adaptive strategy choice model
classification
concrete operational period
conservation
decentering
decoding
developing readers
DUPE
emergent readers
independent readers
knowledge-acquisition components
metacomponents
moral dilemma
multiple intelligences
numeration
performance components
phonological cues
pragmatic cues
reversibility
semantic cues
seriation
syntactic cues
triarchic model of intelligence

Lecture Suggestions
1.      Issues with Intelligence Testing
James Flynn recognized in 1984 that average intelligence quotient (IQ) scores were increasing in industrialized nations. Since then, psychologists such as Ulrich Neissen (1997) and William Dickens, with Flynn (2001), have attempted to determine why. Present this issue of the Flynn Effect to students. Then review the characteristics of good problem solvers. Discuss methods to improve critical thinking skills and to facilitate problem solving. Incorporating what students know about Wechsler’s and Binet’s intelligence assessment tools, examine the possibility that classroom exercises in problem solving may contribute to the rise in IQ scores.

2.      Sternberg’s Personal Experience with Intelligence
Before explaining Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence, share Sternberg’s personal experience with intelligence, and ask students to share their experiences, both positive and negative. Also, ask students how they would define intelligence.

“I really stunk on IQ tests. I was just terrible,” recalls Sternberg. “In elementary school I had severe test anxiety. I’d hear other people starting to turn the page and I’d still be on the second item. I’d utterly freeze.” (Trotter, 1986, p. 56)

After doing so poorly on an IQ test in sixth grade, Sternberg had to retake it with the fifth-graders. This helped him get over his test anxiety, and he did well on the test. In a seventh-grade science project, he designed and administered his own test of mental abilities. After high school, he worked summers as a research assistant at the Psychological Corporation in New York, then at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey. He took a graduate course at Stanford from Lee J. Cronbach, a leader in the field, who said that the psychometric approach had run its course and new intelligence research efforts were needed.

About the same time, an educational publishing firm asked Sternberg to write a book on how to prepare for the Miller Analogies Test. Sternberg seized the opportunity because he wanted to study intelligence and thought analogies were a major part of most IQ tests. This work eventually led to his dissertation and a book based on it. At this stage, Sternberg was analyzing the cognitive processes people use to solve IQ test items, such as analogies, syllogism, and series. His research accounted for mental processing and also seemed to account for individual differences in IQ test performance. From this work, Sternberg published a paper in 1980 of his “componential” theory of intelligence.

But from his teaching and working with graduate students at Yale, Sternberg came to believe that there was much more to intelligence than what his componential theory was describing. He found that one student had high test scores and excellent analytical scores. Another student didn’t have the best test scores but was a creative thinker who demonstrated insight. And yet another student was street-smart, coming out on top in almost any context because the student learned to play the game and how to manipulate the environment. His componential theory had only explained one aspect of intelligence.

Sternberg’s personal experience with IQ tests was the impetus for his involvement with intelligence testing, which led to his triarchic theory of intelligence. Sternberg, IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University, did his undergraduate work at Yale and then got his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1975. His three-part theory of intelligence has a dimension of practicality that is appealing to many. His practical bent toward intelligence is seen in his efforts to teach people to better understand and increase their intellectual skills.

Reference:
Trotter, R. (1986). Three heads are better than one. Psychology Today, 20, 56–62.

Instructor’s CD-ROM Resource Activities
1.      Chapter 11 Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood
A.     Identifying Obesity Risk Factors
B.     Test Anxiety: A Visit with Teachers
C.     A Discussion with Teachers on Bullying
D.     The Homework Blues
E.      Sports and Children: Interview with a Pediatrician

Classroom or Student Activities
1.      Piagetian Tasks in Middle Childhood
As a continuation of an activity described in Chapter 5 of this manual, invite a child in middle childhood to your classroom to participate in several Piagetian tasks. According to Piaget, children in this age group are in the concrete operational stage of cognitive development. They are able to combine, order, separate, and transform objects in their mind, but they still are unable to manipulate objects mentally unless they are present. At this stage, though, children understand that the world is more predictable and their thinking is more flexible.

Have students design Piagetian tasks to demonstrate conservation (including identity, compensation, and negation) and decentration. Conduct the tasks with the child invited to class. Ask students to compare their observations with children at different ages in middle childhood and with children in the preoperational stage of cognitive development.

2.      Kohlberg’s Moral Dilemma
Kohlberg devised the moral dilemma, a conflict causing subjects to justify the morality of their choices. He used moral dilemmas to determine an individual’s stage of moral development.

In order to critically evaluate Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, divide students into six different groups, each group corresponding to one of Kohlberg’s six stages of development. Provide students with a copy of the Heinz dilemma. Have each group work together to decide how an individual at their designated stage of moral development would respond. Remind students that what is important is the reasoning behind the answer that determines the particular stage, not whether or not the husband should steal the drug. Have each group present its reasoning stage of morality to the class.

3.      Career-Related Activity
Imagine you’re a nurse working in a pediatrician’s office. The doctor asks you to create a one-page handout for her patients describing the milestones of cognitive and problem-solving development during the middle childhood years.

Questions for Review and Discussion
1.      Describe the physical changes in middle childhood, and explain motor skill development during these years.
2.      Define concrete operational thinking, and provide examples of how children might demonstrate concrete operational thinking.
3.      Discuss Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, and explain how it helps theorists understand middle childhood.
4.      Explain Sternberg’s triarchic model of intelligence, and discuss how it relates to the developing cognitive competence of the middle childhood youngster.
5.      Explain the interaction between children’s developing memory skills and their problem-solving skills.
6.      Discuss characteristics of good problem solvers and contrast these with the kinds of mistakes children make when approaching a problem.
7.      What is the DUPE method? List and explain its components.
8.      Describe Carol Gilligan’s stages of moral development for women. How does Gilligan’s theory reflect a cultural-contextual view of development?
9.      How is language development related to moral reasoning?

Web Site Resources

Child Development
Developmental Psychology
Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget

The Gardner School
KidSource On Line
America Reads
Kohlberg and Gilligan

www.srcd.org
www.apa.org/journals/dev.html
www.education.Indiana.edu/~p540/webcourse/develop.html
www.psy.pdx.edu/PsiCafe/KeyTheorists/Piaget.htm
www.gardnerschool.org
www.kidsource.com/
www.ed.gov/inits/americareads/kids.html
www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/09_15_99/page_21.html