.
Source: Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington.
Video reflection: How did the child in the video respond to the emoter? What does that tell us about the impact our adult responses have on children?
Information Processing
Information processing theory considers how people are able to make sense of and access information. This model conceives of the brain as a computer, with inputs and outputs. The sensory register receives information from the environment, while working memory is associated with what someone can remember in the moment (Miller, 1956). Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) have proposed that each time we take in information we are accessing our sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. The sensory memory (or sensory register) takes in the external stimuli, transferring some information to the short-term memory. Short-term or working memory lasts only a short time, approximately 30 seconds. Working memory is often thought of as focus. From here the working memory helps with task completion and some of the information can be transferred to long-term memory. It is thought that long-term memory is unlimited, holding memories for hours, days, and even decades.
Information processing theory suggests that there are limits to human memory, such as our age or the significance of the event. For young children, storage limits are associated with their developing attention span. For example, Crick and Dodge (1994) discuss how a child’s social information processing ability is connected to emotional knowledge and cognitive processing. Information processing affects the ability to access previous experiences and make meaning of intended messages. Those abilities in turn influence feelings of distress and potentially challenging behavior (Crick, Grotpeter, & Bigbee, 2002).
In other words, young children desire to please others and start to create their own internal guidebooks. When considering cause and effect, it is important to note that human development never ceases in this area. Even adults continually create and revise their maps of cause and effect. This includes parents and educators as they determine the best ways to support a child’s development.
Internal models about development help educators reflect on why a child is expressing specific behaviors. Individual differences exist among children and how they progress through developmental domains. When we consider the diverse theories seeking to describe the development of young children, we are able to be more effective and intentional educators.
Pause and Consider: Internal Models
Key Points
- Context determines the direction and importance of many aspects of social and emotional development and behavior.
- A child’s social and emotional understanding and behavior is influenced by their age and stage of development and their individual developmental trajectory.
- Children’s early experiences have a profound impact on their understanding of themselves, their world, and how to interact with others.
Figures
Figure 2.1: Cascading influences on development. Created by Christine Pegorraro Schull with Canva.
Figure 2.2: Zone of proximal development. “Zone of Proximal Development” by Kalyca Schultz is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Reproduced from “Early Childhood Literacy: Engaging and Empowering Emergent Readers and Writers, Birth – Age 5” (Chapter 3) by Christine Pegorraro Schull, Leslie La Croix, Sara E. Miller, Kimberly Sanders Austin, and Julie K. Kidd.
Figure 2.3: Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems. “Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory” by Ian Joslin is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Reproduced from “Child, Family, and Community” (Module 1.1) by Rebecca Laff and Wendy Ruiz.
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