Early+Chilhood+Education-+Social+Development

By: Allison Walls

Major debates and studies have taken place in regards to social development, especially in the Early Childhood years. In the Article //Domain Specificity in Social Interactions, Social Thought, and Social Development// by Elliot Turlel, he focus on the first step of Development which is the involvement of parents and families. Parents play a very important role in the foundation of a child's social development. A child is influenced greatly by the words, traditions, and lessons taught by their parents. Parents are the ones who are in charge of the protection, nutrition, and guidance of their children (Turlel 720). In the school system people strongly believe that a child needs to be in the school environment to develop proper social skills. But according to personal experience of being home schooled and this article it is expressed that social development begins at home and the concrete foundation is made at home. As a child grows and mature there are many thoughts and emotions that are changing and for the parents the information that they give their children and the way they carry themselves gravely impacts the type of person, socially, the child will be (Turlel 721). Also in this article Turlel refers to a developmental study done by men named Grusec and Davidov they state, "early formulation, general mechanisms learning such as reinforcement, secondary drives and modeling were proposed as a means of explaining how parental actions accounted for children's social acquisitions" (Elliot 722). Again this reinforces how the main source of social development begins from the influences and foundation set by parents.

In my opinion and research on the topic of social development of homeschoolers in the Early Childhood phase in particular, I have also come across similar studies supported the ideas presented by Turlel. As personal experience of being home schooled for four years from 4th- 8th grade, I developed more social awareness and skills from being at home than being in a school environment, for the first couple years of my life. Being home schooled and learning social skills from the example of my parents, taught me the basics of proper etiquette in social interactions. This reinforces Turlel's point that although a child may learn a great deal about the world around them through interactions with those outside their family, the main point of focus socially does truly begin at home. Therefore because of my experience at home i feel that for me personally i have learned how to properly interact and feel comfortable in most social situations that i am placed in.

When looking for an article i came across this pyramid which present that the bottom formation for development begins with "positive relationships with children, families and colleages."

//http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/modules/facilitators-guide/facilitators-guide.html&usg=__x__//

Again this image demonstrates that at the base of social development is family. Then the second one is Creating Supportive Environments which then a school setting could be categorized under.

Citation:

//Turlel, Elliot. (2010). Domain Specificity in Social Interactions, Social Thought, and Social Development.// Social Development.// 81 (3), 720-726.