Jean Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development

There are two theorists associated with cognitive development; Piaget and Vygotsky. Piaget believes that things children learn and do are organized as schemes, groups of similar actions and thoughts are repeated in response to the environment. Vygotsky believes that thoughts and language are separate functions for infants and toddlers. This is important for me to know because when teaching my first graders using Piaget’s belief that children curiosity to adapt to their environment, will help me in setting up my classroom so as to provide the friendliest environmental atmosphere. Another useful belief of Piaget that I intend to use, is by exploring and manipulating physical objects, children gain a relationship with their physical environment.

Through his studies on cognition in children, a series of simple but clever tests revealed different cognitive abilities in children at different age stages. Children from birth understand their environment through cognitive development stages that are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Sensorimotor is the first stage of cognitive development which starts from birth to 2 years of age. During this stage, children acquire their knowledge through their movement and sensations.

He goes on to say that, when a child is genetically engineered, parents can make/design their children to be attractive, smart and healthy. They can also have photogenic memories, enhanced lung capacity and an increased life span of 200 years. The author made much use of ethos in his writing, and he wrote to inform the audience that has a background on science about the advancing/developing process of gene mutation. Hayes states that many other scientists, biochemists,

The sensorimotor is considered birth through 24 months, preoperational is considered toddlerhood through age seven, the concrete operational period is age 7-12, and formal operational is adolescence through adulthood. He also believed that children were more independent and developed stronger with self-centered and focused, planned activities. Vygotsky believed that cognitive development is continuous and that children are social beings and that their development is directed through social interactions. Even though Piaget and Vygotsky hold different views concerning developmental phycology the use of both theories in classrooms is advantageous, students will have more opportunities to learn through play in the classroom. Developmentally Appropriate Practice is seen with focused activities, as well as social learning on the child’s own.

Erikson has discussed human is development throughout his stages. Humans undergo many changes such as behavioral, biological, and cognitive. In each stage kids go through development stages to help them create their personalities and actually know the person they are growing up to be. These stages go into details with learning new things whether we are ready for it or not. Each stage explains the positive and negative attitude for each individual; however we attend to learn from every stage to become the person we are today.

Cognitive abilities enable children to process the sensory information that they collect from the environment. According to Wood, Smith and Grossniklaus (2012), Piaget defined cognitive development as the progressive reorganization of the mental processes that results in biological experience and maturation. As numerous researchers have explained, children normally undergo many changes from birth to adolescents, most of them being growth related. According to Cook (2005), the changes in thinking is what researchers call cognitive development. In toddlers, cognitive development is observed through the early use of tools and objects, the child’s behavior when objects are moved in front of them and their understanding when objects and when people are in their environment.

Some things that are included in our classroom to encourage aesthetic and cognitive development such as books, animal puppets, kitchen area, soft blocks, puzzles, etc. These types of items spark emotions, peer interactions, memory, emotions that are essential for infants under

Throughout this whole semester there has been many important concepts about the development of life and how we can analyze the growth of one’s mind after birth. Psychologists make these observations closely in order to have a better understanding of how individual’s mindsets process information. In the textbook “Life-Span Development, 15th Edition” by John W. Santrock, he elaborates on how the brain works in different stages of life. For each stage of life there are different components to how the brain and the human body function properly. In chapter five of the book it talks about the cognitive development in infancy and how through this stage infants are starting to explore.

Cognitive processes are essential to almost every daily activities, such as learning, talking, driving and counting. Learning Sciences are part of the cognitive science which emphasizes on human learning. As an educators, we have to understand how our students learn and therefore we can design instruction that makes the student learn effectively. Cognition and Learning are inseparable but they are not interchangeable (Greeno, 1996). Cognitive processes operate to make learning happens.

I believe children grow and learn through their personal experiences and through environmental interactions, their personality is shaped. My personal goal is to challenge students and watch them grow and achieve the most with their capabilities. I believe every child is unique and develop differently, they have varying personalities, they possess different strengths, therefore, require different types of support to meet their individual needs. As the work of Maria Montessori demonstrates the importance of individuality and independence in learning, “Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur" (Montessori, 1949). I want to take students at diverse levels and see them develop together

c. Educational Psychologists are involved in psychology pertaining to learning i. Provide ways to improve learning environments or methods ii. Could be employed by the government or employee training programs d. Experimental Psychologists work in research institutions, businesses or government facilities and study behavior in animals and humans to gain, in their subfield, scientific information for future useable data e. Psychometric and Quantitive Psychologists study data and methods to gain psychological knowledge i. A Psychometrician can create and interpret tests for personalities in school and neurocognitive tests in

Schemas are categories of knowledge that help us decipher and figure out the world. As we experience more throughout our life, new information changes our previous existent schemas (Cherry, 2015). Piaget called the schema the “basic building block of intelligent behavior- a way of organizing knowledge” (McLeod, 2015, para. 16). Because my mother bottle fed me as a baby, I started to learn a constant pattern. Once I was hungry, I would start to cry because I wanted someone to feed me.