Piaget And Maslow Case Study

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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. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development Piaget asserts, children are born with inherited scripts, called schema, these schema are building blocks for cognitive development. As a child grows, he acquires more of these building blocks; moreover, these building blocks become more complex as the child progresses through different stages in development (Huitt, Hummel 2003). Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development are as follows. First, The sensorimotor stage where an infant has rudimentary motor skills, and can eventually …show more content…

These demands are ranked in the order that they most preoccupy the individual. To illustrate, an individual is not preoccupied by physiological needs such as hunger or thirst, he is then free to seek out that which gives him a sense of safety; moreover, if the individual isn’t preoccupied with finding a safety, warmth, and shelter, he can spend time time seeking out companionship (Huitt, 2007). Maslow proposes 8 levels of motivational needs, the first four, termed the deficiency needs, need to be fulfilled before the second four, the growth needs, can be adressed. The deficiency needs are: bodily needs, the need for safety, social needs, and self esteem. The Growth needs are: the search for understanding, the need to be aesthetically pleased, self actualization, and finally, self-transcendence, which is the highest level, where one has acquired wisdom (Huitt,