Child Development

'To truly understand learning we must also understand child development'. Do you agree or disagree? Be sure to justify your answer based on the work covered thus far in the semester and your understanding of various domains of development.

'To truly understand learning we must also understand child development', I couldn't agree more. Each child will develop at a unique rate; that rate will determine how they will be able to learn, therefore I agree that it is important to understand development in order to cater to student's personal learning abilities.

As a child develops they will go through developmental steps, according to Jean Piaget children will pass through four steps of cognitive development in the course of their life. During the first two years of life children go through the sensorimotor stage, characterized by object permanence, intentional action, goal direction and deferred imitation. During the ages of two and seven they will pass through the pre-operational stage, characterized by use of symbols, difficulty considering more then one aspect of a situation at one time, can have difficulty understanding conversations and language becomes increasingly important. From seven to eleven children pass through the concrete operational stage, where children begin to apply logical thought processes with concrete objects and problems are typically tied to personal experiences. From eleven to adulthood individual are able to think logically and abstractly, to form hypotheses and to solve problems systematically. The rate of which each individual will pass through these stages varies for each person, although it is believed that the order does not differ, stages will not end abruptly but instead children will go through a gradually merging (Piaget). This process can be largely influenced by the environment, therefore as a teacher it will be extremely important to acknowledge each students personal learning abilities in order to cater for their needs as an individual and maximize their potential as a learner.

Teachers must recognize the importance of understanding each students learning rate as an individual regarding intellectual development, so teachers are able to teach accordingly (Piaget). For example if I were teaching a class of year seven students some might be in the concrete operational stage, whilst others may be in the pre-operational stage. Therefore I would have to adapt my teaching techniques in order to suit the class as a whole. Jerome Bruner, a cognitive psychologist agrees with Piaget in regards to each student passing through developmental stages at a unique rate, increasing the challenge for teachers to cater to all students learning abilities.

As a teacher I will be a constant influence on my students learning and development, as a result of this I must be able to influence them in a positive