Integrating Scholarship into Practice and Policy

The last topic of the course was “Integrating developmental scholarship into practice and policy” and I learned firstly, another meaning of scholarship in this lesson. I knew this term as help of institutions to students in order to continue their education. The scholarship is similar to research but it is broader than research. It is written in the article that if the facts are based on data, then that type of scholarship is called science. Then, the article cites McCall’s saying that “The purpose of scholarship is to improve life.” This sentence makes me think that what are the purposes of science? I do not agree with McCall and I think that science has three purposes: to explain, to control, and to predict. For example, if a new type of illness emerges, science will firstly try to explain it, then investigate methods to be able to control it with respect to its aim, and then based on these methods, predict the illness’ future, effects etc. but science has not a purpose of improving life. By explaining, controlling, and predicting, science enables people to improve their life. However, it does not make scholarship (research) for the sake of helping people. On the other hand, most people in the society think that science is a tool to make their life easy.
Secondly, one of the most important arguments in the article is related with the value of basic scholarship and applied scholarship. Although the author mentions about why applied scholarship is necessary and more valuable than basic scholarship, then according to many psychologists basic scholarship has more value than applied scholarship. It seems to me that the reason for psychologists’ valuing basic scholarship more than applied one is their struggle for making psychology a science. The author also talks about their struggle by saying that “Psychologists wanted to create a truly scientific discipline of psychology by invoking the basic sciences of physics and chemistry as its model.” However, in psychology, I think that there is a demarcation problem which is the problem of drawing a line between the statements of the empirical sciences and all other statements- whether they are of a religious or of a metaphysical character, or simply pseudoscientific (Popper, 2003). In other words, demarcation problem is the problem of distinguishing science from non-science. I think that psychology’s status whether it is scientific or not is not certain. Therefore, psychologists always try to make psychology scientific with their studies. Otherwise, they would not be interested in making laboratory experiments and search findings. By doing experiments, they think that psychology will be scientific. As parallel to psychologists’ views, similar debate occurs between evolution and intelligent design theorists. Demarcation problem uses also evolution and intelligent design theories. Intelligent design is the idea that various forms of life began abruptly through some supernatural agency, with their distinctive features already intact. For example, the very first fish would already have had fins and scales, the very first birds would have had feathers, beaks, and wings etc. (Radder, 2006). On the other hand, evolution theory consists of the following premises: evolution- change over time, natural selection, modification with descent (common ancestry), multiplication of species, and gradualism (Mayr (1991), as cited in Scharmann (2005).
At first view, it is not easy to separate these theories with respect to scientific perspective, as in the case of psychology. Therefore, many science researchers agree that NOS should be used to be able to demarcate science from non-science. Although subjectivity aspect of NOS contribute the solution of demarcation problem, there must be other aspects which NOS has not possessed yet such as being evidence-based, testability, and falsifiability. In conclusion, by using the criteria of NOS, we can decide whether psychology is a science or not. In this case, psychologists do not need to make psychology a science.    

Role of Parents in Moral Development

Even though the definiton of morality is various, it is the system of rules that regulates the social interactions and social relationships of individuals within societies and is based on concepts of welfare (harm), trust, justice, and rights. We learned in the lesson that moral judgments need to be obligatory, universal, unalterable, impersonal and determined by criteria other than agreement, consensus or institutional convention. While some theorists claim that morality stems from mainly parents’ influence on children through their parenting practices, disciplinary strategies, and parenting styles, some theorists assert that the hierarchical nature of parent-child relationships constrain children’s moral development. Although I do not ignore the effect of peers on children, I think that the role of parents is utmost importance in moral development of their children. For example, Piaget found that children’s conflicts over moral issues such as object possession (taking a toy or not sharing), rights, aggression, psychological harm-all moral issues- do occur primarily in interactions with peers.  Since peers have similar age with each other, children tend to follow how they behave toward each other. They learn the concepts of harm, justice and rights through these interactions. If the child is accustomed to steal money from people’s pockets, then his/her peers tend to follow him/her so that stealing and harming people will be normal behavior according to them. That is, their moral development can consist of harming and violating the rights. By directing their children to have friendship with particular peers, parents can provide these children to develop morally.

Another role of parents is related with being role-model. Various studies show that young children have social experiences with physical and psychological harm, fair distribution and the violation of rights through their experiences of rules, rule violations, and peer conflicts. By considering children’s possible social experiences, parents can help children gain moral development concepts.  Rather than giving advices to their children about moral concepts, parents should try to behave like that (not only saying but also doing) and to make them observe that their parents are respectful to each other’s rights. Or, by providing children to trust the parents, they can learn better the trust concept, for instance.

As parallel to these views, in the article, Smetana (1999) cites that affective component of family-child interactions provide parental warmth, involvement and support which enable children to develop moral reasoning. Hence, parents should be careful in their relationships with students and use affective interactions . Moreover, there is also cognitive dimension of parents’ roles. In the social domain view, parents’ communications with their children are crucial in the construction of moral knowledge. By explaining the reasons for rules, trying to apply these rules in the house, giving appropriate reactions when children violate the rules, parents can enable their children to think critically about their actions so that they obtain moral development.

Finally, it can be said that moral development of children is dependent on the role of parents during the construction of it. Hence, parents should be careful in selection of their children’s peers, have awareness about children’s possible social experiences and give importance to affective and cognitive components of parent-child interactions.

Attachment Theory

In this blog entry, I will talk mainly about how Bowlby’s attachment theory emerges and the importance of the theory from the perspective of infants.

After Bowlby’s first empirical study about maternal deprivation and separation, he found that separation has clear-cut and significant effect on child and parent-child relationship so that it will be easy for him to document effects of separation on the relationship. Then, he decided to focus on attachment in order to analyze parent-child relationship. Considering the importance of the theory, Bowlby found that in order to grow up mentally healthy, “the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his mother (or permanent mother substitute) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment” (Bowlby, 1951, cited in Bretherton, 1992).  That is, an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to be able to occur normally. Bowlby views attachment as “proximity to an attachment figure as a predictable outcome and whose evolutionary function is protection of the infant from danger, insisting that attachment has its own motivation and is in no way derived from systems subserving mating and feeding” (Bretherton, 1992). In other words, it can be said that attachment is necessary for an infant to live in a healthy way since it enables him/her to develop socially and emotionally.

When we consider humans, the necessity of attachment can be understood better. In many species other than humans, young animals, for example, move closer to adults or follow them for a long time. They can walk after birth immediately. Their need for adults is less than human infants’ need for adults. Human infants cannot walk or follow their adults. They even cannot cling to these adults for maintaining contact, as well as not talk and say their need at that moment. They can only send signals by crying or facial expressions etc. to their adults. Hence, they need attachment. If it is not provided to an infant, then he/she will have trouble in development process and in the future he/she will probably harm people around him/her or even the society. For example, during first six months if there are no consistent caretaker, the infant will not form an attachment and he/she will cause many problems in the future for himself/herself and the society. I think that one of the most important reasons for having so many robbers, fighters, liars etc. in the society is due to the lack of attachment when these people are infants. If they got attachment from caregivers, then they would learn and internalize the concepts of love, toleration, and helpfulness.

REFERENCES

1-      Bretherton, I. (1992). The Origins of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainstworth. Developmental Psychology Journal, 28, 759-775   

Language Development

Today’s topic in the course was language development. Oral language can defined as a socially shared code, or conventional system, that represents ideas through the use of arbitrary symbols and rules that govern combinations of these symbols. From the child development course, I have learned that oral language is crucial in all aspects of life but we are not aware of this fact and we simply overlook oral language. Chomsky claims that children learn an intricate grammatical system almost entirely on their own. All their need is to hear a language spoken, and they will master it. His words also support why most schools emphasize academic skills and not consider oral language as a part of the academic curriculum. Similarly, many teachers believe that most children develop language skills naturally and do not require remediation. I believe that not guiding children to develop their language cause them to have problems related with language in the future such as not speaking well, not understanding grammar of spoken language and fluency problems in reading.

I think that the state of oral language is like a vicious cycle. Children have oral language problems, but parents and children are unaware so schools neglect it. Then, teachers overlook and children continue to have oral language problems. Since schools are interested in academic skills, they don’t mention about oral language skills. However, these skills form the basis of academic skills. Additionally, oral language supports for learning other subject areas such as reading, writing, and content areas. To be able to read questions and answer them (that is, in order to be successful academically), children need to have oral language skills. Communicating with friends about homework, understanding teacher’s verbal directions during exams or worksheets, listening to teacher’s instruction on a topic all require oral language skills. By considering the importance of oral language, activities which can develop these skills should be integrated into the curriculum.

When we consider teachers, they can use strategies for teaching oral language skills. For example, they can use imitations for proper use of language by providing a sentence and asking the child to repeat it. Or they can teach language by forming small groups and connecting interactions between peers about correct use of language. Moreover, they can present games and activities in order to make students enjoy learning oral language. In order to enhance students’ receptive skills (an understanding or comprehension of spoken words) as a part of oral language, teachers can read a story and ask students to predict the end of the story or they can play listening games like “Simon Says”. Similarly, parents can develop their children’s language. In general, it is believed that normal children would have great difficulty learning language on the basis of parental conditioning, because parents are such poor language teachers. However, I don’t agree with this belief. Although some parents’ speech is full of grammatical errors, they mainly tend to speak with their children in a very simple, clear, and grammatical fashion. Also, speaking with children increases their vocabulary. Similarly, Hart and Risley (2003) found when parents talk a great deal to their babies and toddlers, the parents can boost their children’s vocabularies at age 3 years. These gains, in turn, are associated with elevated IQ and reading scores in elementary school.

In conclusion, to be able to enhance oral language skills, teachers should give opportunities students to practice what they have been learned about oral language. Parents should also do more practice with their children in a simple and clear way. Schools also should incorporate oral language into the curriculum. If parents, teachers and schools give importance to oral language by applying the suggestions, then vicious cycle will be broken and we will have students who have highly-developed oral language skills.