What Makes People Tick?

What is your earliest memory? Do you remember being five years old, being a toddler, being a baby? Do you remember what it was like in the womb? Chances are you might remember something from when you were around five years old, whereas the earlier years of your life are most likely a blur, if you remember anything at all. Yet the early years of our lives are when we learn all the basics for the rest of our lives. We learn to crawl, to walk, to talk, to recognise people and situations, to differentiate cats from dogs and other animals, to play with other children and navigate playground politics, to understand that fire is hot, that we need to be cautious around strangers, that we need to look both ways before crossing the street... We learn almost everything we need to know to live and survive the rest of our lives yet when we're older we usually can't remember learning many of these things. playground slide Which leads me to wonder, how exactly does a baby's brain...

The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is a concept I learnt about while studying to be a teacher. The ZPD describes the learning that a student needs to do to get from where they are now and what they know at present to where they can get to and what they will know with help. I found it an interesting concept and enjoyed learning about it and seeing it happening right in front of my eyes while at job placements.  The 'creator' of the concept, Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), describes it much better than I do:  The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is " the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers "  Lev Vygotsky, 1978 * In my words, Vygotsky thought that children learn better when inspired / helped / assisted by adults or other (sometimes older) childre...

When I studied Teaching at University, we learnt about lots of relevant and interesting subjects. Not only did we learn 'basics' like (how to teach) science, mathematics, languages and technology, we also learnt a lot of theories. At first, the theories puzzled us slightly yet after the first year or so, we started seeing the connections between all the different subjects we were studying. "Seeing the connections" was something that happened gradually, yet our entire class of 20-30 women got there around the same time. It was a shared process of discovery in which we learnt from each other and with each other and were able to grow and change our insights together.

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917 - 2005) was a Russian American psychologist and professor known for developing the Ecological Systems Theory. He was generally regarded as one of the world's leading scholars in the field of developmental psychology. I learned about theorists such as Bronfenbrenner while studying towards my B.Ed. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory views the person as developing within a multi-layered system of relationships. Using the example of a child, the systems are: The Microsystem - One's family, classroom The Mesosystem - Two micro-systems in interaction (i.e. family and classroom) The Exosystem - External environments which indirectly influence development The Macrosystem - The larger socio-cultural context. Added later: The Chronosystem - The evolution of the external systems over time. Each system contains roles, norms and rules that can powerfully shape development. (Source: Wikipedia ) The Microsystem: The setting in which the indi...