Why is the knowledge of growth and development necessary in the educative process?

Without a working knowledge of human growth and development, a teacher cannot know if a curriculum or objective is developmentally appropriate. While it is true that most educators are guided by local, state or national curriculum goals and objectives already developmentally aligned to grade levels, not all educators have access to such curriculum. Educators left to create their own curriculum must understand the developmental building blocks of learning that create, for example, number sense in...

Without a working knowledge of human growth and development, a teacher cannot know if a curriculum or objective is developmentally appropriate. While it is true that most educators are guided by local, state or national curriculum goals and objectives already developmentally aligned to grade levels, not all educators have access to such curriculum. Educators left to create their own curriculum must understand the developmental building blocks of learning that create, for example, number sense in math, without which students cannot be successful in higher level math. Even when provided a developmentally correct curriculum, educators must understand the stages of growth and development and be prepared assess where along a curriculum continuum a student is at so that a starting point for teaching can be determined. It is possible that a student has succeeded in attaining promotion to a grade level without having mastered the prerequisite skills he should have in order to be successful. If this is the case, the teacher must be prepared to determine a starting point for reteaching a student those prerequisite skills and locate resources with which to teach them.