Applying Theoretical Perspective to Curriculum

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Applying Theoretical Perspective to Curriculum Content Angela Hamby Ashford University ECE/315 Instructor: Marchese April 16, 2012 Applying Theoretical Perspective to Curriculum Content In the world of language skills that children have to develop, there are four different perspectives that the children go through during their life to get those much needed language skills down. These four perspectives are so very important to each and every child. The first one is called the Behaviorist perspective. This perspective gears towards teaching the “nurture” role and takes into consideration that learning is to be based and happen over the stimuli, response, and reinforcements that will take place in their environment. The child is thought of to be a “blank slate”. (Karmiloff & Karmiloff-Smith, 2001). And also that learning occurs due to kinships that are made between stimuli, responses, and events that will happen after the response behavior. Language is then learned as a result of these unions and associations. This perspective is focused on the aspect of the semantic, syntactic, and the morphemic language knowledge. The major theorist that is involved in this perspective is Skinner. Skinner talked about operant conditioning, which is defined as “reinforcement that often takes the form of attention, repetition, and approval.” (Puckett & Black, 2001). For example, when a child will make noises and sounds while in the same room as a parent and says “ma-ma”, the parent will then go to the child and start repeating the sounds and making the child feel positive about the interaction about what just happened. This developmental perspective will usually happen when the child is young and small infant. The next language perspective is called the nativist perspective. This emphasizes the inborn or innate human capabilities, which can be also said to be “nature”
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