Cognitive Development & Learning
Social interaction and learning through experiences are important to a child’s development. Piaget developed the theory of genetic epistemology, the idea that it is the interaction between nature and nurture that develops knowledge. Part of that theory is social experiences. Piaget states that social interactions are necessary for the development of logic in older children. He believed that these interactions should be between peers to be effective. Vygotsky also states that cognitive development results from the interaction of heredity and environment. He developed the metaphor, zone of proximal development (ZPD). This is the zone that includes all the skills that children are on the verge of developing but can only perform with the help of someone who is more advanced cognitively than they are. He says that interactions between a child and an adult or peer who is more capable on tasks that are slightly above the child’s level will allow peak learning to occur. This is visible in my student’s classroom. The children are grouped in a class from first to third grade and the older students help the younger students in completing tasks that are slightly above their capabilities. My student created a booklet with another older student who helped him write out complete sentences and tie the booklet together. This also helps the older students improve their skills as well. I wonder if grouping kids this way in public schools would work?
My youth center student is bilingual, he learned Spanish in the home as an infant and learned English when he entered school. He was in a structured English immersion classroom and speaks English without a Spanish accent. He is slightly behind in reading. Research has shown that children from lower socioeconomic households typically know less words when they enter school than children from higher socioeconomic households. This is not due to the income level of the family itself, but due to the different characteristics of these families. Higher income families tend to speak using more complex sentence structures in their household and with their children. His family is from a lower socioeconomic status, which may be why he could be behind in reading. He may have heard less vocabulary and less complex language. Does this carry over to his English language learning if all he hears at home is Spanish?
Albert Bandura studied how people learn from observing other’s experiences in the environment and came up with his social cognitive theory. This theory state that learning can occur by observing others, that it may or may not include a behavior change, and that personal characteristics, like one’s belief in oneself are all important aspects. For observational learning to occur, someone must perform the behavior while someone observes. This can be a live model like the teacher in a classroom or a symbolic model, like through books, television, video games, etc. I observed this in the classroom with the 6th graders I tutor. The kids watch each other’s behaviors and what they get in trouble for and what they get away with. For example, when two students are talking to each other while the teacher is talking and they do not get reprimanded right away, soon most of the class starts talking amongst themselves and not listening to the teacher, until they all get yelled at and then the room is quiet again.
