How do children learn? Describe and evaluate behaviourist and cognitivist theories of learning, with reference to influential researchers and writers in each field.

Child development that occurs from birth to adulthood was mostly ignored throughout much of history. Children were often viewed as small versions of adults rather than individuals and little attention was paid to the many advances in cognitive abilities, language usage, and physical growth. It wasn’t until early in the 20th-century that interest was taken in the field of child development. This then tended to focus on abnormal behaviour. The following are some of the theorists that specialized at looking at cognitive development; these include Piaget, Bruner and Vygotsky.

Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) was a constructivist whose work has been a major influence both on child development and on learning and education. Piaget’s view was that from birth to adulthood children pass through a number of different stages of cognitive and mental development. As well as this he highlighted that the individual child played a big role in their own development and learning. He also recognized that the social environment plays a part alongside this. Although recognizing this he did not emphasize it, therefore his work focuses on the individual child impacting his or her own development.

Piaget broke his cognitive development in to four different stages; Sensori-motor (birth to around two years), pre-operational (two to around seven years), concrete-operational (seven to around twelve years) and finally formal-operational (twelve years and onwards). As I said above although these stages have ages against them all individuals learn and development at their own rate and so may not hit these stages at the same time as all their peers do. This is something you see in schools and why work needs to be differentiated for the different abilities as they are all learning at their own rate.

Piaget also believed that children learn through processes of adaptation which is known as assimilation, accommodation and equilibration. An example of assimilation can be that child A establishes the concept of cats as black. Child A then progresses to accommodation where the toddler ‘accommodates’ new information that cats can be different colours. Equilibration is where child A then needs to have this reinforced by further experiences before accommodating this in to their understanding.

Schemas are one thing that came out form Piagets work. These are early ideas and concepts based on linked patterns of behaviour and are part of the children’s way of understanding their experiences. Schemas often occur in clusters and dominate a child’s play at any one time. For example the idea of transporting, children will take time to investigate the different ways in which to move objects, such as using bags, trucks and trolleys.

Jerome Bruner (1915) and Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) built on Piaget’s theory. They stressed the role of play, talking with adults and interacting with the social world. Piaget’s view of the child being a solitary learner is here replaced by that of the child as a social being. Children use their learning skills and knowledge of their own culture, received from adults to develop their ideas and learning that they could not do as a solitary learner.

Vygotsky saw children as active organisers of their own lives which agreed with Piaget however he extended this to believing that social relationships and interaction with other people where needed to develop intellectually and that “knowledge develops through interaction with others” (Mistry, M 2009) So where Piaget emphasized the individual learner, Vygotsky is now emphasizing the role of the adults in helping children learn. From this he identified the ‘zone of proximal development’, which is where children show signs about being ready to move on in their own development and learning. Adults then need to intervene and “help children to move into the zone of actual development and the cycle goes on.” (Smith, M 2006, p117).