Theories According To Piaget's Cognitive Development

DEWEY THEORY Dewey’s theory emphasizes the need to learn by doing. He believed that human beings learn through a 'hands-on ' approach. He believed that ‘to prepare the child for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities ‘and this truly can only be achieved through a hands on approach. Dewey’s theory emphasized the fact that a teacher centred curriculum, plan, and teach in many cases causes children to look away from learning but a child centred plan curriculum and learning where the child’s strengths and interest are built on.

Piaget and Maslow: Teaching the whole child Exceptional educators keep their fingers on the pulse of what their students need, in order to teach them effectively. Examining Piaget and Maslow’s theories, and applying them to the classroom will facilitate achieving this goal. Considering Piaget’s focus on development, and Maslow’s prioritization of human needs, one can integrate these ideas into classrooms and lesson plans that are optimized for student success.

‘Constructivist’ theory of learning is considered to be the main developmental theories of learning currently working in the area of special educational needs. Constructivism is ‘child-centred development’. It is an active and building process, where learners use what they already know to learn new things, and infer new knowledge based on their interaction with new experiences outside themselves, using information and ideas from within themselves, or already obtained. In other words, knowledge is considered to be socially constructed because it is obtained in partnership between new experiences and knowledge already acquired. Constructivism is useful for understanding the way in which a child may progress educationally, which is important

“Individuals are born with reflexes that allow them to interact with the environment. These reflexes are quickly replaced by constructed mental schemes or structures that allow them to interact with, and adapt to, the environment” (Lutz, S., & Huitt, W,2004). Piaget believes that each person is born with the ability to think and they use ideas gained from their environment to advance their thinking process in each stage of development. Fleming, PhD(2005), states that Piaget did his study on moral development of a child by carrying out experiments in two different ways. The first way was by getting the children to play a game but they are not made aware of the rules of the game.

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development Cognition is a process where different aspects of the mind are working together that lead to knowledge. Piaget’s cognitive development theory is based on stages that children go through as they grow that lead them to actively learn new information. Cognitive change occurs with schemes that children and adults go through to make sense of what is happening around them. The change that occurs is activity based when the child is young and later in life correlates to mental thinking. Piaget’s stages of cognitive development start from birth to adulthood

For example, if a boy loves to play football, and is good at it, he will have the opportunity to meet and learn to play with another individual. It doesn’t matter race, gender, or beliefs of the two people, they bond with their love for the sport/topic. Some people will say that PE is just a waste of time and that you just play games. Although you do play games, PE is actually teaching children/students how to be accountable, dependable personal. An example of this is in, The Values of Inclusive PE when it says that PE, “...reveals a culture of respect and community values…” Respect is a great benefit to physical education classes.

Understanding the rationales of cognitive perspective helps an individual to interact with children in a better way. It is very important for a child to develop a proper cognitive ability from a young age. By understanding the rationales of cognitive development, one is able to know what to expose the children to as they develop. Also, one knows how to advise the parents of the children on the various methods of handling their children. Once one acquires this skills they are able to distinguish the different types of children and know exactly how to handle each of them.

Moreover, according to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, personality develops through a series of stages, each of them characterized by a specific internal psychological development. And then, it shows to people the importance of learning psychology,especially the psychological development of children,as children are the start of human and psychology is the basic factor of one’s

His theory focuses on understanding how children acquire knowledge, and on understanding the nature of intelligence. (Kathleen 2000) the theory explained the changes in logical thinking of children. Cognitive theory’s focuses on the structure and development of a person’s thought processes; it focuses on not only how children gather the information but also understanding how it has been

Cognitive development stages are the central part of Piaget’s theory, which demonstrate the development stages of children’s ability to think from infancy to adolescence, how to gain knowledge, self-awareness, awareness of the others and the environment. These stages are respectively relative to 4 ranges of age. It consists of characteristics of each stage and phenomena of each. The first stage between birth to 2 years old, children learn the external through senses and action, instinctively. They sense object permanently and they usually show anxiety to strangers.

Frobel believed that children should wear comfortable cloths as it will allow the child to move around feely. Frobel recognised that parents are the child’s first educator so it is important that parents talked to the [practitioners. This is because the practitioners should be like ‘mothers’ to the young children. Frobel theory links into my key issues because he believes that learning should be encouraged through first hand experiences. This links into my key issues about structured and unstructured play as Frobel believes that children’s paly shouldn’t be structured.

Question One (4 marks) Identify which of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development Mollie and her friends are in. Describe some key characteristics of children in this stage of cognitive development. Describe two examples from the chapter that illustrate characteristics of this stage of cognitive development. “Developmental psychology studies the way human develop and change over time.”