Young boy who is determined to see the world. He’s content with shepherding, until he has this reoccurring dream. Through many encounters his view on life changes, he becomes more interested in the spiritual meaning of life.
During this developmental interview, I chose to conduct an observation/interview study with my one of my cousin’s child. This child is a 4 year old girl and will be identified as “child K” in relation to her first name. Her parents had no problem letting me interview her, but I had them stay in the same room as us. The purpose of this interview was to observe the child’s physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development. I observed her behavior and gave her several tests to show how well she has progressed.
Since Vygotsky advocate the ability for students to learn by offering contextualized, meaningful instruction in small or whole groups, this seminar definitely fulfilled these premises. Again, speeches and debates in the form of Socratic seminars also constituted a major part of my Haitian overseas learning. These verbal and social nuances also reflect Vygotsky’s theory since he emphasized how the social basis of learning as “Vygotsky propounds that children interact with their social environment by their speech experiences so that
The biological process of development is the budding of conventional stages and programmed designs of behavior. The child is anticipated to achieve knowledge “logically and instinctively” from peripheral sources only when maturation generates willingness for it [9]. The maturationist teacher works primarily as an observer to identify signs of development and as a provider of an environment that places little demands on the
Vygotsky (1962, cited in Wilson et al., 2011) explained in his theory of sociocultural theory by arguing that, children build knowledge through social and cultural experiences. Piaget, on the contrary, argued that children gain knowledge through exploration and activities. I observed the teacher demonstrating how to add water to some potted flowers using a small watering can while the child observed. The teacher demonstrated this by interacted with the child using language and hand gestures. The teacher promotes the social interaction through values, customs, belief and language to promote the child’s learning.
Development is a gradual and continuous process. The development of children is greatly influenced through interactions with the family, friends and culture. Children learn from seeing how they are treated, overhearing the interactions of the people around them and observing the things we do all throughout the day. Fully understanding how children grown and change over the course of childhood requires us to look into various child development theories such as psychosocial, cognitive, behaviourist and ecological theories, to name a few.
According to Vygotsky, the basis for learning lies within social interaction and communication. It is when a child is able to communicate, either verbally or non-verbally, that they understand the world around them through copying and internalizing new concepts. An example of this is what Vygotsky called cooperative or collaborative dialogue, when a “more knowledgeable other” assists the learner with a task. Although it sounds like a relatively basic idea, other psychologists at the time, notably Piaget, placed the source of learning within the person and not related to the people around them. As Orlando Lourenco illustrated in the article “Piaget and Vygotsky: Many resemblances, and a crucial difference,” the key difference between the two leading psychologists of the early twentieth century was the importance of the surroundings of the child.
Through this knowledge, the teacher can presume how children of a particular age group will act, what they are capable of doing and what they are not likely able to do. Consequently, the teacher can devise activities rather confidently by taking all these aspects into consideration. At this stage, the teacher can take advantage of the windows of opportunity for the child’s growth. In other words, the teacher benefits from the sensitive period of a child’s development to provide him with enriching activities; the best period for the child to learn and develop further. In addition, what the children learn should be relevant to their environment and life experiences.
Theories that as future educator will need to be understood and explored. Some if not all these theory’s will be used in the classroom. Vygotsky, Piaget, Bruner, and Bloom all set out to establish a foundation for education, whether through building skills such as pre-reading, language, vocabulary, and numeracy. It becomes the educators job to implement theories into the classroom for children's cognitive development. The theorist discussed in this paper, have had made a profound effect on
Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory (SCT) explains how individual mental functioning is connected to cultural, institutional, and historical context. Therefore, SCT argues that human cognition is essentially a mediated process that is organised by cultural artifacts, activities, and concepts (Ratner et al., 2002). Vygotsky believed everything is learned on two levels. First, through interaction with others, and then combined into the individual’s mental structure. “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (inter-psychological) and then inside the child (intra-psychological).
Many theorists discuss ways in which children are developing. Physically, emotionally, socially and language progressions. Within the early childhood sector, the study of children's development is vividly important as teachers learn to observe the children's individual learning patterns and habits. The practical knowledge of how to develop a child further will assist in utilising the children's skills and holistic development to their fullest potential, however, knowing how to practically aid children in the separate developmental domains is also key as individual kids need more help in some areas than others.
Lev Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist of the early Twentieth century. He was an intellectual contemporary of Piaget, however a meeting
Social and physical environments in the home and the social environment in the classroom impact early childhood development. This paper discusses: the impact of the social environment in the home on early childhood development; the possible negative impact of the physical environment on a preschool child in a Guyanese home; and the impact of a positive social environment in the early childhood classroom. Early childhood development is“a set of concepts, principles, and facts that explain, describe and account for the processes involved in change from immature to mature status and functioning.” (Katz, 1996, p. 7) The physical environment refers to; the nature of the physical home surroundings including its cleanliness; the safety of the home and the security which the home offers.
Piaget used a clinical method, in order to seek his theory of cognitive development. This allowed Piaget to understand how children and adolescents learn. On the other hand, Vygotsky used tangible items like stories, paper, and writing utensils to determine how the society would move forward. An educational difference from Vygotsky is that parents, teachers, and other adults has having an impact on how children learn and grow. However, Piaget found that
The Learning perspective argues that children imitate what they see and hear,and that children learn from punishment and reinforcement.(Shaffer,Wood,& Willoughby,2002). The main theorist associated with the learning perspective is B.F. Skinner. Skinner argued that adults shape the speech of children by reinforcing the babbling of infants that sound most like words. (Skinner,1957,as cited in Shaffer,et.al,2002). This theory explains that the language starts on what they see or hear, the children will imitate what they see on their parents or the people around them.
