Abstract: . . .  outline and assess research evidence in relation to three specific core areas of thought i.e. physics, psychology and biology from infancy and throughout childhood in order to appraise the appropriateness of the two broad cognitive development approaches. To examine what the educational implications of domain-general and domain-specific theories of cognitive development. Lecture Content 1 Domain-General Cognitive Processes and Core Domains of Knowledge This lecture will consider whether children’s cognition is structured around core domains of knowledge by contrasting traditional domain-general theories of development (e.g. Piaget, Vygotsky, Behaviourism and Information Processing) with more recent domain- specific theories (e.g. Karmiloff-Smith, Wellman and Gelman). 2 Development of Theories in Physics Recent research on children’s conceptual development reveals that pre-school children hold ideas relating to the physical world (e.g. they have ideas about why some objects float or sink, why things become hot and how objects fall through space. This lecture will review research on infants and young children’s concepts of physics, where they originate from and how they develop. Page 26 25 3 Development of Psychological Knowledge This lecture will review evidence that children have a core domain of psychological knowledge and explore when and how this develops from infancy. Theory of mind literature will be described together with other research evidence relevant to a domain of psychology . 4 Development of a Domain of Biology There is currently an ongoing debate as to whether young children possess a domain of biological thought and whether this is separate from the domain of psychological knowledge. This debate centres on the timing of onset of biological thought and how the domain should be characterised. This lecture will review in some detail key research studies on children’s biology and discuss what would constitute a domain of biological thought. 5 Educational Implications of the Domain-Specific Approach to Cognitive Development Evidence that children’s naïve theories are resistant to change through education will be reviewed and intervention studies  . . .
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