Theoretical foundations of learning environments Book

My overall impression of this book is a favorable one. The information was relevant, easily digested, and had snippets of humor interjected here and there. The resources used to compile this book were extensive and credible. The notes on the material were comprehensive.

The first chapter dealt mainly with the history of the study of children, dating back to early philosophers like Plato, Socrates, and Meno. The chapter made me quite nostalgic for my philosophy classes. I think I'm much better equipped as a 30-year old mother to debate such topics as the Other World problem and the External World problem than I was as an 18-year old college freshman. Also presented in the history of developmental theory are Locke, Piaget (who I did not know was a child genius), Freud, Skinner, and Vygotsky. It's quite interesting to see the progression of thinking about thinking (learning) condensed into such a small timeline. We really have come a long way!

Chapters two, three, and four all deal with what children know about people, things, and language. The general consensus at this time seems to be that children come with innate knowledge of some things, have the ability to learn others, and are surround by adults who seem to innately want to teach them. It seems like common sense, but for years it actually wasn't. These chapters briefly touched on various syndromes that seem to involve some sort of breakdown in the pre-programming that children seem to have.

The real gem in this section came from the discussion about language learning and development being influenced by region and environment. As children develop new ways of thinking, they develop new was to communicate these thought processes. For example, when a child learns the concept of failure, he/she also develops ways to communicate this, sometimes putting a word or a phrase into multipurpose use (like calling all animals with four feet "doggie"), which brings us to this passage...

American babies use [...] uh-oh to describe failures, while the babies in the Oxford villas used the more genteel oh dear (although one British baby did briefly but memorably say oh bugger).

Chapters five and six deal with the specific topics of children's minds and brains. A lot of this information was not new to me, and some of it was even recycled information from earlier in the book (though I will grant that it was tied in with new-to-the-book concepts). The information was very easy to understand, partially because it was explained well (though talking about how computers works makes my brain want to explode) and in part because the information provided was very superficial and lacked a lot of detail. Again, it was at the very least good for a chuckle...

For most grown-ups, for most of history, that learning [responsibility-free childhood learning] may have largely stopped when we reached maturity and turned to the more central evolutionary business of the four f's (feeding, feeling, fighting, and engaging in sexual reproduction).

Predictably, the last chapter was a call for more study as well as the reasons why more study is justified. Basically, it let the reader finish the book with a warm fuzzy.

I'm happy to have read this book, and it will keep its place on my bookshelf. It's a good starter-book for someone interested in child development. There are certainly more detailed books available, but this is a good appetite-wetter.