Examples Of Discontinuity Theory

A description of the social, economical and cultural factors that will impact on the lives of children and young people.

A child’s environment, for example, their family or school play a huge part in their development. Some of the main factors that influence a child’s development are their family, where the child lives, and socio-economic status. These factors often cross over and blend as they are related.

Each child’s physical, social, emotional, and intellectual and language development will be looked at through age stages. All of these categories are as important as each other and can each have a substantial impact on the child’s full adult potential.

1.1. Describe the social, economic and cultural factors that will impact on the lives of children

1.describe the social, economic and cultural factors that will impact on the lives of children and young people (unit 7)

Children and young people often experience many things which have a direct impact on their development; things such as their family environment and structure, personality, hospital visits, childcare arrangements, and culture.

The difference between sequence of development and rate of development is that a sequence of development is the order in which the development of a child will occur. The rate of development is in which speed/ time this development would happen. Child development experts have carried out a lot of research on young children to work out what most children can do at different ages and the rate at which they grow. From this research, milestones have been identified. A ‘milestone of development’ refers to the age at which most children should have reached a certain stage of development. We think about stages and sequences of development in stages:

This theory focuses solely on children’s cognitive development so that is both a strength and a weakness as it gets an in-depth understanding of children’s cognitive processes however it cannot be generalised to adults. Another strength of this theory is the fact that it can be applied practically within the real world, especially in regards to education as it means children can be taught based upon their developmental stage. It is extremely useful in that sense as it is nomothetic so it can be applied to larger population. The theory contains both continuous and discontinuous, it is discontinuous as it contains distinct hierarchal stages. It is good in one sense as it allows professionals to see if a child is meeting the stages and if they do not action can be taken. At the same time it can be disadvantageous as professionals, such as teachers may not push a child to reach their full cognitive capabilities as they have met the criteria for their age. At the time this was quite revolutionary as children were once considered “little adults” that only has a slightly less mental and developmental capacity. Therefore they may not have learnt as effective as they could, as they may have been taught above or below their capacity. However with that said it has been suggested that his stages of

1.1 Describe the Social, Economic and Cultural factors that will impact on the lives of Children and Young People:

These different components explain how the child is affected by their environment meaning living situation, family, eating and sleeping schedules, cultural beliefs and parenting styles.

The exosystem relates to the linkages that may exist between at least two settings, one of which may not contain the creating adolescent but rather influences him by implication in any case. Other individuals and spots which the child may not specifically associate with but rather may in any case affect the kid, involve the

The first subsystem includes the child’s physical and social settings – the size and shape of the living space as well as the people who frequent the child’s settings (Super & Harkness, 1986). A child’s physical and social settings

The third level is the exosystem; it consists of social structures that directly or indirectly affect a person’s life: school, work, mass media, government and various social networks (Crandell, Crandell, & Vander Zanden 2009). For example, if a child’s parent, especially a one income family household, gets laid off and is without work that may have negative effects on the child if her parents are unable to pay rent, buy groceries, or provide the necessities. In contrast, if her parent receives a promotion and a raise at work, this may have a positive effect on the child because her parents will be better able to give her physical needs. This may have a positive effect on a child’s development and motivate them to work hard and obtain a good job as an adult. Another example within this system would be the relationship between a child’s school and home, as the rules are often times different for a child at home and school and being able to keep the two separate can prove challenging for a child.

     Dealing with the Developmental Theory (Stage Theory), a child may have the same dysfunction and not be able to move up the ladder of stages. There are those rare cases where a child may be stuck at one stage, or a child may not develop everything he or she needs to move on.

Before anything else, the term “Sociocultural context” must be defined. Sociocultural context is defined as “the physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances that make up any child’s environment”. (Siegler, DeLoache, & Eisenberg, 2014) It is a very broad term covering a wide variety of subjects that have the potential to impact a child’s development either positively or negatively. Due to it being so broad, it is critical to give at least one example for each of these terms in the definition. An example of a physical environment is where someone physically grew up, and includes factors such as environment and one’s physical house. (Siegler, et al. 2014) Social environment is who one grew up around, including friends, family, and educators. (Siegler, et al. 2014) Cultural environment refers to a set of beliefs, customs, practices and behavior that influence population. Economic circumstances refer to one’s financial well-being; and historical circumstances refer to the time that one grew up in and the historical events that one was