©FYNDLAY 2024/2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2:49PM A+
OAE Assessment of Professional Knowledge:
Middle Childhood (4-9) Exam Study Guide.
Scaffolding - Answer✔A method of supporting students' learning by providing them with clues,
examples, step-by-step instructions, or partially completed learning tasks.
Cognitive Impairment - Answer✔A disability characterized by significant limitations in
intellectual functioning.
Intrinsic Motivation - Answer✔Refers to behavior that is driven by internal rewards. In other
words, the motivation to engage in a behavior arises from within the individual because it is
naturally satisfying to you.
Extrinsic Motivation - Answer✔Refers to behavior that is driven by external rewards such as
money, fame, grades, and praise. This type of motivation arises from outside the individual.
Reflective Practice - Answer✔The ability to reflect on one's actions so as to engage in a process
of continuous learning.
Developmental Theory (Sigmund Freud) - Answer✔Freud's fifth and final stage of psychosexual
development- the genital stage, which begins with puberty and continues throughout life. This
stage involves exploration. This stage's erogenous zone: phallic and genital in preschool and
teen years respectively, around sexual drives, with a calm latency period in between when such
urges are buried in favor of the outward focus on friendships and school. The powerful physical
changes and events of puberty are Freud's focus for the genital stage.
Developmental Theory (Erik Erikson) - Answer✔Erikson believed people continue to develop
throughout life. Hence he proposed stages for each life period until death. He identified the
nuclear conflict characteristic of every stage being identity vs. role confusion in adolescence (c.
12-18 years). Teenagers begin developing their individual personal identities. Social
relationships are the focus of this stage. Teens that are successful in defining their personal
roles and identities develop feelings of being true to themselves. Teens who fail in this
endeavor develop confusion about their roles in life and weak and/or poorly defined self-
images.
1
, ©FYNDLAY 2024/2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2:49PM A+
Social Learning Theory - Answer✔Albert Bandura's social learning theory emphasized the
importance of social interaction in learning. Also, he believes learning does not necessarily
change behavior. Bandura discovered children learned indirectly by watching others—i.e.,
vicarious or observational learning: seeing others receiving rewards for certain behaviors, they
imitated those actions to obtain similar rewards. This discovery contradicted the empiricist
claim that learning requires direct experience. Bandura also discovered children witnessing
violent actions by living persons (cf. his Bobo doll experiments) or by people they saw in video
recordings would then display more aggressive behaviors imitating what they observed. This
influenced education and parenting: adults, realizing children's behavior was influenced not just
directly by experiencing violence, but also indirectly by observing it, became more concerned
about controlling what children observed. Bandura identified attention, retention,
reproduction, and motivation as conditions necessary to modeling and observational learning.
Bandura's concept of reciprocal determinism states individuals and environments mutually
influence each other. His concept of self-efficacy identifies belief in one's individual
competence to perform specific tasks and skills.
Jerome Bruner - Answer✔Bruner, like Piaget and many others, embraces constructivist
philosopher, i.e., by interacting with their environments, children actively construct their
learning, knowledge, and realities. His emphasis on discovery learning is based on
constructivism. He defined learning as not only remembering existing, culturally imparted or
acquired ideas and actions, but moreover inventing or creating these on one's own. Bruner
feels "culturally invented technologies" amplify human abilities, rather than providing all
knowledge. He influenced education by advising that its goal should be producing autonomous
learners.
Bruner posited three modes of representation in child cognitive development. 1) Enactive
representation: action-based information based on motor responses, retained in muscle
memory, emerging in infancy. 2) Iconic representation: visual image- based information,
emerging around 1-6 years of age. 3) Symbolic representation: coded or symbolic storage of
information, emerging c. 7 years and older.
Bruner's concept of the spiral curriculum enabled teaching complex ideas to all ages by initially
structuring them simply and increasing difficulty gradually.
Bruner (with Wood and Ross) originated the concept scaffolding—temporary, gradually
withdrawn support matching student needs.
John Dewey - Answer✔Psychologist, philosopher, educator, and social activist John Dewey was
a prominent member of the Progressive social reform movement, a president of the American
Psychological Association, a functional psychology pioneer, a Pragmatist and Instrumentalist
philosopher, and the foremost theorist in modern American education. Like Rousseau and
2
OAE Assessment of Professional Knowledge:
Middle Childhood (4-9) Exam Study Guide.
Scaffolding - Answer✔A method of supporting students' learning by providing them with clues,
examples, step-by-step instructions, or partially completed learning tasks.
Cognitive Impairment - Answer✔A disability characterized by significant limitations in
intellectual functioning.
Intrinsic Motivation - Answer✔Refers to behavior that is driven by internal rewards. In other
words, the motivation to engage in a behavior arises from within the individual because it is
naturally satisfying to you.
Extrinsic Motivation - Answer✔Refers to behavior that is driven by external rewards such as
money, fame, grades, and praise. This type of motivation arises from outside the individual.
Reflective Practice - Answer✔The ability to reflect on one's actions so as to engage in a process
of continuous learning.
Developmental Theory (Sigmund Freud) - Answer✔Freud's fifth and final stage of psychosexual
development- the genital stage, which begins with puberty and continues throughout life. This
stage involves exploration. This stage's erogenous zone: phallic and genital in preschool and
teen years respectively, around sexual drives, with a calm latency period in between when such
urges are buried in favor of the outward focus on friendships and school. The powerful physical
changes and events of puberty are Freud's focus for the genital stage.
Developmental Theory (Erik Erikson) - Answer✔Erikson believed people continue to develop
throughout life. Hence he proposed stages for each life period until death. He identified the
nuclear conflict characteristic of every stage being identity vs. role confusion in adolescence (c.
12-18 years). Teenagers begin developing their individual personal identities. Social
relationships are the focus of this stage. Teens that are successful in defining their personal
roles and identities develop feelings of being true to themselves. Teens who fail in this
endeavor develop confusion about their roles in life and weak and/or poorly defined self-
images.
1
, ©FYNDLAY 2024/2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2:49PM A+
Social Learning Theory - Answer✔Albert Bandura's social learning theory emphasized the
importance of social interaction in learning. Also, he believes learning does not necessarily
change behavior. Bandura discovered children learned indirectly by watching others—i.e.,
vicarious or observational learning: seeing others receiving rewards for certain behaviors, they
imitated those actions to obtain similar rewards. This discovery contradicted the empiricist
claim that learning requires direct experience. Bandura also discovered children witnessing
violent actions by living persons (cf. his Bobo doll experiments) or by people they saw in video
recordings would then display more aggressive behaviors imitating what they observed. This
influenced education and parenting: adults, realizing children's behavior was influenced not just
directly by experiencing violence, but also indirectly by observing it, became more concerned
about controlling what children observed. Bandura identified attention, retention,
reproduction, and motivation as conditions necessary to modeling and observational learning.
Bandura's concept of reciprocal determinism states individuals and environments mutually
influence each other. His concept of self-efficacy identifies belief in one's individual
competence to perform specific tasks and skills.
Jerome Bruner - Answer✔Bruner, like Piaget and many others, embraces constructivist
philosopher, i.e., by interacting with their environments, children actively construct their
learning, knowledge, and realities. His emphasis on discovery learning is based on
constructivism. He defined learning as not only remembering existing, culturally imparted or
acquired ideas and actions, but moreover inventing or creating these on one's own. Bruner
feels "culturally invented technologies" amplify human abilities, rather than providing all
knowledge. He influenced education by advising that its goal should be producing autonomous
learners.
Bruner posited three modes of representation in child cognitive development. 1) Enactive
representation: action-based information based on motor responses, retained in muscle
memory, emerging in infancy. 2) Iconic representation: visual image- based information,
emerging around 1-6 years of age. 3) Symbolic representation: coded or symbolic storage of
information, emerging c. 7 years and older.
Bruner's concept of the spiral curriculum enabled teaching complex ideas to all ages by initially
structuring them simply and increasing difficulty gradually.
Bruner (with Wood and Ross) originated the concept scaffolding—temporary, gradually
withdrawn support matching student needs.
John Dewey - Answer✔Psychologist, philosopher, educator, and social activist John Dewey was
a prominent member of the Progressive social reform movement, a president of the American
Psychological Association, a functional psychology pioneer, a Pragmatist and Instrumentalist
philosopher, and the foremost theorist in modern American education. Like Rousseau and
2
