September 05, 2025
ACTION ITEMS ✨
Write a weekly blog column on Brewing Knowledge, incorporating teachers' reflections from the WhatsApp chat.
Neelashi
MEETING SUMMARY ✨
To continue the "Brewing Knowledge Fridays" book discussion series, we will focus on Chapter 4 of Kamala Mukunda's book on child development.
Key Takeaways
The brain undergoes significant growth and development from birth through adolescence, with synaptic connections forming and pruning based on experiences.
Child development occurs through a combination of stage-like qualitative changes and continuous quantitative improvements in cognitive ability.
Children are not "blank slates" at birth, but come with some innate capabilities that interact with environmental experiences.
Engaging students through active listening and allowing them to share their thoughts is crucial for addressing attention-seeking behaviours.
Highlights
Brain Development in Children.
- Brain weight increases rapidly in the first year from 400g to 850g, reaching 1450g by adulthood.
- The cerebral cortex is less mature at birth, with frontal/prefrontal cortices maturing in late adolescence.
- Brain plasticity involves the formation of synaptic connections and the myelination of neurons.
- Experience-expectant plasticity: overproduction and pruning of synapses based on experiences
- Experience-dependent plasticity: formation of new synapses in response to specific experiences
- Piaget described distinct developmental stages with qualitative differences in reasoning abilities.
- Alternative view: continuous quantitative changes in processing speed, knowledge, and strategies
- Debate on whether development occurs in discrete stages or as gradual, incremental improvements
- Educational implications around concept teachability, learning readiness, and environmental stimulation
- Children are not "blank slates" - born with some innate neural circuits and abilities.s
- Significant interaction between genetics and environment from birth
- Analogy of a child's brain having an innate "operating system" to which programs are added
- Mythological tales and research support the idea of some inherited knowledge/tendency
- Give students opportunities to be heard and express themselves
- Allocate time to listen to students' thoughts and observations
- Use creative activities like drawing to channel students' need for attention
- Recognise potential lack of attention at home, driving classroom behaviours
