Annotated Bibliography: Cognitive Development and Teaching Pedagogy

This annotated bibliography reviews three articles focusing on cognitive development in early childhood. The first article examines the impact of environmental enrichment and maternal support on cognitive development, highlighting its potential as a non-invasive treatment for neurological disorders. The second article analyzes the integration of Bloom's taxonomy with higher-order thinking, presenting a framework for teaching pedagogy to enhance cognitive functioning in older children. The third article illustrates the benefits of incorporating executive functioning-oriented curriculum in lesson plans to improve cognitive control in preschoolers. The bibliography concludes that while environmental enrichment has clinical applications, the integration of Bloom's taxonomy and executive function exercises holds significant implications for enhancing teaching pedagogies and improving cognitive functioning in children.

Running head: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Annotated bibliography
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
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Table of Contents
Article 1:.....................................................................................................................................2
Article 2:.....................................................................................................................................3
Article 3:.....................................................................................................................................5
Summary:...................................................................................................................................6

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Article 1:
Baroncelli, L., Braschi, C., Spolidoro, M., Begenisic, T., Sale, A., & Maffei, L. (2010).
Nurturing brain plasticity: impact of environmental enrichment. Cell death and
differentiation, 17(7), 1092.
Nurturing brain development is a very important aspect of early child care, the early
years of a child’s life is associated with most of the neurological development. The article by
Baroncelli et al. (2010) emphasises on how the environment enrichment impacts the
nurturing of the brain plasticity in the early years of childhood. The authors have mentioned
in this context that environment enrichment has been reported to have a profound impact on
the central nervous system of the child. Baroncelli et al. (2010) have clearly emphasized that
the environmental enrichment affects the central nervous system of the children at early years
of childhood at functional, anatomical and molecular level. on a more elaborative note, the
impact of the environmental enrichment to act like a trigger that facilitates a marked
acceleration in the maturation of the visual system. Another very important factor that needs
to be acknowledged in this context that the maternal behaviour in the early years of childhood
plays a significant role in this case as well, it acts like a fundamental mediator in accelerating
the impact of the environment enrichment on the central nervous system. The authors in this
article have proposed the usage of the environment enrichment as a non-invasive therapy to
manage and treat various different neurological disorders via ameliorating the deficits in the
development of the central nervous system.
This review study has elaborated on the dramatic influence exerted by the
environment on the brain plasticity. The studies reviewed in this paper indicated the presence
of a molecular hotspot that emerges as one off the possible ways of successful treatment that
helps in addressing the neuro-pathological conditions that cause both juvenile and adult CNS

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disorders. Elaborating further the maternal physical activity emerged as a very important
protective factor, although the most of the evidence is based on the animal models. Maternal
care coupled with tactile stimulation such as massage therapy has also been shown better
CNS development outcomes. Along with that, the review also integrated the theme that
environment enrichment can be used as a tool to modulate the CNS development to target the
cognitive impairment directly in a completely non-invasive manner as well improving
neuronal plasticity. Hence, the authors described that cognitive decline can be improved with
environment enrichment in combination of a higher level and variety of mental and physical
activity to lower the chances of cognitive decline. Hence, the environment enrichment
paradigms can in fact be used with or without combination of pharmacological treatments as
non-invasive, safe and effective treatment intervention for neurological disorders. The only
limitation of this review study is the fact that it has not provided any details regarding the
design of the review study and how many articles have been chosen for the review. Along
with that, another considerable disadvantage of the study had been the fact that
Article 2:
Collins, R. (2014). Skills for the 21st Century: teaching higher-order thinking. Curriculum &
Leadership Journal, 12(14).
This article by Collins (2014) on the skills of teaching the higher-order thinking that
can help the young men and women how to love in the 21st century. The authors
acknowledged in the very beginning of the paper that almost entirety of the teacher and
leader population understand the higher order thinking. However, the authors debated that
three is not enough evidence regarding to what degree the higher order skills are taught to the
students by the teachers. The authors have mentioned that while learning for recall, the higher
order thinking in in the stage of transfer, which indicates that the student will not only acquire
new knowledge but also learn to implement the acquired knowledge to the new situations.

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While attempting to explain how the higher order thinking is taught to the students, the
authors have taken thee aid of Bloom’s taxonomy. According to the theory, the aspects of
learning was divided into three main domains of educational activity, cognitive, affective and
psychomotor. The authors have identified the fact that Bloom’s taxonomy has 6 different
domains and each of the domains can be implemented in the teaching planning and
implementation in order to facilitate higher order thinking. The domains include knowledge,
comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The authors have clearly
illustrated how these elements of the Bloom’s model can be employed in teaching planning
so that the activities taught to the children can also implement higher order thinking.
However, it has to be mentioned that integrating theory in the real world practice can
be very difficult, especially with children who have a highly impressionable mind. However,
another notable strength of this article is the fact that they have developed a thorough
framework for teaching pedagogy with the implementation of the Bloom’s taxonomy. There
strategies include “Specifically teaching the language and concepts of higher-order thinking”,
which is focussed on the teachers implementing what higher order thinking is and why it is
being taught to the children. The second strategy is “Planning classroom questioning and
discussion time to tap into particular higher-order thinking skills”, which indicates teachers to
incorporate meticulous planning to incorporate recall questions rather than only questions to
improve higher order thinking. The third strategy is “Explicitly teaching subject concepts”,
which is focussed on providing the children direct and explicit instructions to facilitate higher
order thinking. The last strategy of the framework is “Providing scaffolding”, which instructs
the teachers to plan ahead how to enhance empowerment in learning from lower order to
higher orders. This strategy instructed the teachers to provide maximum support in the
beginning of a lesson plan and then gradually withdraw support and turn over responsibility
to them to enhance higher order thinking. Overall this article has been successful in

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discussing the importance of higher order thinking among the children and how it can be
implemented in the practice scenario to incorporate higher order thinking in the children
taking the assistance of the theory of Bloom’s taxonomy, providing a systematic and easy to
implement framework for the teachers to use in their future practice.
Article 3:
Diamond, A., Barnett, W. S., Thomas, J., & Munro, S. (2007). Preschool program improves
cognitive control. Science (New York, NY), 318(5855), 1387.
The cognitive development in the early years of life is optimal, various research
studies have focussed and evidenced the importance of the early years of development for
neuro-development in the life of the child. Hence, the importance of nurturing the child in
this period to improve cognitive control has been a fertile field for research in the recent
years. Diamond et al. (2007) has illustrated in this article the impact of preschool programs in
improving the executive functioning among the pre-schoolers. The authors have described the
core cognitive executive skills as the (i) inhibitory control (resisting habits, temptations, or
distractions), (ii) working memory (mentally holding and using information), and (iii)
cognitive flexibility (adjusting to change). The study incorporated random assigning of the
teachers to children including 18 classrooms with three added through the year as it
progressed. All of the classrooms received the same resources and opportunities with the only
variable being the planning of the preschool programs including the EF training curriculum
by the teacher and how it improved the executive functioning if the children that have
participated. The results indicated the fact that some of the participants thought preschool was
too early of an age to incorporate the aspects of executive functioning while the rest thought
of it as a possible phenomenon.

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The results indicated learning by playing helped improve the executive functioning
far more than the rest of the interventions, although, forcing the children to limit the time
allotted to play negatively impacted the executive functioning development. Along with that,
the study also revealed the fact that the implementation of more EF exercises enhanced the
cognitive control more successfully in the children. The aid of different tools used in the
study undoubtedly helped to move the children with low cognitive control to perform better,
however the support also acted like a positive factor to their improvements. Overall the
strengths of this article includes the random assignment and use of objective measures to
explore the impact of executive function improving curriculum in the preschool on the
cognitive control of the pre-schoolers, and this study successfully ruled out many competing
explanations.
Summary:
Three articles chosen for this review had a variety of different factors explored and
evaluated related to early years of cognitive development and how it can be beneficially
incorporated in the teaching pedagogies. While the first article helped understand the impact
of environment enrichment with maternal support to improve cognitive development and can
be used as a non-invasive treatment in neurological disorders, it has minimal applicability in
teaching pedagogies. On the other hand, the second and third article illustrated two very
important aspects that can be successfully integrated with teaching pedagogy to improve the
cognitive functioning in children. While the third article by Diamond et al. (2007) illustrated
the benefits of executive functioning oriented curriculum in lesson plans to enhance cognitive
control in children; the second article by Collins (2014) analysed incorporation of Bloom’s
taxonomy with higher order thinking to develop a framework that can be implemented in
practice for older children to develop their higher order thinking. Hence, both the second and

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third article has considerable implications in practice for teaching, although the first article
has more clinical applications than in context of teaching pedagogies.