Being naturally curious and willing to get new knowledge regularly, young children can learn in a variety of ways and require professional educators’ assistance to develop properly and transform knowledge into helpful skills. A very common mode of learning demonstrated by children is knowledge acquisition through observing the external world and individuals in it and imitating other people’s behaviors and the ways to interact with the environment (Eggen & Kauchak, 2016). This aspect of children’s perspective on the world finds reflection in the so-called teacher modeling instructional strategy that involves modeling a specific learnable skill simply and explicitly to enable young learners to repeat it independently. If broadly defined, modeling is understood as “behavioral, cognitive, and affective changes resulting from observing the actions of others” (Eggen & Kauchak, 2016, p. 243). Modeling is specifically important and valuable in early childhood education since this practice helps to gradually prepare young learners to perform specific tasks. Without modeling, young learners would be placed in situations of uncertainty when they would be supposed to hit upon the ideas behind the required skills without necessary help.
Continuing on the importance of modeling, even though there are intellectually precocious children that outperform their peers in terms of finding links between the sequences of actions and results, the absence of modeling during instruction would deprive the majority of learners of an easy-to-follow point of reference. The use of modeling during instruction leads to some valuable outcomes, including learning new behaviors, helping learners to use abilities that they already possess, altering individuals’ self-imposed restrictions on behavior, and arousing specific emotions (Eggen & Kauchak, 2016). Additionally, teacher modeling is extremely valuable since many techniques involve dividing the skill into a set of simple and easy-to-understand segments, which makes it much easier for learners to understand the internal logic of an activity that they are to complete.
Modeling can be used to instruct and teach diverse learners, and young children are not an exception. The arts and artistic activities are known to contribute to children’s timely and healthy cognitive development (Baker, 2013). Such activities are widely used in early childhood centers, and it is possible to apply instructional modeling to enable young learners to produce simple artworks. For instance, the teacher may use modeling to explain how to create a greeting card with handprint flowers. To do it, the teacher may use a series of steps, including presenting the completed work as a reference and explaining the steps taken to produce the work (one by one). Then, the teacher may show how to complete each step and verbalize any meaningful actions to make sure that all students understand the purpose of actions being demonstrated. Finally, the students will understand the sequence of steps needed to transform an empty piece of paper into a colorful greeting card and engage in the process of art.
Concepts that young learners are expected to understand and put into practice may vary in terms of the extent to which their acquisition depends on children’s ability to engage in complex cognitive processes. In my opinion, behaviorism can be successfully used to teach abstract values and social norms, such as respect for peers, to young children. Behaviorism is a theory of learning that focuses on the interactions between external stimuli and behaviors and the way of how the former can be manipulated to cause intended and positive changes in learners’ responses to situations (Eggen & Kauchak, 2016). Behaviorism takes its roots in Pavlov’s studies of classical conditioning in laboratory dogs, but its applications to education are more specifically discussed in Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning (Eggen & Kauchak, 2016). The theory is based on the idea that people quickly learn to associate some behaviors with its desirable or unwanted consequences. It means that positive and negative reinforcements can be introduced to motivate learners to engage in particular behaviors or prevent them from doing something that is regarded as unacceptable.
Using behaviorism, it would be possible to teach preschoolers in kindergartens (3-5 years old) to follow social norms that are critical to subsequent socialization. The examples of such concepts that refer to universally recognized norms is respecting peers and communicating with them in a polite way. Children in kindergartens spend a lot of time playing, and such activities often involve the elements of collaboration and interpersonal communication (Welchons & McIntyre, 2017). To motivate young learners to be respectful toward peers, it would be possible to resort to a set of positive reinforcements that would make politeness and respectfulness attractive and advantageous. For instance, it could be helpful to reward children for being patient when waiting for their turn to play games, asking for permission prior to using their peers’ toys, expressing gratitude, and so on. Some ways to reward students would include giving verbal praises or letting kids play with their favorite toys or engage in activities that they like most of all. Also, positive and negative stimuli can be effectively used by introducing behavior charts and rewarding or removing stickers depending on children’s attitudes to others.
References
Baker, D. (2013). Art integration and cognitive development. Journal for Learning through the Arts, 9(1), 1-15.
Eggen, P. D., & Kauchak, D. P. (2016). Education psychology: Windows on classrooms (10th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson.
Welchons, L. W., & McIntyre, L. L. (2017). The transition to kindergarten: Predicting socio-behavioral outcomes for children with and without disabilities. Early Childhood Education Journal, 45(1), 83-93.