School age is a special period in the life of a child. During this period children tend to quickly develop psychologically and physically. At this time there is created a basis for further formation of a child as a personality. The basic achievement of the school age, which defines the psychological development of a child, is the formation of body, speech and main activities. The qualitative changes experienced by a child during these years are rather significant. Some psychologists consider the main period of psychological development of a person to be the school age. The purpose of the following research is to analyze main peculiarities of the development of a person in school period. The paper refers to such significant psychologists as L. Berk and S.C. Wortham. The research deals with such aspects of child education as educational philosophy, teaching students with special needs and parent-school partnership. Discussion of these aspects is aimed at understanding their influence on the attitude of children towards school education.
Speaking about educational philosophies, it is important to mention that most teachers form their own philosophy of education during first professional semesters, when they learn what education means to them. They realize that students need to learn socially, emotionally, intellectually and physically. Teachers should be flexible and diverse in their teaching methods. The use of one particular method for the whole class will surely not be suitable for every child. With the help of diverse teaching methods, students become aware of numerous ways of problem solving (Wortham, 2008). And these ways may be used throughout their lives. What is taught to children should be relevant to real life experiences. If children can relate things they have learnt to something they might use in their lives, the process of learning becomes more interesting and diverse.
Another aspect of educational philosophy is the problem of child socialization. Socialization helps children become true citizens and active workers. It is necessary to teach children how to work in a team as such knowledge will be of much use in their future lives. Besides, philosophy of education presumes that a teacher should have enough skills to meet the needs of every student. A teacher’s goal should be the fact that students leave classroom with a feeling that they have learnt some really useful lessons. It increases children’s motivation and helps improve children’s attitude towards school and education itself. In such a way, philosophy of education is one of the major factors which if properly applied may be effective in achieving certain goals of educational process. A skillful philosophy of education helps teachers to increase interest of children towards learning process. Teachers should learn throughout their whole lives, and they should teach children do the same. Teachers should instill the same values in their students in order to achieve effectiveness in education.
As for teaching students with special needs, it is important to mention that this problem causes much discussion among psychologists and teachers. The government guarantees a right for education to every child, and recently children with special needs have received more opportunities to develop. In this regard the integrated approach to learning is most appropriate (Berk, 2009). Pedagogical integration presumes the opportunity of children with special needs to be educated together with usual children. Integrated learning is a complex process which helps impaired children to receive a proper education along with other children. It creates certain conditions necessary for a positive educational experience by children with special needs. On the other hand, such education may be effective only if children with special needs are close to normal children judging from their psychological and physical state. In this case, the choice of an educational model should be performed by teachers, who should be responsible for every child in their classroom.