Modern Theories of development Flashcards
Piaget (1896-1980)
Cognitive development theory has been the most influential
Developed a stage theory of child development to adulthood
The 4 main stages
- Sensorimotor intelligence: birth-2 years
- Preoperational thought: age 2-7 years
- Concrete operations: age 7-11 years
- Formal operations: age 11-adulthood
The stages theory
Each stage contains of many phases which describe the progressions in details
And can only go to the stage through successful completion of the phases
Piaget’s cognitive development theory has been the most influential across different domains
such as informing educational policy and practice
- Sensorimotor intelligence
Developed object permanence: knowing that even when something has disappeared from view, it has not necessarily actually disappeared
- Preoperational thought
Children thought is egocentric: understanding the world only from their own perspective and finding it difficult to understand the point of view of another person
Criticism of Piaget’s theory
Stage model is too restricted
Overestimate the cognitive ability of adults
Underestimate ability of children
Stage model is too restricted
Not necessarily achieve proficiency in each stage at exactly the age that Piaget describe
Overestimate the cognitive ability of adults
Not everyone acquires the mathematics skills and uses them in every day life
Underestimate ability of children
Children in stage 2 do consider others perspective
Vygotsky (1896-1934): Sociocultural theory
Combined the biological nature with the social-historical influences from family, friends and society
Sociocultural theory of development (Vygotsky, 1978b)
Children develop as a result of biological determined, but as well as the social interactions
Without contact with other people, we do not progress through the primitive patterns of thinking
Social interaction is the key, we need to interact with others to build on our abilities and skills
Vygotsky proposed the concept of scaffolding
Describe how adults and older children try to advance the child’s abilities by correcting their language use (basically teaching them skills)
Zone of proximal development
The gap between our pre-existing knowledge and what we can accomplish with helping others
The area where the most sensitive instruction or guidance should be given that allow the child to develop skills they will then use on their own which develop higher mental functions
Neo-Piagetian theory
Recent interpretation of Piaget’s theory in an information-processing framework that places greater emphasis on cognitive processes than maturation
Focuses on the cognitive processes
Information-processing theory
The likening is human cognition to the working structures of a computer
with input, processing, memory, output, etc.
that helps us conceptualised what is happening in the brain
Growth in capacity
that is how well children can use their limited memory capacity
involves four stages
Encoding
Strategies: free up mental capacity,
Automatisation: leads to central conceptual structures
Generalisation
In strategies:
Assimilation leads to accommodation
Assimilation: process new information into what we already know (existing knowledge)
Accommodation: revision of older knowledge structures to take account of new information
Central conceptual structure
A well-formed mental scheme of a concept like a horse that can be generally applied to all horses and requires a little more assimilation until we experience a zebra for the first time
Criticism
Didn’t take into account of biological aspects
Little emphasis on the social or cultural influences of cognition
Information-processing theories do offer applications to many educational settings
Helps to explain the difficulties in reading and problem solving tasks is due to the limited memory
Evidence for Vygotsky and the ZPD: Freund (1990) asked children to place furniture in particular areas in a dolls house
they were in two different conditions: either play with their mother before they attempt to play by themselves or work on the task by themselves
In other words: one is only allowed to play by themselves, another one has guidance
Found that those who had previously worked with their mother (ZPD) showed the greatest improvement compared with their first attempt at the task
The conclusion being that guided learning within the ZPD led to greater understanding/performance than working alone (discovery learning).
