Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Although computational modeling is now a widespread technique in cognitive science and in psychology, relatively little work in developmental psychology has used this technique. The approach is not entirely new, as a small group of researchers has attempted to create computational accounts of cognitive developmental phenomena since the inception of the technique. It should seem obvious that transition mechanisms -- or how the system progresses from one level of competence to the next -- ought to be the central question for investigation in cognitive developmental psychology. Yet, if one scans the literature of modern developmental studies, it appears that the question has been all but ignored. However, only recently have advances in computational technology enabled the researcher access to fully self-modifying computer languages capable of simulating cognitive change. By the beginning of the 1990s, increasing numbers of researchers in the cognitive sciences were of the opinion that the tools of mathematical modeling and computer simulation make theorizing about transition mechanisms both practical and beneficial -- by using both traditional symbolic computational systems and parallel distributed processing or connectionist approaches. Computational models make it possible to define the processes that lead to a system being transformed under environmental influence from one level of competence observed in children to the next most sophisticated level. By coding computational models into simulations of actual cognitive change, they become tangible entities that are accessible to systematic study. Unfortunately, little of what has been produced has been published in journals or books where many professionals would easily find them. Feeling that developmental psychologists should be exposed to this relatively new approach, a symposium was organized at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. The "cost of entry" was that speakers had to have a running computational model of a documented cognitive transition. Inspired by that conference, this volume is the first collection where each content chapter presents a fully implemented, self-modifying simulation of some aspect of cognitive development. Previous collections have tended to discuss general approaches -- less than fully implemented models -- or non self-modifying models. Along with introductory and review chapters, this volume presents a set of truly "developmental" computational models -- a collection that can inform the interested researcher as well as form the basis for graduate-level courses.

Cognitive Development from a Strategy Perspective recognises the outstanding scientific legacy of Robert S. Siegler as a pioneer of modern research on cognitive development throughout the lifespan. This volume presents a collection of essays written by leading scholars in the field, using cutting-edge research to illustrate how Siegler’s work and ideas lay the groundwork for much of the modern studies on cognitive development. The collection includes chapters which examine strategic aspects of lifespan cognitive development, change mechanisms underlying cognitive development, and numeracy acquisition with emphasis given to the application of new strategies for education. It explores conceptual and methodological frameworks to best study and understand development during childhood and adulthood, and the role of foundational core knowledge on development and acquisition. These foundational issues are examined from various angles and finally integrated in a concluding panoramic chapter written by Siegler himself. Cognitive Development from a Strategy Perspective offers valuable reading for graduates and researchers in cognitive development and mathematical cognition, as well as those at the interface of psychology and education.

How does cognition develop in infants, children and adolescents? This handbook presents a cutting-edge overview of the field of cognitive development, spanning basic methodology, key domain-based findings and applications. Part One covers the neurobiological constraints and laws of brain development, while Part Two covers the fundamentals of cognitive development from birth to adulthood: object, number, categorization, reasoning, decision-making and socioemotional cognition. The final Part Three covers educational and school-learning domains, including numeracy, literacy, scientific reasoning skills, working memory and executive skills, metacognition, curiosity-driven active learning and more. Featuring chapters written by the world's leading scholars in experimental and developmental psychology, as well as in basic neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience, computational modelling and developmental robotics, this collection is the most comprehensive reference work to date on cognitive development of the twenty-first century. It will be a vital resource for scholars and graduate students in developmental psychology, neuroeducation and the cognitive sciences.

Cognitive Development in Digital Contexts investigates the impact of screen media on key aspects of children and adolescents' cognitive development. Highlighting how screen media impact cognitive development, the book addresses a topic often neglected amid societal concerns about pathological media use and vulnerability to media effects, such as aggression, cyber-bullying and Internet addiction. It addresses children and adolescents' cognitive development involving their interactions with parents, early language development, imaginary play, attention, memory, and executive control, literacy and academic performance. - Covers the impact of digital from both theoretical and practical perspectives - Investigates effects of digital media on attention, memory, language and executive functioning - Examines video games, texting, and virtual reality as contexts for learning - Explores parent-child interactions around media - Considers the development of effective educational media - Addresses media literacy and critical thinking about media - Considers social policy for increasing access to high quality education media and the Internet - Provides guidance for parents on navigating children's technology usage

The book focuses on theoretically important relationships among determinants of young children's cognitive development: Working memory, executive function, and conceptual understanding of the mental domain.

Understanding Cognitive Development provides a fresh, evidence-based research perspective on the story of children’s cognitive development in the first ten years of human life. Starting with a brief survey of the key theoretical positions that have come to define developmental psychology, the textbook then focuses on the different cognitive abilities as they emerge throughout early development. Uniquely, it examines these in terms of their interdependence; that is how skills such as perception, memory, language and reasoning relate to one another. This holistic treatment allows students to see the many important intersections in this critical phase of human life development. This textbook employs a novel design that will be of immense help to both students and instructors and is intended to be read at two levels: at the first level, it provides a fully referenced explanatory account of experimental research on cognitive development with complete attention to the needs of students who have never been exposed to experimental methodology nor studies in cognitive development before. At the second level, and mapped directly onto numbered sub-sections within the text, the author uses illustrative panels designed along the lines of PowerPoint presentations to summarise studies and key findings, employing lots of pictorial material together with bullet-points to give vividness and texture to the material covered. These panels are replicated on the accompanying companion website in PowerPoint for lecturers and students to make further use of in teaching and revision. Revision points are provided at the end of every chapter. Rich in academic coverage, including a widespread database of the most important empirical research in the field, this textbook will be essential reading for students of cognitive development and developmental psychology across psychology and education.