Explain How Theories of Development and Frameworks to Support Development Influence Current Practice

Furthermore, children become less egocentric during this stage as they start to consider simultaneously different ways of looking at a problem.

There are many theorists that influence the way practitioners teach children in nursery settings as they all have different theories about how children learn best and develop. On of the theorists is Sigmund Freud. Freud suggested that personalities are made up of three parts. These three parts are the id, the ego, and the superego. All of these will develop when the child grows and will be controlled by what happens in the child’s life and the experiences that they have. Sigmund Freud focused on the id which is the instinctive part of our personality and the superego which is the conscience, this develops later in the childhood of the child.

The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast two theorists on how children learn and develop and how their theories work in the early years setting. Piaget and Skinner are both very well known for their theories, they contrast each other as one shows the behaviourist view while the other shows the cognitive view. Piaget is a nativist, he believes that children learn best through active learning, doing for themselves. Whereas Skinner is an empiricist he believes that children’s knowledge is learnt from their sense experience and environment.

Jean Piaget has introduced theories on child development from 1896-1980. He is the the most cited and most influential on cognitive development. Piaget is the foundation of current child developmental in psychology. His inspiration came from observing children’s as he even used his own. His development of the cognitive deployment focused on mental process, remembering, believing and reasoning. To help explain his theory, Piaget’s came up with Stage-bound cognitive development. “Stage-bound is the development progresses through a series of stages as a result of assimilating (using the environment for already-learned activities)and accommodating (changing behaviors—and mental structure—in the face of environmental demands)” (Lefrancois, G. R. 2012). Piaget’s stage theory makes up four components, Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete operations, and Formal operations. With these components a teacher or educator can designs its class room and better understand the deployment a child goes through. Once the knowledge of the theories is understood the teacher can teach the child the correct development that they are in. It’s important to know the characteristics of the development a child is going trough because all different age group have their own development stages.

Teachers are under a great amount of pressure to meet mandated academic benchmarks and goals, starting at even the earliest grade levels. They struggle to provide an environment for learning that is “evidenced based” and “adequately prepares children to succeed” (Burnett 146). Despite this pressure put on early childhood education teachers and students to keep up, research shows that children flourish in a play-based, discovery centered environment. In an article for The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, Sarah Burnett states that the constructivist theory, first proposed by scientist Jean Piaget, is recognized by many early childhood education organizations as the “most appropriate and effective avenue through which children learn” (147).

Both Piaget’s and Vygotsky Constructivist theories supports this framework, Piaget believed that children learn by being active participants, by exploring and discovering new concepts on their own they will construct their own knowledge and understanding (Kearns, 2010, p.38). Vygotsky believed that a child’s knowledge was developed through social transmissions, cultural experiences and language activities (Woolfolk & Margetts, 2013, p,322). The author strongly believes ‘students learn best when they are given a variety of tools and opportunities to learn in different ways and with the right learning objectives children will develop higher order thinking skills’ (Pfeffer, 2017). The National Quality Framework’s [NQF] (2008) states that ‘Quality education and care early in life shapes every child’s future and lays the foundation for development and learning’. The author believes that quality education and care stems from providing children with multiple opportunities to learn and develop. Like Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory, the author suggests that ‘all children are

I feel that Piaget’s Theory of child development is a most important idea because it’s still one of the most well-known theories of today. Piaget believed that children contributed to their development through their mental and physical activity. Without his findings, regarding cognitive development, our knowledge of children’s thinking would be very limited. Piaget split cognitive development into four distinct stages; the sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. In each of these stages, children display new abilities that allow them to better understand the world around them.

Consider what age group you hope to work with and reflect on which aspects of Piaget’s theory will be the most useful to you in your future career. How will this information be useful in your everyday work with children? Will it change your expectations for children? For yourself?

The strengths of Piaget’s theories are that many parents and teachers use his theory to develop ideas on how to improve upon a child’s development. The different stages Piaget explained in his theory can help a teacher or parent judge where they think children are at developmentally. It can also help them see what areas the child needs to work on in order to move to the next stage (Cherry, 2017). The teachers can teach and remediate students based on what level or stage they are at. Thanks to Piaget’s theory now we can better understand children, so now we can communicate with them better since we know how they are thinking and developing (Kail, 2016). Piaget’s theory also inspired other researchers to further study child development and improve upon the research that he

Throughout the history of education, there have been many intelligent theorists who have contributed endless amounts of research to explain how children develop. Piaget and Vygotsky were two of the most important theorists whose focus was on how children develop cognitively. Piaget’s research supported the idea that children’s intellectual growth is based partly on physical development as well as the particular interactions that a child has with their environment. He also strongly believed that a child will only learn when their curiosity gets the best of them, because then the child experiments on their own (Mooney, 2000). Vygotsky, on the other hand, believed that a child’s cognitive development was influenced by the values and beliefs of the adults and other children in their lives. He presumed that children learn best from one another, especially when one child is attempting a difficult task and cannot seem to conquer it, but then another child whom has conquered this same task offers aid to the struggling student. Learning occurs when the struggling student accomplishes the task at hand with the gentle guidance of another person. Piaget and Vygotsky, both, possessed research that supported the idea that children learn best when they are at play, yet they both had different ideas about how that learning takes place (Mooney, 2000). Both of these incredible theorists’ ideas coincide quite nicely with the idea of a constructivist view of learning, which can be simply

Finally, like the psychosocial theory, that had a slight unconscious effect on my personality, Skinner’s operant conditioning could most clearly explain my behavior now. My parents were very fond of positive and negative reinforcement. They often spanked us as a child, which they used as a positive reinforcement to negate my bad behavior, such as flushing Legos down the toilet. My parents used negative reinforcement, such as taking the TV away, as well. These methods are ultimately how my parents behaviorally shaped me growing up, and even to some extent now.

In the world of childhood education, the ideas behind children being able to be active participants in their learning is a great talking point, but it is usually not followed as a method of instruction. David Elkind says that true education will happen as soon as educational institutions replace outdated teaching practices with “developmentally appropriate” learning concepts (Elkind, 1989, p. 113). Elkind says that all children will reach the “concrete operations that Piaget described” and they will learn the rules and be able to apply them more effectively, if the curriculum that teaching institutions use matches the level of “the children’s emerging mental abilities” (Elkind, 1989, p. 114). Currently, educators are teaching children at a fast pace and teaching concepts sometimes beyond a child’s ability to relate to, assuming that the students can learn past their current ability, believing it stretches their cognitive capacity. I agree with Elkind’s statement that the only way to understand how children learn is to study children while they are learning.

B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory proposes that the voluntary responses of people are strengthened when reinforced by rewards and weakened when they are ignored or punished. Related to students, Skinner developed programmed instruction, in which students were given positive reinforcement for correct responses, motivating the student to proceed with desired consequences.

In all in this paper I briefly explained Piaget’s Cognitive Theory of development. I explored the four different stages of development that describe how individuals way of thinking changes over time. This theory, along with many others not discussed in this paper, play an important role in the field of child development. All of the different theoretical perspectives include different aspects of human development necessary to provide appropriate developmental practices in educating young children and

With the current notable changes in children and their behaviors reagarding learning; one would be remiss if they didn't start with a look at both Piaget and Vygotsky theories for insight. The first step, would be to take a look at the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky . Subsequently, we will take a beginners look at some of the similarities and differences in the theories offered by Piaget and Vygotsky. Conclusively, what can we learn from this?