EARLY CHILDHOOD

First, the representative developmental theorists (Piaget, Kohlberg, Selman, and Erikson) will guide us through the classic stage theories concerning social cognition and emotional development.

There are other theorists and researchers who have influenced the design of our curriculum activities, for example, Vygotsky and Bronfenbrenner, but we men­tion them only briefly because of space limitations. These post-classic theorists add significantly to knowledge about the fundamental elements of school readi­ness and conflict management: innate temperament and individuality, emotional control, role taking, empathy, perspective taking, moral reasoning, problem solv­ing, and the interconnection between social-emotional learning and academic achievement.

Both classic and post-classic theorists have been of great help in creating the Peaceful Kids Educating Communities in Social-Emotional Learning (ECSEL) Program at the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1998.

Stage Theories of Early Childhood Development

Kohlberg called early childhood the stage of heteronomous morality, a time referred to by Piaget as the preoperational stage of development, or morality of constraint. (See Tables 16.1 and 16.2.) Children in this stage are subject to exter­nally imposed rules and adhere unquestioningly to rules and the directives of powerful adults. Their motives and those of other children and adults are dis­regarded; only outcomes are important.

Developing a “Self.” In a Piagetian and neo-Piagetian constructivist approach (De Vries and Zan, 1994), a critical developmental task for a young child is decentering; that is, constructing a self separate from others and developing the capacity to think in terms of other people’s attitudes toward oneself. Within this theoretical framework, as in others, well-managed conflict is one of the most important factors in overcoming egocentrism and acquiring new knowledge about oneself and others. Naturally occurring conflict is an opportunity for chil­dren to develop social, emotional, intellectual, and moral skills by working through their disagreements.

The Influence of Friends. Contrary to what was previously believed, peer rela­tionships in early childhood are now seen as an important factor in promoting perspective taking (the ability to analyze a situation in terms of emotions, inten­tions, and reasons from both sides of an issue) and moral development.

Friends influence children through their attitudes, behavior, and personal characteristics. The quality of the friendship is important: positive, mutually supportive, and cooperative relationships are, not surprisingly, more constructive

Table 16.1. Piaget's Social Cognitive Approach to Children's Development.

Note: One of the major critiques of Piaget is that researchers are finding evidence that children are actu­ally more competent in a number of ways than Piaget thought.

Source: Adapted from Piaget and Inhelder, 1969.

than those characterized by put-downs and hostile rivalry. Friendships posi­tively affect a child’s school adjustment in three ways:

1. Attitude toward classes (cooperative students value classes, teachers, and what they are learning)

2. Classroom behavior (cooperative students are rarely disruptive)

3. Academic achievement (cooperative students learn what is taught and receive high grades and test scores)

Role of Conflict. During early childhood, the parent often pleads, “How do I change my child’s behavior so that she is more agreeable?” The answer is to recognize that oppositional, conflict-provoking behavior usually represents an

Table 16.2. Comparison of Social Cognitive Approaches to Development.

Level 1: Preconventional

(ContintieT)

Table 16.2. Comparison of Social Cognitive Approaches to Development. (Continued)

Sources: Adapted from Kohlberg, 1976; Damon, 1980; Selman, 1980.

^aRecent research suggests that preschoolers may know more than they can tell us and so this level may need revision.

important developmental step. What needs to be changed is how the child’s behavior is viewed and in particular how it is handled by the parent.

Conflict serves different purposes according to the level of early childhood development. During the second and third years, it corresponds with children’s developing autonomy. The increasing assertiveness of the child is to be desired rather than socialized into compliance with parental demands. Between the ages of three and seven, constructive conflict management helps to coordinate play. According to the theorists in Table 16.2, there is, in early childhood, little full­scale perspective taking. However, incipient perspective taking is readily appar­ent in the child’s empathic response to others, and a number of current theorists believe young children are more capable of perspective taking than classic stage theories allowed. (See the later section “Empathy and Perspective Taking.”) Chil­dren are often seen comforting friends who are upset or mirroring the emotion of others around them. Skills training in recognizing emotion in self and others encourages development of empathy, a precursor to perspective taking.

Selman (see Table 16.2) refers to the “egocentric, impulsive stage” of devel­opment as representing the primitive foundation of social perspective taking. According to this view, young children may recognize that other children dis­play different preferences, but they lack the capacity to distinguish between their own perception of an event or person and that of another child. Neither do preschoolers see the cause-effect relationship in other people between thinking and behaving. This often leads to confusion over cause-effect relationships, such as whether punishment following misbehavior is the effect of misbehavior or its cause. Without guidance, children are likely to feel that they did something wrong because they are punished but fail to understand precisely what they did wrong. (Note that some modern theorists feel young children are more capable of perspective taking than just stated.)

The egocentric stage of social perspective taking corresponds to Kohlberg’s level 1 (preconventional heteronomous morality) and Damon’s level 0-A (jus­tice is getting what one wishes) and level 0-B (justifications are based on external factors such as size or gender). Children at stage 0 view a conflict sit­uation as being an event where one cannot do what one wants because of how the other person is behaving. Conflict resolution thus consists of fight (“Hit her!”) or flight (“Go play with another toy or do something else”).

As can be seen in Table 16.3, Kegan (1994), a neo-Piagetian “constructive- developmentalist,” frames different developmental periods in an individual’s life in terms of orders of consciousness. Kegan’s approach includes cognitive, affective, interpersonal, and intrapersonal development throughout the life span. The first order of consciousness encompasses children under the ages of seven or eight whose cognitive capabilities allow a socially egocentric construction of the world. In this world, they believe that others share the minds and views they do and enjoy a moment-to-moment relationship to their desires, preferences, and abilities. At young ages, children are unable to delay gratification for any

Table 16.3. Kegan's Cognitive Orders of Consciousness.

Source: Adapted from Kegan (1994).

length of time. Today does not remember yesterday’s failures. Self-esteem is largely kept intact because one’s abilities are reconstituted continually from one moment to the next.

Developmental Abilities and Neural Activity

Recent research in neuroscience has made significant progress in mapping how a child’s mind develops and learning takes place (Jensen, 1998; Shore, 1997). There is no longer any question about the fundamental role of nurture in learn­ing. Children get smarter as they interact with their environment; stimulation from important others promotes essential brain activity. The interplay between neural activity and learning builds personality and temperament. Negative pat­terns can be interrupted during the brain’s high-activity stage in early child­hood, and patterns promoting the child’s emotional, social, and cognitive well-being can be “automatized” by learning and frequent practice. Neurosci­entific research shows that:

• The first forty-eight months of a child’s life are more important to brain development than previously thought. In fact, much of the brain’s infra­structure is in place by age four. By this age, children have already mapped out, through repetition, significant aspects of their cognitive and behavioral repertoire.

• Early experience at home and school critically influences the ability to learn and the capacity to regulate emotion.

• Across all ethnic groups, the human brain benefits significantly from good experience and teaching, particularly during the first four years.

• Children learn in the context of important relationships. Caregiving and stimulation help children develop capacity for empathy, perspective taking, emotional regulation, behavioral control, problem solving, and optimal cognitive functioning.

• There are key emotional milestones that children must pass at specific developmental points, particularly in early childhood.

Regarding this last point, those children who do not pass the milestones appropriately are at risk of retaining such negative traits as impulsivity, imma­ture emotional functioning, behavioral problems, and even propensity to vio­lence. Instruction in early childhood must be flexible to take into account a wide range of individual differences in temperament, personality, environment, inter­ests, and variation across developmental levels.

Individual Differences That Affect Social-Emotional Competence

Every child is born with a certain temperament, or characteristic way of respond­ing emotionally to the world. It is important to accept temperament for what it is and to focus the skills development involved in conflict resolution toward helping each child make the most effective use of his innate characteristics.

Temperament. Conflict resolution is often helpful for so-called difficult children; however, a child with a serious behavior or emotional problem may often require an intensive, therapeutic approach to manage the difficulty. In any case, labeling a child (for example, as a troublemaker or a pushover) is to be strictly avoided because the label may stick and be difficult to change even if the child learns to cope with the temperamental traits that cause trouble. Another factor to consider is the considerable difference in significance of a temperamental trait depending on the age level. A child’s so-called negative traits at one developmental stage (for example, hyperactivity) may turn into positive characteristics at a later stage (such as a high energy level in adulthood). The critical point is to accept the child’s tem­perament as it is, without labeling it or being judgmental, while working to help the child to grow and develop in a positive direction.

Temperamental differences are seen in traits such as activity level; fearful­ness; persistence; shyness; positive or negative mood; regularity of eating and sleeping; sensitivity to bright light, loud noises, or touch; adaptability to new situations; distractibility; irritability and anger level; and impulsivity.

Emotion. Emotion influences most of our behavior. A threatening situation (a hostile look from a classmate) may trigger intense emotion, which creates action that occurs without thinking. This is why students need to be taught emotional- management strategies (stop and think before responding, for example) repetitively, so they can become automatic responses. Achieving social- emotional competence requires children to develop awareness of both their own emotional states and those of others. The key to developing this awareness is acquiring the communication skills involved in clearly expressing one’s own emotions as well as in effective listening and attending to the other’s verbal and nonverbal emotional expression. Such skills are fostered by constructive con­flict experiences.

Although emotion in Western cultures has often been considered irrational in relation to cognition, neuroscientists now believe that emotions provide infor­mation in much the same way logic does. Emotions also direct attention and create meaning using their own memory pathways. In addition to music, games, drama, or storytelling, there are other ways to engage emotion in learning, such as ritual clapping, cheers, chants, or songs to mark the beginning or comple­tion of a project. It is important for adults to model a love of learning, letting children share the ideas and activities that excite them. It is also important for students to show and discuss their work with one another and tell what they like and dislike about it. Whenever emotions are involved following a learning experience, there is greater recall and accuracy about the information learned (McGaugh and others, 1995).

Empathy and Perspective Taking. As rage fuels aggression, so empathy inspires understanding, sharing, helping, and cooperation. Empathy first begins in infancy, when even a two-week-old child may cry upon hearing another child cry. Many believe empathy at this stage is an innate reflex. The second stage in developing empathy is comforting behavior, which occurs during the second year of life. At this age, children begin to understand that it is the other person who is distressed; this understanding may lead them to engage in efforts to com­fort. Because a two-year-old is not skilled at recognizing the other person’s point of view, the child’s attempt usually reflects what he himself finds comforting, such as giving Mommy a toy or his blankie if he sees that his mother is dis­tressed. The third stage occurs roughly at three to five years of age: at this age, a child shows more empathy to the distress of a friend than to another (Farver and Branstetter, 1994). Also at this age, increasing language skills enable chil­dren not only to empathize with people in stories, pictures, or film, but also to take into account differences between their level of knowledge and that of younger children. This indicates less egocentrism than presumed by Piaget. In fact, current knowledge of children’s competencies in early childhood leads us to suspect that they are far more capable of perspective taking than they have been given credit. Developmental capabilities appear to have a much wider age variation than previously thought.

Two important ways to promote social-emotional learning of empathy and perspective taking as well as other prosocial behaviors include explicit model­ing by adults and induction. Modeling refers to adults behaving in ways they desire the child to imitate. Induction refers to parents and teachers giving expla­nations that appeal to the child’s pride, desire to be grown up, and concern for others.

Motivation and Personality

Dweck (1996) has demonstrated that major patterns of adaptive or maladap­tive behavior (such as a mastery orientation or a helplessness orientation to tasks) are affected by children’s implicit theories or self-conceptions about their ability. For example, some children believe their intelligence is a fixed entity; others believe it can be increased by effort. Those holding an entity theory are orientated toward proving the adequacy of their performance in order to win approval of their intelligence. The latter group, adhering to an incremental theory, is more interested in pursuing learning goals whereby they can increase their ability. These latter children, who focus on controllable factors such as effort, are likely to persist when experiencing setback or failure. (For further discussion, see Chapter Thirteen.) Implicit motivational theories do not exist only in the intellectual realm; as we have already mentioned, they are paral­leled in social interaction as well. School adjustment depends on both social and academic goals and abilities: having prosocial goals and successful peer relationships are critical factors in promoting interest and achievement in school.

In addition to implicit theories about ability, several other factors influence the choice of a goal: its importance, the interpretation of an event (attribution), knowl­edge of strategies for reaching the goal, and environmental variables. For example, aggressive children are bound by the importance of control and dominance. They have more confidence than other children that they can master events involving aggression. In social situations, they interpret the actions of their peers, even when accidental or ambiguous, as being hostile; thus, the behavior of others becomes provocative and inspires a need for retaliation. Frequently, these children lack strate­gies for interacting successfully with peers. They do not know that it is important to show interest in what a peer is doing or that they need to cooperate with other people in playtime activities. Similarly, children who fear or experience rejection by others are caught up in the importance of avoiding rejection. These children are handicapped by lack of group entry skills, such as knowing how to express interest in others’ activities and to suggest cooperative ways of joining the ongoing group process. Environmental variables refer primarily to the atmosphere established in the home or classroom and whether it promotes adaptive or maladaptive behavior.

Parents, teachers, and other adults play a major role in determining what kind of theories children develop about their personality characteristics. They do this mainly in two ways. One is the implicit theories and explicit explana­tions that adults offer for their own behavior and personality; children imitate adults and internalize these explanations for their own personality and behavior. The second way is to explain the child’s behavior and personality characteris­tics. Thus, a parent who explains the child’s behavior by presumably fixed char­acteristics such as genes, ability, or temperament rather than malleable characteristics such as knowledge, effort, or mood often stimulates the child to use similar explanations. As we have already stated, the type of theory that children develop about their personality and behavior greatly affects their academic learning and emotional development.

Adults also need to consider the environmental or context variables that may be changed to help children, especially those who are socially isolated or aggres­sive. An effective way of doing this involves decreasing competition among chil­dren and promoting cooperative learning activities (Johnson and Johnson, 1991). In the classroom, having children work cooperatively in small groups promotes common achievement goals and enhances the motivation to learn through group acceptance and support. Children require coaching in the various strategies that can be used to achieve their goals. Teaching these strategies is a step-by-step process that involves instruction and many practice sessions.

Self-Control. Self-control is a critical skill that enables a child to inhibit his ini­tial impulses; an example mentioned earlier is to stop and think before acting. (See also Chapter Thirteen.) Basically, there are four forms of inhibition to be mastered (Maccoby, 1980):

Movement. Prior to age six or seven, children have difficulty in stopping an action already in progress.

Emotions. Before age four, young children have little control over the inten­sity of their emotions.

Reflection. Before age six or so, children commonly fail to engage in the reflection necessary to perform well.

Gratification. Children under twelve often have difficulty in refusing imme­diate gratification to wait for a better choice later.

Summary. Differentiating cause and effect, empathy, and perspective taking, along with self-regulation and problem solving, are among the key elements of positive conflict management. Modern theorists and researchers find the young child to be far more capable of learning these skills than did their classic pre­decessors. However, children do not learn skills merely by observation; they require instruction in cause-and-effect sequences before they can separate right from wrong or unintentional from intended harm. Equally important, children must learn empathy and perspective taking before they can become aware of the effects their actions have on others. These lessons need to be conveyed through gentleness and kindness; turning an amoral child into a moral one need not include inducing lifelong guilt. The most effective, long-lasting, and perva­sive acquisition of these skills occurs in early childhood, a time when the brain is most receptive to learning (that is, from birth until the child is four or so).

The ECSEL Program

In the Early Childhood Social-Emotional Learning (ECSEL) curriculum, the emphasis is on achieving emotional, social, and intellectual growth through an integrated approach involving parents, preschool staff, and children in a shared learning venture.

The ECSEL staff does extensive role modeling and assists parents and teach­ers in doing the same at home and in the classroom. We encourage parents and teachers to set rules and discuss them with children before actual implementa­tion. We also help them plan cooperative discipline techniques that, in the long run, are far more effective than angry yelling or rote punishment. Cooperative discipline is based on mutual affection and trust between teachers, parents, and children. The accent is on helping the child understand both her own and the other person’s feelings and perspective, as well as the consequences of her action, rather than simply getting the child to obey.

The goal is to help parents and teachers promote the child’s internalization of standards of right and wrong. Internalization depends on consistency about clearly stated rules, consistent and appropriate praise for following rules, and consistent, appropriate discipline when rules are broken. Most important, inter­nalization depends on loving parents who are loved in turn by the child; discipline has a much greater positive effect from a loving parent than from a distant or unloving one. If a child is motivated through love to adopt his par­ents’ standards, he is likely to remember the rules prior to potential misbehav­ior and, anticipating his parents’ disappointment if he breaks the rules, resist engaging in that behavior. But if punishment is used as the primary deterrent to misbehavior, the child learns that the objective is not to get caught.

When stressful methods of discipline (arguing, yelling, and overly harsh pun­ishment) are used with preschoolers, the brain becomes rewired so as to make children prone to impulsiveness, overarousal, and aggressiveness. Children exposed to such harsh methods are often especially in need of remedial help to acquire the emotional literacy skills necessary to understand the nonverbal behavior of others correctly (Jensen, 2003).

Although children appear to have innate capacity for certain social- emotional responses, such as empathy and perspective taking, these are fre­quently hit-or-miss skills unless the child is effectively tutored by an adult. Since interpersonal understanding is influenced more by experience than by age, a three-year-old can be at a higher developmental level than a six-year- old. Accordingly, the ECSEL program uses a spiraling effect to review or teach older preschoolers what the younger preschoolers are taught in their basic program. We never finish a topic, but revisit it at other levels of complexity according to the child’s ability to understand. Scaffolding (a process whereby an adult creates a supportive guideline for thinking about problems through a series of questions) is a process we model and encourage parents and teaching staff to use at every possible opportunity in real-life problem solv­ing and conflict resolution.

In ECSEL, we introduce preschoolers to vocabulary related to feelings, coop­eration, and problem solving. This vocabulary is amplified and extended to var­ious situations and emotional contexts. It begins with four basic emotions: sad, angry, scared, and happy. Children learn to sense and label these emotions in themselves through pantomime, stories, puppet shows, discussions about situ­ations in which these emotions occur, and role-plays involving both adults and children. Simultaneously, children learn to understand both verbal and non­verbal cues as to how other people feel in various situations.

The four basic emotions are later amplified to include complex feelings such as disappointment, embarrassment, joy, and excitement. Parents are encouraged to read extensively to their children; the program provides stories, games, and word exercises as take-home activities for parents to enjoy with their children. We also talk with parents about turning storybook time into an expanded emo­tional and cognitive learning experience for their children, for example, by questioning the child about the feelings of the character in the book, what the character may be thinking, other actions the character might have taken, and how to evaluate actions and their consequences.

One particularly popular scaffolding activity involves using three sets of pic­ture cards (large ones in the classroom and a smaller version for take-home use) illustrating a situation. The sets involve and are labeled as feelings, conse­quences, and problem solving. As with other activities and learning tasks, the picture cards are designed for relevance to the children’s interests and experi­ences, because this facilitates the brain’s making a connection with existing neural sites, thus maintaining the information efficiently in memory.

Children learn about cooperative skills through motor tasks such as creating group drawings, building structures together with materials such as Lego® blocks and building blocks, and problem-solving activities involving balance (two children carrying a small object on a board or using sticks to lift a small box into a larger one). As frequently as possible, we engage the teaching staff in leading small groups of children in such activities as communication go-rounds, pantomime, puppetry, and structure role-plays and skits to build children’s group skills and support prosocial, cooperative behaviors such as listening, sharing, and taking turns. Teacher-facilitated group work also provides model­ing and skill development that can help aggressive or shy children learn and practice strategies for group entry and constructive play.

Problem solving is presented in our SOAR model: Stop and think, Open up and tell how you feel, Ask what we can do, and Resolve the situation. Puppet scenarios are enacted to show ways of achieving a goal, demonstrating posi­tive and negative behavior. As examples, aggressive behavior such as that of two children fighting may lead to both of them failing to achieve their goals. Shy or fearful behavior could end in the child’s failing to even attempt to achieve a goal. The best approach is to assertively ask for or work toward one’s goals. If this fails, then it is time to think of another way to attain what is wanted or needed. Including negative consequences is essential because children do not intuitively know which actions are likely to lead to a negative outcome. However, in modeling or demonstrating negative behaviors, it is important to assume a quiet, understated manner, since children are often attracted to loud, rude behavior and will imitate it. Positive behavior is best shown in a lively, celebratory way, since children are drawn to noisy, action-filled events.

To get and maintain the attention of the preschooler, we create strong, frequent contrasts in activity. Sustaining continuous high-level attention for more than ten minutes is difficult even for adults. Knowledge of children’s capacity for concen­tration must guide an expectation for sustaining attention in early childhood: a rough guideline is to involve preschoolers in four to six minutes of direct instruc­tion at any one time (Jensen, 1998). Following this, they need time to create meaning, which is accomplished through internal rather than external attention. Internal attention is largely carried out unconsciously while the child is playing or engaged in an apparently mindless activity. External attention is the direct listen­ing that occurs during instruction. Last but not least, time is required for the learn­ing to “take.” Activities and practice sessions are repeated with the children in a variety of situations and over many weeks for enduring internalization of these lessons. Obviously, parental support and assistance in conducting at-home practice sessions is an integral component of this process. Because stress is deleterious to learning, we consciously work with our teachers and parents to reduce stress for children. The outcome of stress is activation of defense mechanisms, which may be useful for surviving a physical danger but interfere with learning. Stressors range from a rude classmate to a tense parent overreacting to the child’s behavior or a teacher who, perhaps unwittingly, embarrasses a student in front of peers.

The aim of ECSEL is to help each child not only succeed in school (and even­tually the workplace) but also to have a fulfilling personal life characterized by respectful communication, creative problem solving, and regard for the feelings of others—and unburdened by thoughtless put-downs or other avoidable, lim­iting experiences. The teachers and families across the country who have par­ticipated in this evidence-based program over the past eight years unequivocally affirm its usefulness in directing preschoolers toward these ultimate goals.

Involving parents along with children and preschool staff produces the greatest increase in children’s social-emotional learning. For example, in comparison to classrooms where only teaching staff were engaged in skills development, we found that parent involvement resulted in significant gains in children’s assertive­ness, cooperation, and self-control. Children in the parent-involvement groups also showed a significant decline in externalizing (aggressive) and internalizing (withdrawn, moody) behaviors. In classrooms with parent participation, preschool staff and parents were in agreement concerning the positive effects for the children. Preschool staff was also likely to integrate the ECSEL curriculum throughout the day’s activities. Parents increased in authoritative (as opposed to authoritarian) parenting practices; they remained in control while respecting their children and recognizing that the youngsters, too, were entitled to a number of rights. Parents explained rules and decisions to children, while also considering the child’s point of view—whether or not that view was accepted in the end result. Authoritarian practices (obedience to strict rules) and permissive practices (low control over children) also diminished among parents in the ECSEL program.