In ancient China, someone said, "If you dye it in the sky, it will turn pale; if you dye it in yellow, it will turn yellow. If you enter, you will change color. " To illustrate the impact of the environment on people. Italian education expert Montessori pointed out: "The basic task of education is to let every child's potential develop himself freely in a prepared environment." The concept of environment is put forward here. From the perspective of educational theory, environment is a potential educational factor. In a good educational environment, children can freely and actively discover, think and explore, and gain knowledge and experience from them, which has a subtle influence on emotions, beliefs, will, behavior and values. It can promote the realization of educational goals. And organically combine the environment and education to ensure the development of children to the maximum extent. How to understand environmental education? Environmental education should be correctly understood as a comprehensive lifelong education, an education that can cope with various changes in a rapidly changing world. Environmental education should make individuals understand the main problems in the contemporary world, and provide them with the skills, attitudes and values necessary to play an active role in improving their lives and protecting the environment, so that everyone can be prepared for life. Environmental education adopts a holistic approach based on a wide range of disciplines to train people to understand the close dependence between natural environment and artificial environment from a comprehensive perspective. Environmental education helps to show the permanent connection between today's actions and tomorrow's results, and proves the interdependence between societies and the necessity of unity among all mankind. Environmental education must face the society, encourage individuals to actively participate in the process of solving problems under specific realistic circumstances, and encourage initiative, responsibility and investment in building a better tomorrow. Environmental education can make a great contribution to the renewal of the educational process.
As we all know, the main factors affecting children's development are nothing more than heredity and environment. The essence of heredity is the ever-changing base pairing sequence in nuclear deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). These genetic codes were decided as early as the kiss of life-the moment the egg was fertilized. After the birth of a new life, it is almost an unchangeable factor, and the only factor that can be changed or adjusted is the environment. The results show that 0-3-year-old babies can not only adapt to the requirements of the environment, but also put forward their own requirements for the external environment, and actively explore ways to solve problems when they encounter problems. The key to the development of children's intelligence lies in the environment of receiving education, and the main reason for determining the personality difference between children lies in the time and degree of receiving education. The environment and conditions of infant education, that is, the condition of receiving external stimuli during the sensitive period of the brain, directly determine the level of infant intelligence development.
However, what environmental factors can directly affect children? What are the basic principles or mechanisms that affect children's development?
The sum of all kinds of people, places and events (FPE) that directly affect children and have an impact on their development. These people, places and events exist not only in the family environment, but also in kindergartens, schools and other educational institutions and the whole social environment.
Case 1: The infants of the same age with different family backgrounds were followed up when their physiological indexes developed normally. Babies cared for by grandparents or mothers are far less likely to look up when they are one month old than those cared for by educated parents. The reason is that babies who are with grandparents or with their mothers rarely do head-up stimulation exercises for their babies within a month, and they have less chances to undress and sleep, and their parents spend too much time cuddling. These grandparents still continue to adopt the old concept of parenting, and they ignore the influence of environmental changes on the development of babies. With the development of economy and rich material conditions, infants' absorption of calcium and bone development are much better than those in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, modern educational concepts provide timely and appropriate external stimuli for babies, so that babies can actively respond accordingly. Whether parents grasp the sensitive period of baby's head-up movement for training is the key to baby's development difference.
Environment can be divided into physical environment (mainly functional places) and mental environment (interpersonal relationship and psychological atmosphere in which various characters and events interact with children). The spiritual environment in the environment, like a pair of invisible hands, affects the growth of children almost all the time. However, whether at home or in kindergarten, what we often find is the great contrast between rich material conditions and poor spiritual environment, and between advanced educational ideas and educators' behaviors. In the process of environmental education, it is not only a process of educating children, but also a process of re-educating parents. It is inevitable, not accidental, to establish good environmental education concepts such as "flying out of golden phoenix in the ravine" and "prodigy".
Case 2: A child whose mother is a master and whose father is a doctor can't go to kindergarten. The reason is that this 5-year-old child is almost a "black sheep" and no kindergarten is willing to accept it. Children/kloc-0 years old were raised by their mothers and developed well in all aspects. However, after 1 year-old, his parents will study for a degree and foster their children with relatives in the countryside. The baby named "Hunk" can imagine the quality of its development microenvironment. After returning to Beijing at the age of 4, he became a problem child.
The psychological education mechanism of environment promoting children's development can really affect the environment of children's development, which should be suitable and interactive. Children are not passively influenced by the environment, but have the ability and tendency to actively choose the environment. For another example, before the baby was born, the mother would get up or serenade to sleep listening to the same piano music every day. After the baby is born, when the adults play the CD containing these two songs again, as long as the baby is very excited when he hears the piano music that his mother often listens to, the newborn will turn his head to find the sound source, but he will not turn his head and have an excited reaction to other music. On the contrary, when rock music or jazz is played, children will cry. So we can't think that as long as we create a rich educational environment for our children, we can promote their development. Only appropriate environmental stimulation can open the window of children's mind, let children accept the influence of the environment, let children interact with the environment, and then promote their development. Therefore, suitability and interaction constitute the basic psychological education mechanism that the environment affects children's development.
Understand the importance of environmental education to children's early education, and how does environmental education affect children's initiative?
First, the influence of cultivating children's initiative in environmental education:
Children's transition from passive position to active cognition. This transformation should be carried out in a prepared environment. The so-called preparation refers to a healthy and beneficial living environment that conforms to the laws of children's growth and development. Macroscopically, it includes material environment and psychological environment. Microscopically, it includes
Social environment, family environment and cultural background environment.
Let's analyze the influence of environmental education on children's initiative from a macro perspective.
(1) Enrich the environment and create external conditions for children's active development?
1, physical environment?
The creation of material environment is actually the materialization of educational thoughts, concepts and values. In the creation of material environment, the goal is to be close to children's development and serve children's active activities. It not only pays attention to the beautification and decoration function of the environment, but also pays attention to excavating the educational function in various environments. Children have the ability to appreciate beauty, observe things and understand things since childhood. By cultivating these abilities, we can lay a foundation for future communication. Toys, teaching AIDS and various materials related to children should be versatile, safe and hygienic, and full of aesthetic feeling, so as to attract children to actively operate and play. ?
For the creation of material environment, we don't take the quantity and price as the evaluation criteria, but pay attention to the subtle influence of this material culture on children's cognition, emotion and thinking, and whether children can take the initiative in the environment, gain diversified learning and development experiences, and make their body and mind develop more fully and freely.
2? Psychological environment?
On the basis of paying attention to creating the material environment, we also combine the material environment with the psychological environment in time. Montessori advocates that children's psychological development is the natural expression of natural ability, which has sensitive periods and stages and is realized in work. Call for attention to children's self-development, sensitive period and stage of children's development, and children's activities; Oppose adults to interfere with and hinder children with inappropriate standards, and hope to find out the law of children's psychological development by determining the sensitive period and stage of children's development, and ensure children's self-activity by providing children with a prepared environment. Because children do not have a deep understanding of things, their mentality is easily changed by changes in the environment, their psychological endurance is poor, and their ability to judge adults' words is poor. If adults don't evaluate "right and wrong", it will affect children's freedom, autonomy, self-confidence, hands-on and brains in various activities, gain various experiences from them and develop their own subjectivity.
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(2) Stimulate interest and enhance the intrinsic motivation of children's active development?
Interest has the best stimulation, which is the psychological tendency to try to know and explore something. From the psychological and physiological characteristics of children, children's learning is not mainly subject to goals, but comes from interests and their own development needs, that is, children's learning activities are mainly based on interests and needs. We strive to let the main body participate in the activities in the initiative training, and form a clear goal and a psychological demand for active participation driven by strong interest. Only by forming such a learning process can children be willing to try, dare to think, have unique opinions on problems, and find and solve problems through hands-on operation. Playing with water is the best example. In the activity of playing "water", children use containers of different heights, sizes, shapes and colors to hold, pour and transport water, and try to put all kinds of things into the water. In the attempt, "water" has undergone various changes. They sometimes find that the water poured into a square cup becomes square. When I found my finger in the cup, it became thicker; Sometimes, I find that some things will melt in the water, while others will not ... which arouses children's great interest in exploring various phenomena that occur or appear during surgery, so they spontaneously try to find the answers to the questions. Interest is the regulator of the energy generated by the subject, which can make people pay attention, have a sense of pleasure and have a positive emotional response. Interest is the source of subject function and the most basic condition for subject development. Driven by interest, children can maintain a positive mental state, and learning is the most effective.
(3) Encourage operation to provide possibilities for children's active development?
Activity is the basis of human subjectivity, and operation in activity is an indispensable condition for the existence and development of subject, just as movement is the way of material existence. Without activities and operations, human subjectivity becomes unrealistic. Children form subjectivity in operation and show whether they are active or not.
We deeply understand that children should be encouraged to actively operate, find problems, think about problems and solve problems in their attempts, and at the same time experience the fun of operation and improve their enthusiasm for learning. Children are only willing to explore if they are in an active position.
The biggest feature of guiding children to explore is not to tell them knowledge or experience directly, but to let them discover or learn how others acquire knowledge or experience through certain channels, that is, to attach importance to the process of exploration, so that children can discover the relationship or connection between things in the process of exploration and arouse their enthusiasm, initiative and creativity in learning. ?
Guide children to explore, don't rush to tell the whole story, and don't rush to affirm or deny children's opinions. Evaluation in teaching activities should not be based on fixed standards, but should allow and encourage children to boldly put forward different opinions and fully affirm their different ideas. Even if the opinions put forward by children are wrong, we should provide opportunities for children to realize their mistakes and find ways to correct them themselves, so that the knowledge gained by children through experimental comparison is the most real. Adults should give their children enough time to speak, do and think, instead of trying to figure out the attitude of adults to get the answer. ?
Adults' attitudes, emotions, words and deeds have a subtle influence on children's initiative development. These idioms profoundly clarify the role of educators. Pedagogy and psychology have always advocated "role models", indicating that adults are like a mirror of children, through which many valuable things can be reflected. It can be seen that adults' own attitudes and practices towards events are positive, active, innovative or negative, passive and conservative, which has a very important influence on children, and sometimes even produces the effect of "inadvertently inserting willows into the shade". ?
Adults' attitudes and expectations towards children will also become factors for children's active development. The famous experiment of "Hawthorne Effect" by American psychologist Rosenthal also shows that adults' attitudes and expectations towards children will directly affect children, and children will study hard and make continuous progress with this as the driving force. Especially in the family, we should also create a good psychological environment, and parents should take the initiative to understand their children's performance in social groups (such as parent-child parks, kindergartens, schools, etc.). ), combined with their own homes, work together to promote children's initiative and better development.
Analyze the influence of environmental education on children's initiative from a micro perspective;
The status of human beings in human society determines the necessity of children's active development. The world needs active people, not passive ones; People's life experience is accumulated by children themselves; In real life, let children choose independently and exercise themselves.
Wolf Child is a negative case. Because the wolf boy lived with wolves since childhood, the society he lived in was a wolf, and all his education came from the wolf society, so he completely lost his human characteristics. If the wolf is brought back to human society to survive, he will be very painful. He needs long-term adaptation and human training to reintegrate into human society. His sensitive period of knowing the world was spent in wolves, which will be engraved in his memory forever, indelibly and even affect his performance in human society.
In another case, a mother of 1 year old and 1 month old told me that her daughter just didn't like climbing. I have tried everything at home, but as long as I let my daughter climb, she will cry. The mother is listening to experts.
After the lecture, I learned that if children learn to walk instead of crawl, there may be "sensory integration disorder" in the future, which will lead to learning difficulties, so they are very anxious. So she accepted my suggestion and took her daughter to the baby contest, so that her daughter could see many children about her age climbing in the contest. As a result, when she came home at night, as soon as her mother opened the door, her daughter "plopped" on her knees and crawled all over the room (psychologically called "deferred imitation"). In fact, this is an opportunity created by the baby mother for her daughter, which makes the social environment of the baby contest in the community affect the baby's behavior, and also shows an interaction between the child and the social environment.
In addition to social environment, family environment and cultural and educational environment are also essential.
Children's cultural region, religious beliefs, parents' education level, and the background of adults who come into contact with children. There is an example around me: a 2-year-old girl with an excellent family environment. Her father is a country's ambassador to China and her mother is the president of a big company. She has a mansion at home and is taken care of by a full-time nanny driver. Mother has been paying great attention to the cultivation of little girls until 1 year and a half. 1 At the age of half, the little girl went to kindergarten. Children grow up in this environment and develop better than other children of the same age in all aspects. Because of her parents' working environment, the little girl's sociality has developed very well. She is never "unfamiliar", with a cheerful and lively personality, early development of speech ability and strong independence. However, after 1.5 years old, the mother is busy with work and can't take care of the little girl at any time. At this time, she was specially taken care of by the nanny and the driver. In the meantime, one day the little girl's performance shocked her mother. One day, my mother got off work early. In order to surprise the child, my mother and the driver's nanny went to the kindergarten to pick up the little girl. On the way home, the little girl is always talking and laughing with her mother excitedly. Suddenly, the driver braked suddenly, interrupting the conversation between mother and daughter. When the driver rolled down the window to argue with passers-by, the little girl leaned in. The little girl's standard Mandarin (English is the common language at home) surprised everyone present. "Hey, what are you looking at? What to eat! " Mother never taught her daughter to speak Chinese, and never allowed such rude words in their home. Her daughter received a good international education. Who taught her? Mother passed the question on to the nanny and the driver. The driver said that he had never taught the little girl to say it, only casually, but only once or twice. It can be seen that children's learning is active and they can learn from anyone anytime and anywhere. It is unconscious that the driver's education for the little girl belongs to hidden education, but the little girl is in a sensitive period of language development at this time, and any fresh stimulus (Chinese spoken by the driver) will have an impact on the little girl. Although the little girl doesn't fully understand the meaning of the driver's words, the child has a strong imitation ability. When similar scenes appear frequently, children may imitate the behavior of adults.
Therefore, in the process of children's education, the environment is a very important factor, and every detail neglected by adults will be discovered by children. Environmental education is an educational system put forward relative to the traditional subject education system. It mainly refers to an educational process in which, according to certain educational goals or requirements, the educated interact with the environment through effective organization by using various environmental elements and their internal logical connections. Therefore, special attention should be paid to the role of environmental education in the early education process. In order to improve the overall quality of Chinese people and create a healthy, harmonious and orderly living environment for our next generation, we must attach importance to the construction of environmental education from the aspects of society, family, schools and kindergartens, so as to make environmental education develop in an orderly and sustainable way, get rid of the backward situation of early education in China, learn from the advanced methods of western education, absorb its essence and discard its dross, and create a prepared educational environment for our next generation to catch up with developed countries.