I have a lot of thoughts on this question and wondered at how it is a common practice to send the toddler to a day-care during the pre-school time. Having read a relevant book and found some researched and cited study on this topic, I wanted to share it with all. Here is goes....
Its from the book "Beyond Intelligence: Secrets for raising happily productive kids"
The authors of this book quote a research done by the National Institute for Child health and Human Development (NICHD). This study began in 1991 with over a 1000 infants from a variety of family backgrounds, locations through the US. Its findings showed that children who were cared for by stay-at-home mothers didn't develop differently than those who were primarily cared for by others like nannies, extended family, day care personnel. What mattered was the parental and familial characteristics they experienced, including warmth, responsiveness, and the right kinds of stimulation. Researchers did find some differences across different circumstances. Children who participated in better care settings showed higher levels of language, cognitive, and social development than those who experienced a lower-quality care. Another study by Megan Gunnar et al found that children's stress levels rise when they are in settings where they don't receive ample attention, support, guidance from the care provider. Children in the NICHD study who spent more time in non-maternal care in their first 4.5 years of life had more behavioral problems like aggression, lack of cooperation as well as minor illnesses of upper respiratory system and stomach, as compared with those with fewer hours in care. On the same lines, findings of Gunnar include that children in daycare situations have higher levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) than children being cared for at home by their parents, and this increased with the number of hours in the care.
Lastly, a child attending care-child centers do better socially and cognitively in the early years, but also have more minor illnesses upto an age of 3 and more behaviorial problems when they enter kindergarten. Gunnar's concludes that center-based care is inherently more stressful than home-based care for children younger than 3 and parents should keep tp a minimum the number of hours their infant or toddler spends in the care-based daycare.
I appreciate the importance of giving relevant citations of such an important study.
Megan Gunnar's article: "The Rise in Cortisol in Family Daycare: Associations With Aspects of Care Quality, Child Behavior, and Child Sex"
NICHD research: Backgrounder: The NICHD's 16-Year Study of Child Care & Development
Thursday, February 18, 2016
On Creativity
I am on a committee at the college that works to access and improve the growth of creativity during the academic career of students at my college. I think, it has been a great opportunity to spend time and thoughts on getting an objective hold of creativity, its measurement metrics and its nurturing characteristics.
In general, creativity is understood to be a mix of originality, flexible progressive thinking, aesthetics, and motivation. In addition to being a set of characteristics, creativity is also a potential of a person to make original, contributions as opined by experts.
Daniel Keating has defined creativity as a culmination of domain specific knowledge, divergent thinking, and effective communication. Having a domian-specific knowledge is essential part of being creative, similar to it being essential for being intelligent. To understand, this, it can be agreed that a person cannot be creative if he/she does not have the background knowledge and skills to apply to an unfamiliar situation/scenario. Its similar to saying that an author cannot create an creative work without having the fundamental tools of effective communications. Creative is not something that passes through few gifted individuals, even though it may appear that creativity is something like having a magical power. It has to depend of having relevant background knowledge and skills.
Unix/terminal-type programmers, scientists, as shown in the Hollywood are not individuals who have bought of excellent thoughts, what the movies do not show is the background work that is needed for recognizing a creative thought. I can think of Good Will Hunting's opening where Matt Damon is shown to flip through books and seemingly gain all the knowledge before the titles end and the movie begins. In reality, creativity begins after the entire movie of learning is experienced by an individual.
An occasional wave of creativity cannot go further without a through understanding of skills and knowledge to ride on. Without the relevant knowledge, one cannot draw from memory and find specific patterns, ideas, synergistic concepts. Focusing of knowledge and skills will not render an individual less creative, as popularly thought.
Having Divergent Thinking
It refers to having many thoughts stemming from a common thought but going in different thought directions. The aim being, that several divergent thought might cover more ground and eventually lead to something creatively relevant.
Recipe of having valuable creative thoughts:
Having a balance of four things: knowledge, divergent thinking, critical analysis, and communication.
Creative Thinking Habits
Creativity can be developed, parents can encourage children to cultivate essential skills for success in the ever evolving world.
In general, creativity is understood to be a mix of originality, flexible progressive thinking, aesthetics, and motivation. In addition to being a set of characteristics, creativity is also a potential of a person to make original, contributions as opined by experts.
Daniel Keating has defined creativity as a culmination of domain specific knowledge, divergent thinking, and effective communication. Having a domian-specific knowledge is essential part of being creative, similar to it being essential for being intelligent. To understand, this, it can be agreed that a person cannot be creative if he/she does not have the background knowledge and skills to apply to an unfamiliar situation/scenario. Its similar to saying that an author cannot create an creative work without having the fundamental tools of effective communications. Creative is not something that passes through few gifted individuals, even though it may appear that creativity is something like having a magical power. It has to depend of having relevant background knowledge and skills.
Unix/terminal-type programmers, scientists, as shown in the Hollywood are not individuals who have bought of excellent thoughts, what the movies do not show is the background work that is needed for recognizing a creative thought. I can think of Good Will Hunting's opening where Matt Damon is shown to flip through books and seemingly gain all the knowledge before the titles end and the movie begins. In reality, creativity begins after the entire movie of learning is experienced by an individual.
An occasional wave of creativity cannot go further without a through understanding of skills and knowledge to ride on. Without the relevant knowledge, one cannot draw from memory and find specific patterns, ideas, synergistic concepts. Focusing of knowledge and skills will not render an individual less creative, as popularly thought.
Having Divergent Thinking
It refers to having many thoughts stemming from a common thought but going in different thought directions. The aim being, that several divergent thought might cover more ground and eventually lead to something creatively relevant.
Recipe of having valuable creative thoughts:
Having a balance of four things: knowledge, divergent thinking, critical analysis, and communication.
Creative Thinking Habits
Creativity can be developed, parents can encourage children to cultivate essential skills for success in the ever evolving world.
Friday, February 5, 2016
Intelligence
I wanted to write something that I learnt after reading a book "Beyond Intelligence" written by Dona Matthews PhD and Joanne Foster Ed. D. I think its a good combination of educational expert and a science expert perspectives.
Perspectives on Intelligence:
From 3 decades of studies on people perspectives of their success and failures, Carol Dweck concluded that those who think of intelligence with a growth mindset: developing incrementally, step by step, with effort and practice, do better across in areas of academia, career, and psychological success, as compared to fixed mindset:folks who think of success as being something innate that people are born with.
This of course should not be startling as neurosciences has shown that brain activity develops from birth on wards and is affected over lifespan of an individual. A whole lot of learning is possible in a lifespan and that is what we as humans do and those who do not learn so to say have already reached their developmental state inertia.
To avoid coming back to a catch 22 situation, it needs to be stated that a mindset is not acquired at birth these refer to habits that can be developed and learned. I, being an educator myself am a witness to my college's students who have developed newer habits that tend to make oneself more successful, with all its subjectivity.
Research has shown that praising children for being smart is detrimental to their growth and instead of using the praise terms of "bright", intelligent, talented it is suggested to provide a praise children for what they have accomplished through practice, study, persistence, and good strategies. Always go for uplifting the growth mindset.
From fixed mindset perspective, does not give an elbow room for further improvement as intelligence is considered as innate, something one has from birth where as the growth mindset talks about varying degrees of intelligence, the intelligence being progressive and attainable by an individual. Ask any accomplished person and you shall hear back the experiences of an growth mindset person.
Why is that certain individuals master new ideas quickly and easily?
Well it can be thought that the above statement is valid only for new ideas that are close to concepts that these certain individuals have mastered already. So , in reality by considering their old existing knowledge possessed by them, the newly (but relatable) ideas are not really new to them.
Working hard does not mean that someone is not smart, instead it means to confront challenges and moving ahead methodically, and is the blueprint of making a person smart (not in the sense of innate smartness though).
Take away point:
The definition of Intelligence at last:
Intelligence is the ability to understand complex ideas, adapt effectively to the environment, overcome obstacles, engage meaningfully in various forms of reasoning, and learn from experience. It develops incrementally, and varies across time, situations, and domains.
Perspectives on Intelligence:
From 3 decades of studies on people perspectives of their success and failures, Carol Dweck concluded that those who think of intelligence with a growth mindset: developing incrementally, step by step, with effort and practice, do better across in areas of academia, career, and psychological success, as compared to fixed mindset:folks who think of success as being something innate that people are born with.
This of course should not be startling as neurosciences has shown that brain activity develops from birth on wards and is affected over lifespan of an individual. A whole lot of learning is possible in a lifespan and that is what we as humans do and those who do not learn so to say have already reached their developmental state inertia.
To avoid coming back to a catch 22 situation, it needs to be stated that a mindset is not acquired at birth these refer to habits that can be developed and learned. I, being an educator myself am a witness to my college's students who have developed newer habits that tend to make oneself more successful, with all its subjectivity.
Research has shown that praising children for being smart is detrimental to their growth and instead of using the praise terms of "bright", intelligent, talented it is suggested to provide a praise children for what they have accomplished through practice, study, persistence, and good strategies. Always go for uplifting the growth mindset.
From fixed mindset perspective, does not give an elbow room for further improvement as intelligence is considered as innate, something one has from birth where as the growth mindset talks about varying degrees of intelligence, the intelligence being progressive and attainable by an individual. Ask any accomplished person and you shall hear back the experiences of an growth mindset person.
Why is that certain individuals master new ideas quickly and easily?
Well it can be thought that the above statement is valid only for new ideas that are close to concepts that these certain individuals have mastered already. So , in reality by considering their old existing knowledge possessed by them, the newly (but relatable) ideas are not really new to them.
Working hard does not mean that someone is not smart, instead it means to confront challenges and moving ahead methodically, and is the blueprint of making a person smart (not in the sense of innate smartness though).
Take away point:
The definition of Intelligence at last:
Intelligence is the ability to understand complex ideas, adapt effectively to the environment, overcome obstacles, engage meaningfully in various forms of reasoning, and learn from experience. It develops incrementally, and varies across time, situations, and domains.
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