WHY TEACHERS NEED TO UNDERSTAND HUMAN GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

Many psychologists and educationists have appreciated the value of the knowledge of growth and development or simply put, developmental psychology to education, some of the most important contributions are as below:

• It helps in understanding how children change as they grow up and the forces that contribute to this change or make children become maladjusted

• It has helped in training early childhood educators who are qualified in early childhood education with specialisation in daycare of children

• It helps in training of preschool teachers who are to take care of pre-kindergarten children, many of whom are 4 years old. Such teachers are expected to develop appropriate curricula for the age of the children that helps in promoting their physical, cognitive and social development in a positive atmosphere

• Helps in understanding the roots of social difficulties encountered by many of today’s adolescents, for instance problems that cause them to drop out of school.

• It helps teachers, prospective teachers and parents to be in a position to understand the individual differences in learning among learners so that they can be able to adapt their teaching according to the learner’s mental requirements by using different teaching methods

• Teachers and parents get to know the needs and motives of children at different levels so that they (teachers etc.) can motivate the children accordingly

• It enables teachers, psychologists, and parents to understand the mental and emotional reactions of individual child

• It helps psychologists, teachers, development psychologists, etc. to understand the nature of classroom learning and the learning processes of children in general.

Furthermore, the main implications of the growth and development of principles for teaching and learning processes are as follows:

· The fact that the students in the class are at varying levels of growth and development, have acquired different types of experiences implies that though the same curriculum is being used, the classroom setting must be appropriate and rich enough to accommodate these differences. The use of instructional aids of various types often helps greatly in this situation.

· Also, the children are at various levels of developments meaning they cannot all perform the same developmental tasks. The teaching strategy of the teacher must reflect this in the classroom otherwise not all the pupils will be carried along. This should be noted too during skill performance.