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... dad off to war, grandparents, aunts and uncle. Family structure is still intact except for mom outside of the house and dad off to war. Grandparents begin to play a larger role in the house as far as house maintaining. Mom is living with grandparents. 1940 - 1950 's - Mom and dad are working; only 2 children, and grandparents are around but more distance in family. Because of transportation the 5 mile radius is extended and smaller nuclear families.
Move away from grandparents and home. 1955 - Only mom back at home and dad is back working with 2. 5 children. Nuclear family becomes smaller and the grandparents are no longer in the household. Passing down of heritage and values disintegrating. 1960 's - The Women's Movement has started. Women begin working outside of the home. Vietnam war and the draft take all of the dads away. The flower children emerge with drugs, sex and Rock and Roll. 1970 's - Birth control to offset the promiscuity from the previous decade, abortions, and multiple births with no dads.
Single mothers and welfare programs started. Men come back from war with substance abuse problems and a slue of mental health issues. 1980 's - This decade marked by the first US case of AIDS. There is single parents and divorce. The stepfamily becomes norm. Both mom and dad are working and this leads to "Latch Key" kids.
These kids let themselves into the house parents do not get home until late in the afternoon. Incarceration rates increase. After school programs were instituted to reduce the latch key kid trouble. 1990 's - Increase in foster care due to drug uses and unfit mothers. Grandparents return back to the picture as primary care givers. 2000 's - Same sex marriages parenting children. 2004 's - Mom and Dad are back at work with 2 kids babysitter and daycare. There are still some single moms and dads.
Drug addiction is still here and the jails are over populated. Implications: How Family Unit Changes Impact NCLB This was the trend of the family from 1920 - 2004. This collapse of the family unit caused a decline in the academics here in the USA. So the USA came up with Compensatory Programs to offset this decline. "Head Start" programs were started because in the 1960 s, a deficit or cultural deprivation model became the most accepted hypothesis to explain the educational disadvantage and underachievement in the working and ethnic minority children (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 576).
These types of programs failed to alleviate the problems in the academic achievement of the poor and disadvantaged groups. It then seems that the "best schemes of compensatory education appear to be those that involve the families since those that focused on the child alone tend to have only short term effects." (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 576) Conclusion: The NCLB Act goal, which "sets a standard of excellence for every child" is extremely flawed. It is not flawed in how it addresses what is taught in the classroom. It is flawed in that it assumes that every child if given the same educational opportunity should be able to meet this so called "standard of excellence." Research has shown that the "material disadvantage and discrimination in the educational system remain convincing explanations of much educational underachievement." A study in the National Child Development Study defined social disadvantage in the terms of adverse family composition, poor housing, and low income. (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 577). These children had more difficulties than normal children. Besides their poor housing and income, the fathers were more likely to be unemployed, and both parents were more likely to be chronically ill. (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 576) The dilemma of teachers is that if the curriculum is changed to accommodate issues arising in the home and in the community, there is no guarantee that what is taught will be valued by wider society, like employers and examining boards. (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 577) As educators we must help the disadvantage or else by failing to take action we perpetuate the injustices in our society.
Introduction III - NCLB & Vygotsky's (Bruner) Scaffolding The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) uses Vygotsky (Bruner) "scaffolding" as one of its basis for a scientific approach to education. Again this Acts usage of this principle is flawed because it fails to take into account that the foundation for this building of knowledge doesn't begin in the 3 rd or 4 th grades it begins at a younger age when language is first beginning to develop. Summary: Chapter 15 - Vygotsky and Bruner Scaffolding American psychologist Jerome Bruner was intrigued by Vygotsky's "suggestion that society provides the tools that enable the child to become more advanced as a thinker" (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 502). He was also interested in Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD) and the role that other people play in helping the child to learn and reflect on things (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 502). Bruner and his colleagues proposed the concept of scaffolding to refer to the wide range of activities through which the adult, or the more expert peer, assist the learner to achieve goals which would otherwise be beyond them. (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 502). To be more effective, scaffolding has to be constructed so that the child is not asked to climb too much at once (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 502).
What this means the child is not ask to asked to step out of the ZPD, but rather helped to reach the next level with expert peer help. In practice scaffolding in learning comprises of 5 steps: 1. Recruitment: The teacher or tutor engages the interest of the child. Gets the attention in order to encourage the completion of a task. 2. Reduction of degrees of freedom: The teacher or tutor simplifies the task by reducing the number of acts needed to get to the solution 3. Direction maintenance: Keep the child's enthusiasm up.
Maintain task with directions for building. Keep focused. 4. Marking critical features: Highlighting important features accounting for any discrepancies 5. Demonstration: Modeling solutions to the task involve completion of a task or explanation of a solution already partly done by the younger learner. The aim is that the learner will imitate this back in a better form. Scaffolding doesn't use a rigid structure or a teacher method but rather a flexible and child centered strategy, which supports the child in learning new things and which enables the child to have a sounding board for action (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 503).
Implications: As teachers we "must address the issue of enabling students to grasp structure of a discipline rather than simply mastering facts. The structure of a body of knowledge is as important as its mode of representation. Mastery of structure gives the learner purpose and direction: it is a process that enables the children to go beyond the information given in order to generate ideas of his or her own. " (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 509) This can be utilized in earlier childhood in order to help the younger kids attain these skills and begin using them earlier on in the academic process. Conclusion: Children may also need help in having their attention directed towards significant features of a task or a situation, when left alone, they might not make the right connections.
The interventions by the knowledgeable give the child a structure within which to formulate meaning (Smith, Cowie, Blades, p 510). Based on this I believe that it is important that our children's development should begin at day care and pre-school age. So that developmentally they are not left alone and not making the correct developmental connections. Many times we leave our children alone and it sets them up for failure. As teachers and parents we should not fail to build on prior knowledge, as some of our day care centers do, but we should build on the foundations of knowledge at an early time. Not in the 3 rd and 4 th grade when its too late.
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Research essay sample on Mom And Dad Family Unit
