Growth and Development in ECE
Abstract
In this literature review present a survey of the studies on child development particularly on language development. The studies presented in this review all employed quantitative method of research. That is why quantitative method was also assessed.
It is evident that the researches in child development present the main concerns and methodological tendencies were there in the early stage of their development (Benson:2003). It seems that most methodical efforts to study child development and their behavior centered basically on particular traits and capacity. There have been studies on child development that focused on the language development of a child. Most of these studies used a variety of methods in examining a child’s sentence formation, normally samples of all-day conversations of advanced children. Mcdonald (2002) conducted a vocabulary test and tried to evaluate a 1-hr discussions of nursery-school children, however the groups cannot be considered to be a representative of the population.
While Hayne (2000) and Bjorklund (2001), investigated and studied the language development of a child. They have series of continuous discussions of a large population of children that were randomly chosen. The studies carefully evaluated the different factors of a child’s language development, the importance of language in the child’s life, the changes in the length of sentences, the complexity of sentence structure and the proportions of the different parts of speech that occur in the material. Both studies employed quantitative research. They conducted observation individually in a child’s home, a place that is very familiar to a child, like his classroom. They recorded verbal responses for each child and gave sample of the child’s stage of linguistic development in a relatively short period of time.
Another study also used quantitative method in examining a child’s use of words to communicate his ideas to others (Huttenlocher:2002) . The study proved that in eighteen months, a child could communicate with the people around him only by crying and gestures. At the age of four a child is very sociable through using language to communicate his needs and desires, both physically and intellectually.
Studies employing quantitative methods has conventionally centered on either infancy or preschool age of a child (Huttenlocher:2002) . There are two significant views on development emerged. However, these studies with preschoolers have painted the errors and failures of children in this age level. Some researchers concluded that quantitative method is limited in studying child development.
Children are often the “victims” of child development research. In order to avoid this, researchers must impose ethical consideration before administering their studies. So far, all studies above seek the consents of their respondents’ parents and school administrators. They informed them the following: the nature of research and the possible risks of the research.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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