When Students Aren’t Responding: Cognitive Development May Help Us Understand Why
The Way Christian Educational Leadership Institute
By Dr. Kevin A. Hall
Theoretical lens: King, in Schuh et al. (2017)
Teachers routinely encounter the student who will not participate, the teenager who seems unusually dependent on peers, the learner who becomes defensive when challenged, or the young person who appears capable but simply does not respond to instruction as expected. Our instinct may be to label the behavior: unmotivated, immature, disrespectful, disengaged.
But what if we asked another question?
What if some of what we are observing is developmental?
Cognitive development theory provides educators with an important lens for thinking about this question. King, writing on cognitive development in Student Services: A Handbook for the Profession, distinguishes change, growth, and development. Change simply means becoming different, while growth involves gaining more of something. Development goes further: it represents a transformation in how a person understands, organizes, and responds to the world (King, 2017).
That distinction matters enormously in education.
