ABSTRACT
Children draw upon knowledge and experience from their wider life to make sense of learning in the classroom. This chapter examines the nature of child development and explores three areas of development foundational to learning: physical, social and emotional, and communication and language. It introduces some of the key child development theorists and explores how their research has impacted on classroom practice. The chapter emphasises that our knowledge of child development is open to challenge, that developmental norms are socially constructed, and that they have often been based on Western industrialised childhoods. T. Campbell’s research convincingly shows that in-class ‘ability grouping’ may be instrumental in contributing to the effect of age-in-cohort on children’s academic achievement. A growing body of research has examined the effects of disrupted childhoods on children’s development. Jean Piaget believed that successful negotiation through these stages was achieved through the child’s active interaction with their environment, both socially and physically.
