One cognitive-developmentalist speaks as an educator

Theory Into Practice, Autumn, 2004 by Heather A. Davis

The purpose of this article is to frame the divide between cognitive and developmental researchers and findings and educational practitioners. Specifically, the author argues that the divide emerges as a result of practitioners and researchers approaching childhood and instruction from differing perspectives. The article presents four questions organized around themes designed to support practitioners in becoming critical consumers of findings from the fields of cognitive and developmental psychology. The author also attempts to support researchers in sharing their findings in a way that contributes to shaping educational theory and practice.

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IT SEEMS FITTING that an applied developmental psychologist and novice teacher educator, who herself is learning how to bridge the divide between psychology and education, be presented the task of synthesizing the articles included in this issue of Theory Into Practice. For 5 years I have worked with K-12 teacher preparation students to make sense of the development paradigms, theories, and findings and their limitations. I still find myself seeking rationales that will not only capture and maintain the motivation of my students but encourage them to (a) persist through the massive body of knowledge to understand the developing human mind and (b) translate what they read into the context of how they instruct and interact with their students. The articles in this issue not only speak to the varied interests and methodologies of cognitive and developmental researchers but also to the traditional burning questions (e.g., What can be attributed to nature versus nurture? Are abilities stable or malleable? Is growth over time continuous or discontinuous? Are children passive or active learners? Are we growing towards an endpoint or is growth ongoing?) In this article I attempt to balance the four voices constantly negotiating with each other in my mind (Peshkin, 1988): the voice of the student in a cognitive development course seeking to become an educator, the educator struggling to use what I know about my students' thinking to be an effective instructor, the educator who teaches cognitive development, and the applied researcher who seeks to write about her work in a way that will compel teachers to care about her findings. Ultimately, I hope to offer my colleagues a new lens for viewing the questions driving cognitive developmental research, a lens developed from the perspective of an educator. It is my hope these four questions provide a solid context both for reading the articles in this issue and for maintaining continual contact with the field.

Psychological Research Speaks to Our Understandings of "Good Practice"

While philosophers have long reflected on the nature of childhood and purposes of developmental differences, the institutionalization of childhood and adolescence in American society is a relatively new phenomenon (Kessen, 1979). We currently live in a society that views childhood as segmented into different periods (e.g., infancy, toddlerhood, young childhood, middle childhood/early adolescence, adolescence, and emerging adulthood). Each group has its own set of institutions and is marketed to with unique products and programs. In part, this trend towards specifying more and more homogeneous periods of growth can be attributed to the work of cognitive developmentalists who sought to classify periods of growth that are distinguishable by unique patterns of behavior, thought, emotional experiences, and tasks to accomplish. Yet, in an age of increasingly complex classrooms and diverse populations of learners, combined with increasingly rigid constraints for instruction and evaluation, there are still voices that ask, "Why should teachers care about the findings of cognitive developmentalists explored in controlled settings somewhat foreign to today's classroom?" (Newman & Cole, this issue).

Question 1: What can findings tell me about the accuracy of my own beliefs and the developmental trends I can anticipate in my classroom?

The majority of our successes and failures in the classroom depend on our ability to cope with the in-the-moment decision making of how to manage problems and interact with our students. We must make quick decisions about when to persist with our activities or to change gears, as well as when and how to modify our own and our students' behaviors. Borko and Putnam (1996) argue, "the knowledge and beliefs that prospective and experienced teachers hold serve as filters through which their learning takes place" (p. 675). Torff and Sternberg (2001) define pre-service teachers' existing beliefs about teaching and learning as intuitive conceptions. Where do our intuitive conceptions come from? They may reflect our tacit or practical knowledge, our own subjectivities based on how we learn best, as well as the stereotypes and misconceptions we've acquired about children and learning. Why do we hold intuitive conceptions and what purpose do they serve? Intuitive conceptions emerged from our own experiences as learners and our vicarious observations of other's learning.