Developmental Theory Essay

Developmental Theory Piaget’s concept of assimilation explains why students have difficulty with irregular plural nouns is because children seek equilibrium. Assimilation is where people take new information in and then incorporates that new information into their existing knowledge. The students learned to add an s to the ending of words that needed to be plural, so they added an s to all the words they already knew. Piaget’s concept of conservation is when a child understands that changing the form of a substance or object does not change the amount or volume. Piaget says that children do not truly understand this concept until the age seven to eleven. Mrs. Jennings uses different symbolic representations to help students visually see that there is more than one way to get the same value. She uses blocks, quick tens as solid lines, and counting bears. She uses this method to show students that the form varies but the value stays the same. Kohlberg’s theory about children’s stage one and two of moral development explains the punishment-avoidance, obedience, and exchange of favors. The children are in level one which is the Preconventional Morality. The children tell on other students because they want the kid that is misbehaving to get caught. The teacher responds by

Scaffolding is when a teacher provides a framework that is instructional support for students to learn new material; once the child understands the new material the framework is taking away. Mrs. Jennings peer teaching illustrates both concepts by pairing one student who fully understands the work to another student who still needs help understanding. The child who does not understand will learn another way to understand the material by his advanced