Transcript CHAPTER 10 LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Learning Objective • What is the typical developmental course of language development?

CHAPTER 10
LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION
Learning Objective
• What is the typical developmental course of
language development?
Mastering Language
• Language
– Defined as a communication system in
which a limited number of signals –
sounds, letters, gestures – can be
combined according to agreed-upon rules
to produce an infinite number of messages
Mastering Language –
What Must Be Mastered?
•
Words (symbols) and rules must be mastered:
phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics, pragmatics,
and prosody
– Phonemes – basic units of sound that can change the
meaning of a word
• Example: substitute the phoneme /c/ for /m/ in the
word “man” changes the meaning of the word
– Morphemes – the basic units of meaning that exist in a
word
• “View” is one morpheme
– Add the morpheme “re” to get a two-morpheme
word with a different meaning – “review”
– Add “pre” to get another two-morpheme word
with another different meaning – “preview”
Mastering Language –
What Must Be Mastered?
• Phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics,
pragmatics, and prosody (continued)
– Syntax – the systematic rules for forming
sentences
• Fang Fred bit. or Fang bit Fred. or Fred
bit Fang. Which violates the syntax of
English?
Mastering Language –
What Must Be Mastered?
• Phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics,
pragmatics, and prosody (continued)
– Semantics – understanding the different
meanings of language
• “Sherry was green with jealousy” does
not mean that Sherry was green, literally
Mastering Language –
What Must Be Mastered?
• Phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics,
pragmatics, and prosody (continued)
– Pragmatics of language – rules for using
language in different contexts
• We might say “Chill!” to a peer, but not to
a respected family member
Mastering Language –
What Must Be Mastered?
•
Phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics,
pragmatics, and prosody (continued)
– Prosody – how the sounds are produced
• The “melody” of speech, including pitch,
intonation, accentuation of syllables in a
word or words in a sentence, and the
duration or timing of speech
– We might say, “Oh, yeah” in response to
a friend who asks if we are ready to go,
but “Oh, yeah?” to express doubtfulness
or disbelief
When Does Language Develop?
Before the First Words
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Newborns are attuned to human speech, show a
preference for speech over nonspeech sounds
and for their native language
– Can distinguish between phonemes such as b
and p or d and t
By 7½ months, infants demonstrate word
segmentation ability when they detect a target
word in a stream of speech
• They understand that “The cat scratched
the dog’s nose” is a string of six words, not
one word
When Does Language Develop?
Before the First Words
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Infants produce sounds that exercise the vocal
cords and provide opportunities to learn how
airflow and different mouth and tongue positions
affect sounds
By 5 months, infants know that their sounds
affect caregivers’ behaviors
– Parents respond to as many as 50% of
prelinguistic sounds as if they were genuine
efforts to communicate
Prelinguistic sounds and the feedback infants
receive pave the way for meaningful speech
When Does Language Develop?
Before the First Words
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Milestones in vocalization
– Cooing – around 6 to 8 weeks of age
• Repeated vowel sounds such as “ooooh” and
“aaaah” when babies are content
– Babbling – around 4 to 6 months
• Repeated consonant-vowel combinations such as
“baba” or “dadada” for the pleasure of making an
interesting noise
• By 8 months of age, infants’ babbling begins to
include the intonation patterns (accent) of the
language that they hear and is restricted to the
phonemes of the language
– These utterances sound a great deal like
speech
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•
When Does Language Develop?
Before the First Words
Comprehension (reception) occurs before production or
expression of language
– 10-month-olds, on average, can comprehend about 50
words but do not produce any of them
Around 1 year, infants seem to understand familiar words
– Use cues to connect words with their referents (objects,
people, or ideas represented by a name)
• Important social cue is joint attention – social eye gaze –
two people looking at the same thing
• Infants see parents pointing, labeling, directing their gaze
and make the connection between words and their
referents
Children use syntactic bootstrapping to determine the meaning
of a word
– Where a word is placed in a sentence
•
When Does Language Develop? –
The First Words
An infant’s first meaningful word – spoken around 1
year – is a special event
– Holophrases – first words that convey an entire
sentence of meaning
• “Shoe” means “There is Mommy’s shoe” or
• “Shoe” means “I want to put my shoes on my
feet”
• 1-year-olds can use holophrases for naming,
questioning, requesting, and demanding
• At the same time, they begin to use nonverbal
symbols, gestures such as pointing or raising
their arms
When Does Language Develop? –
The First Words
•
1-year-olds talk about familiar objects and
actions
– Nelson (1973) found that 2/3 of early words
were common nouns representing the objects
and people that children interacted with daily
(mommy, kitty)
• The objects were nearly all things that
children could manipulate (bottle, ball) or
that were capable of moving on their own
(animals, trucks)
• Children also acquire words that facilitate
social interaction (hello, no, bye-bye)
When Does Language Develop? –
The First Words
•
Vocabulary acquisition proceeds one word at a
time
– At 18 months, when the child has about 30 to
50 words, the vocabulary spurt occurs and the
pace of word learning quickens dramatically
• Pinker (1995) estimates that a new word is
acquired every two hours during this time
• Children seem to realize that everything
has a name and by learning the names of
things, they can share what they are
thinking with others, and vice versa
When Does Language Develop? –
The First Words
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Rapid vocabulary acquisition may involve some
mistakes
– Overextension – the use of a word to refer to a
too-broad range of objects or events
• All furry, four-legged animals are “dogs”
– Underextension – the use of a word in toonarrow fashion
• “Kitty” is used only for the family pet and not
in reference to other cats
Semantic errors such as overextension may
occur because children want to communicate but
don’t have the vocabulary they need
• Caption: The range of individual differences
in vocabulary size from 16 to 30 months
When Does Language Develop? –
Telegraphic Speech
•
The next step in language development is
telegraphic speech about 18-24 months of age
– Two-word sentences to express basic ideas
– Like telegrams, the utterances contain critical
components and omit articles, prepositions,
and auxiliary verbs
– A form of functional grammar that emphasizes
the semantic relationships among words, the
meanings being expressed, and the functions
served by sentences (naming, questioning, or
commanding)
When Does Language Develop? –
Telegraphic Speech
• Overregularization represents continued
language development
– “Foots” or “goed” or “mouses”
– The child has inferred the morphological
rules of adding –s to pluralize nouns or –ed
to signal past tense
– In overregularization, the child overapplies
the rules to cases in which the proper form
is irregular
When Does Language Develop? –
Telegraphic Speech
• Children must learn to use rules for creating
variations of basic declarative sentences
– For example, converting a statement into a
question, a negative sentence, or an
imperative
– Linguist Noam Chomsky proposed that
language be described in terms of
transformational grammar – rules of syntax
for transforming basic thoughts into a
variety of sentence forms
When Does Language Develop? –
Later Language Development
• The average first-grader starts school with a
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vocabulary of about 10,000 words and adds
somewhere between 5 and 13 new words a
day throughout the elementary-school years
Middle childhood and adolescence bring
metalinguistic awareness – knowledge of
language as a system
Adolescents are better able to understand
and define abstract terms and are better able
to infer meanings that are not explicit
When Does Language Develop? –
Later Language Development
• Adults retain their knowledge of phonology
and syntax
• Adults often expand their knowledge of
semantics (word meanings) and refine their
pragmatic use of language (adjusting
language to social and professional contexts)
• Hearing impairments, cognitive deficits, or
memory problems/retrieval problems can
affect adults’ language skills
Learning Objectives
• What is the neurobiological basis of
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language?
What are the main features of the nativist and
learning theories of language acquisition?
Which explanation is best supported by
research?
How Does Language Develop? –
Neurobiology of Language
• Recent research regarding neural activity
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reveals that the left hemisphere shows
increased activity when listening to speech
and the right hemisphere is active when
processing the melody or rhythm of speech
fMRI studies show that areas in both the left
and right hemispheres are active in women’s
brains when processing language, whereas
activity in men’s brains is more typically
localized in the left hemisphere
How Does Language Develop? –
Neurobiology of Language
• Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area are
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connected with a band of fibers
Typically, incoming language is processed –
comprehended – in Wernicke’s area and then
sent to Broca’s area via these fibers to be
turned into speech
– Damage to this band of fibers can leave a
person with a type of aphasia, a language
disorder in which a person might hear and
understand linguistic input but be unable to
vocally repeat the information
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How Does Language Develop? –
Nurture – Environment and Learning
Children’s language development is influenced
by their environment
– Learn the words they hear spoken by others
– More likely to use new words if they are
reinforced for doing so
– Children who have encouraging, interactive
caregivers are more advanced in early
language development
However, imitation and reinforcement are not the
best explanations for children’s acquisition of
syntax (grammatical rules)
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How Does Language Develop? –
Nurture – Contributions of Biology
Chomsky (2000) proposed that humans have a
unique genetic capacity to learn language
– Equipped with universal grammar, system of
common rules and properties for learning any
language in the world
• 75% of the world’s languages have the
basic order of subject-verb-object or
subject-object-verb
– Exposure to language activates the language
acquisition device (LAD) which sifts through
language, applies the universal rules, and
tailors the system to the specifics of the
language spoken in the child’s environment
•
How Does Language Develop? –
Nurture – Contributions of Biology
Evidence for the nativist perspective on language
development
– The “learnability factor” – children acquire an
incredibly complex communication system
rapidly and without formal instruction
– All children progress through the same
sequence of language development at similar
ages and make the same kinds of errors
• Suggests that language development is
guided by a species-wide maturational plan
How Does Language Develop? –
Nurture – Contributions of Biology
– The universal aspects of language
development occur despite cultural
differences in adults’ styles of speech with
children
– Researchers believe there is a period for
optimal language development – a
sensitive period – when language
processing areas of the brain are shaped
by early experience with language
How Does Language Develop? –
Nurture – Contributions of Biology
– There is evidence that the capacity for
acquiring language has a genetic basis
• Some human linguistic competencies
are shared by chimpanzees and other
primates (e.g., the ability to combine
symbols to form short sentences)
• Identical twins score more similarly than
fraternal twins on measures of verbal
skills
• Certain speech, language, and reading
disorders appear to run in families
How Does Language Develop? –
Nature and Nurture Working Together
• Interactionists believe that both learning
theorists (nurture) and nativists (nature) are
correct
– Children’s biologically based competencies
and their language environment interact to
shape the course of language development
– Language acquisition is interrelated to other
developments (perceptual, cognitive, motor,
social, emotional) that are taking place
concurrently with language acquisition
How Does Language Develop? –
Nature and Nurture Working Together
– Interactionists emphasize the ways that social
interactions with adults contribute to children’s
language development
• Child-directed speech describes the speech
adults use with young children
– Short, simple sentences spoken slowly in
a high-pitched voice with repetition and
exaggerated emphasis on key words
• Adults may use expansion – a more
grammatically correct or complete response
to a child’s verbalization
– “Kitty goed” elicits “Yes, the cat ran away”
Learning Objectives
• What factors influence infants’ motivations to
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master their environments?
How do early education programs affect
infants’ development?
The Infant – Mastery Motivation
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Mastery motivation appears to be inborn and
universal
– Will display itself in the behavior of all normal
infants without prompting from parents (e.g.,
how to open a cabinet door)
– Appears higher when parents provide sensory
stimulation designed to arouse and amuse
their infants
– Flourishes when infants have a responsive
environment that provides them opportunities
to see that they can be effective, successful in
their efforts
The Infant – Early Education
• Parents are often encouraged to purchase
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special products to promote infant intellectual
development
– Most experts disagree that children can
benefit from special educational
experiences before age 3
Elkind (1987) believes that children need time
to socialize and play
– May lose self-initiative and intrinsic
motivation if pushed to achieve at early
ages
The Infant – Early Education
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Research suggests that overemphasis of
academics during the preschool years may
undermine achievement motivation
But preschool programs that stress both play and
academic skill-building activities can be beneficial
to young children, especially disadvantaged ones
– Disadvantaged children who attend programs
specially designed to prepare them for school
experience more cognitive growth and achieve
more success in school than disadvantaged
children who do not attend such programs
The Infant – Early Education
• Research suggests that children also benefit
when parents are educated about the
importance of early environment and
experiences
• Positive effects on later school achievement
are especially likely if the early education
experience stimulates children’s cognitive
growth, gets parents more involved with their
children’s education, and includes follow-up
during elementary school
The Child – Achievement Motivation
•
Explaining differences in children’s achievement
motivation
– High achievers have a healthy attributional
style – mastery orientation
• Attribute success to internal and stable
causes such as high ability
• Attribute failures to external factors beyond
their control or on internal causes that they
can overcome, such as insufficient effort
• Do not blame the internal, stable factor of
low ability
The Child – Achievement Motivation
•
Explaining differences in children’s achievement
motivation
– Low achievers have a helpless orientation
attributional style – tendency to avoid challenges
and to cease trying when they experience failures
based on the belief that they can do little to
improve
– Attribute success to the internal cause of hard
work or to external causes such as luck or
easiness of the task
• Do not experience pride or self-esteem
– Attribute failures to the internal, stable cause of
lack of ability
The Child – Achievement Motivation
•
Characteristics of the child that contribute to
achievement levels and motivation to succeed
– Age or developmental level
• Before age 7, children tend to think they can
succeed on any task
• With age, children’s perceptions of their academic
abilities become more accurate
• Children’s belief that ability is changeable and
that they can become smarter and improve their
ability if they work hard leads them to adopt
mastery goals – aiming to learn new things so
they can improve their abilities
– Mastery goals dominate through the lower
elementary grades
The Child – Achievement Motivation
•
Characteristics of the child that contribute to
achievement levels and motivation to succeed
– Age or developmental level (continued)
• As children age, they begin to see ability as a
fixed or stable trait and begin to adopt
performance goals
– Aim to prove their ability rather than
improve it
• Children who continue to focus on mastery or
learning goals tend to do better in school than
those who switch to performance goals
The Child – Achievement Motivation
• Characteristics of the child that contribute to
achievement levels and motivation to succeed
(continued)
– Level of intelligence
• Motivation and achievement goals are
higher when children value a subject –
when they believe it is important
The Child – Achievement Motivation
•
Contributions of parents to children’s achievement
and motivation
– Stress and reinforce children’s independence
and self-reliance
– Emphasize the importance of meeting high
standards of performance
– Get involved with children’s education and
emphasize practices that stimulate curiosity and
engagement in learning
– Provide a cognitively stimulating home
environment
The Child – Achievement Motivation
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Contributions of schools to children’s achievement
and motivation
– Educational practices
• Schools are structured to emphasize
children’s performance goals – by rewarding
grades – rather than mastery or learning
goals.
– School climate
• Academic achievement is greater when
schools encourage family involvement and
regular parent-teacher communication
Learning Objectives
• What are the components of learning to
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read?
Is there a most effective way to teaching
reading?
What distinguishes skilled and unskilled
readers?
The Child – Learning to Read
• Before children can read, they must
understand the alphabetic principle
– The idea that the letters in printed words
represent the sounds in spoken words in a
systematic way
The Child – Learning to Read
• Phases of learning the alphabetic principle
– In the prealphabetic phase, children
memorize selected visual cues to
remember words
– In the partial alphabetic phase, children
learn the shapes and sounds of letters
The Child – Learning to Read
– In the full alphabetic phase, children make
connections between written letters and their
corresponding sounds
• Apply phonological awareness – sensitivity
to the sound system of language that
enables them to segment spoken words
into sounds or phonemes
– In the consolidated alphabetic phase, letters
that regularly occur together are grouped as a
unit
• Example: “ing” is perceived as a unit rather
than as three separate letters
The Child – Learning to Read
•
Factors that influence emergent literacy
– The developmental precursors of reading skills in
young children
• Activities that strengthen children’s working
memory and attention control, such as
repetitious storybook reading
• Reading with the child by asking questions in
order to deepen understanding
• Engaging in rhyming stories and games to
foster phonological awareness
• Activities that expand children’s semantic
knowledge, such as providing definitions and
assigning meaning to printed symbols
•
Learning to Read –
Skilled and Unskilled Readers
Skilled readers
– Understand the alphabetic principle
– Have a higher level of phonological
awareness
– Read all the words
• Unskilled readers
– Skip words or parts of words
– Have difficulty with phonology
•
Learning to Read –
Skilled and Unskilled Readers
Dyslexia
– Reading disability experienced by children
who have normal intellectual ability and no
sensory impairments or emotional
difficulties that would explain difficulty
learning to read
– Dyslexia may involve problems with visual
perception or auditory perception
Learning to Read –
Skilled and Unskilled Readers
– Deficiencies in phonological awareness are
apparent before school age
– Brain imaging studies reveal distinctive
patterns of neural activity, which suggests
that a perceptual deficit may develop
during the prenatal period
Learning to Read –
Skilled and Unskilled Readers
– Difficulty analyzing the sounds in speech
causes trouble in detecting sound-letter
correspondences
–In turn, this impairs the ability to
recognize printed words automatically
and effortlessly
– So much time and effort in decoding words
leaves too little attention for interpreting
and remembering what was read
– Dyslexia is a lifelong disability
•
Learning to Read –
How Should Reading Be Taught?
Two broad approaches to reading instruction
– The phonics approach
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– The whole-language approach
The phonics (code-oriented) approach teaches
children to analyze words into the component
sounds (letter-sound correspondence rules)
The whole-language (look-say) approach
emphasizes reading for meaning by teaching
children to recognize words by sight or to
determine meaning by using contextual clues
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Learning to Read –
How Should Reading Be Taught?
Research supports the phonics approach to
teaching reading
– To read well, children must learn that spoken
words are made up of sounds and that the
letters of the alphabet correspond to these
sounds
• Phonological awareness leads to better
reading skills
However, reading programs that use both
phonics and whole-language approaches help
children learn letter-sound correspondences and
find meaning and enjoyment in what they read
Learning Objectives
• How does school affect children?
• What factors characterize effective schools?
The Child – Effective Schools
•
Some characteristics of schools have less
influence than other factors upon children’s
performance
– As long as funding is adequate and used
wisely, increased resources have not been
shown to improve school effectiveness
– Modest reductions in the student-teacher ratio
are not likely to increase student achievement
• But small-group or one-on-one tutoring in
the kindergarten through third grades,
especially for disadvantaged and low-ability
students, makes a difference in reading and
mathematics performances
The Child – Effective Schools
– Research shows only minimal effects on
achievement when schools have
implemented modest increases in the length
of the school day or year
– Ability grouping – when students are grouped
according to ability and taught with abilitylevel peers – has no clear advantages over
mixed-ability grouping for most students
• Ability grouping can be beneficial to higherability students if they can move more
quickly through a higher-level curriculum
• Lower-ability grouping may deny students
access to effective teachers and instruction
and create stigmatization
The Child – Effective Schools
• Some characteristics of schools have a great
deal of influence upon children’s performance
– Characteristics of the students
• Genetic differences in aptitude
• Socioeconomic status
– Characteristics of the teachers
• Are well prepared and qualified
• Strongly emphasize academics
• Create a task-oriented, comfortable atmosphere
• Manage discipline problems effectively
The Child – Effective Schools
– Goodness of fit – an appropriate match
between the person’s characteristics and her
environment
• Highly achievement-oriented students
adapt well to unstructured classrooms in
which they have a great deal of choice
• Less achievement-oriented students often
do better with more structure
• Students tend to have more positive
outcomes when they and their teacher
share similar backgrounds
Caption: Teacher effectiveness matters
Learning Objectives
• What changes in achievement motivation
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occur during adolescence?
What factors contribute to these changes?
How does science and math education in the
United States compare to science and math
education in other countries?
What are the pros and cons of integrating
work with school during adolescence?
•
The Adolescent –
Declining Levels of Achievement
At the transition from elementary school to
middle school, achievement motivation, selfesteem, and grades may all decline
– Gutman and colleagues (2003) identified the
following risk factors for a decline in academic
achievement
• Minority group status
• Low maternal education and mental health
• Stressful life events
• Family size
• Father absence
The Adolescent –
Declining Levels of Achievement
• Explanations for achievement may be found
in examinations of
– Characteristics of the individual
– Family and peer influences
– Context of school and society
•
The Adolescent –
Declining Levels of Achievement
Explanations for achievement – characteristics of
the individual
– Children become increasingly able to
realistically evaluate their strengths and
weaknesses and may lose self-esteem and
high expectations of success
– Students who have a performance orientation
– believe that success is a matter of luck –
have lower grades
– Those who maintain an emphasis on mastery
or learning goals attain higher grades in high
school
The Adolescent –
Declining Levels of Achievement
•
Explanations for achievement – characteristics of the family
– Potential risk factors
• Minority group membership, single-parent family, and
having a mother with less education or mental health
problems
– Higher academic achievement associated with
• Living in a small, caring family with at least one
stable parent who uses consistent discipline
• Mothers who talk to their middle-school children
about assuming responsibility and making decisions
• Students’ perceptions that parents are involved in
their schooling
The Adolescent –
Declining Levels of Achievement
• Explanations for achievement – context of
school and society
– Peer influence
• At times can undermine parents’ and
teachers’ efforts to encourage school
achievement
–Teens may be concerned with
popularity, may want to avoid looking
dumb, or may want to be average
The Adolescent –
Declining Levels of Achievement
– Peer pressures that undermine achievement
motivation tend to be especially strong for many
lower-income males as well as minority students
• African-American and Hispanic peer cultures in
many low-income areas actively discourage
academic achievement
• European-American and especially AsianAmerican peer groups tend to value and
encourage academic achievement
The Adolescent –
Declining Levels of Achievement
•
Explanations for achievement – context of school
and society
– Some decline in achievement motivation may
be attributed to a poor person-environment fit
• Transition (switching schools) to middle
school/junior high school may be especially
difficult when it occurs simultaneously with
the physical and psychological changes of
puberty
The Adolescent –
Declining Levels of Achievement
– The fit between developmental needs and the school
environment affects adolescent adjustment to school
• When adolescents are seeking more autonomy
and becoming more intellectually capable, they
may transition to a school environment that is
characterized by
– Larger size, more bureaucracy
– More impersonal student-teacher relationships
– More emphasis upon grades
– Fewer opportunities for choice
– Less intellectual stimulation
– More rigid discipline
The Adolescent –
Declining Levels of Achievement
• Explanations for achievement – context of
school and society
– The middle-school slump can be lessened by
• Supportive teachers
• School staff that understands and
responds appropriately to students’
developmental needs
• Mothers who display high interest in
academics and hold high expectations
The Adolescent –
Science and Mathematics Education
• On mathematics and science achievement
tests, U.S. students score above the
international average but significantly below
achievement levels in nations such as
Singapore, Japan, and Korea
• The achievement gap between American and
Asian students seems to be rooted in cultural
differences in attitudes concerning education
and educational practices
•
The Adolescent –
Science and Mathematics Education
Cross-cultural research on education and
achievement shows
– Asian students spend more time being
educated
• Asian students spend about 95% of their
class time listening to the teacher and
completing assignments
– Teachers have different approaches to
instruction
• In China, more time in math classrooms is
spent questioning and discussing correct
answers
The Adolescent –
Science and Mathematics Education
• Cross-cultural research on education and
achievement shows (continued)
– Asian students, especially Japanese
students, are assigned and complete
considerably more homework than
American students
– Asian parents are strongly committed to
the educational process: homework,
monitoring children’s progress, following
teachers’ suggestions
The Adolescent –
Science and Mathematics Education
• Cross-cultural research on education and
achievement shows (continued)
– Asian peers value school achievement and
have high standards
• Time with peers often involves doing
homework
– Asian parents, teachers, students all share
a strong belief that hard work or effort will
pay off in better academic performance
(learning goals)
•
The Adolescent –
Integrating Work and School
In the U.S. and Canada, between 1/3 and 1/2
of teens work part-time during their high
school careers
• Steinberg and colleagues compared working
and nonworking high school students
– Working students appeared to gain
knowledge about work, consumer issues,
and financial management, and sometimes
about greater self-reliance
•
The Adolescent –
Integrating Work and School
Steinberg and colleagues compared working and
nonworking high school students (continued)
– High school students who worked 20+ hours
each week had lower grade-point averages,
compared to nonworking students or those
who worked 10 or fewer hours per week
– Working students were more likely to be
disengaged from school – bored and
uninvolved in class, prone to cut class, and
spend little time on homework
•
The Adolescent –
Integrating Work and School
Steinberg and colleagues compared working and
nonworking high school students (continued)
– The more adolescents worked,
• The more independent they were of
parental control
• The more likely they were to be
experiencing psychological distress
(anxiety, depression, and symptoms such
as headaches)
• The more frequently they used alcohol and
drugs and engaged in delinquent acts
•
•
The Adolescent –
Integrating Work and School
Other researchers found that
– Academically struggling students are the
ones likely to work more hours
– Working reduced the number of math and
science courses that students enrolled in
Mortimer and colleagues (1996) found a more
positive perspective
– Working 20 hours or more a week did not
hurt academic achievement, self-esteem,
or psychological adjustment
•
The Adolescent –
Integrating Work and School
The damaging effects of working while attending high
school may be related to the nature of the work
adolescents do
– Fast-food service or manual labor are routine,
repetitive jobs that offer few opportunities for selfdirection or decision-making and rarely call for
academic skills such as mathematics or reading
• These jobs do not build character or teach new
skills
• Adolescents may lose mastery motivation and
become more depressed when they hold
menial jobs that interfere with their schooling
•
•
The Adolescent –
Pathways to Adulthood
The educational paths and attainments of
adolescents are influenced by factors that
originate in childhood
– IQ scores and aptitude for schoolwork
– Level of achievement motivation
In adolescence, influential factors include
– The quality of the school
– The extent to which parents are authoritative
and encourage school achievement
– The extent to which peers value school
•
•
The Adolescent –
Pathways to Adulthood
Students who achieve good grades are more likely to
complete high school
– 92% of European Americans
– 86% of African Americans
– 85% of Asian Americans
– 70% of Hispanic students
Students who complete 4 or more years of college
– 30% of European Americans
– 17% of African Americans
– 49% of Asian Americans
– 11% of Hispanic students
Learning objectives
• How does achievement motivation change
•
during adulthood?
How do literacy, illiteracy, and continued
education affect adults’ lives?
The Adult – Achievement Motivation
• Adults with strong achievement needs are
•
•
more likely to be competent workers than
adults who have little concern with mastering
challenges
Adults’ achievement-related motives are
more affected by changes in work and family
contexts than by the aging process
Elders who have a sense of purpose,
direction, and achievement enjoy greater
physical and psychological well-being than
those who do not
The Adult – Literacy
• Literacy is the ability to use printed
•
information to function in society, achieve
goals, and develop one’s potential
Literacy among U.S. adults is unevenly
distributed
– 14% demonstrate the lowest level, roughly
third-grade or lower reading ability
– 29% have basic literacy skills sufficient to
use a television guide or compare prices
– 13% demonstrate proficient literacy
The Adult – Continuing Education
• Nearly 40% of college students are 25 years
or older
– Often motivated to attend college by
internal factors such as personal
enrichment or work-related reasons
– Internal motivation often leads to deeper
levels of processing information, greater
effort to understand material because they
want to learn and want/need to use the
material
The Adult – Continuing Education
• Continued education allows adults to remain
knowledgeable and competitive in fields that
change rapidly
• Higher education is associated with
maintaining or improving physical and mental
health