His theory of ‘language is being learnt therefore used to learn’ is also a practical theory as children ask questions to learn, they then remember things that they are told and access it from their memories when needed.
A child in my infant placement, George, was also my next-door neighbour. One night when I was babysitting him, he asked me why the moon changed shape, I told him all about it then thought no more of it until, 3 months later in school the teacher asked the class if anyone knew why the moon changed shape. George stuck his hand straight up and reeled off everything I had told him.
On Piaget’s theories on children being egocentric, I feel that Margaret Donaldson was probably more accurate; children can see things from another person’s point of view. I remember my step – daughter (aged 5) coming running into a room really upset having watched a film where 2 dogs and a cat were lost on there own trying to find their way home, she had seen the whole film from the animals point of view. I do believe that children are egocentric to an extent; it entirely depends on the situation and how well the child can relate to it, just as it is with adults.
Lev Semonvich Vygotsky (1896 – 1934)
Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist, like Piaget, he looked at the active process of cognitive development.
He said that social interaction enables the child to develop the intellectual skills needed for logical reasoning and thought.
Through language and communication, children learn to think about their world and modify their actions.
Adults have an active role in fostering a child's cognitive development. Children need to receive knowledge from other children and adults. Adults support cognitive development with appropriate framework.
Adults support children's learning by assisting the child's own efforts, enabling the child to gain skills, knowledge, understanding and confidence.
As children develop skills through assisted learning, adults slowly decrease their support until the children are able to work independently. With adult supervision young children are able to complete tasks that they would have been able to complete alone.
A lot of childcare settings use Vygotsky’s theories. Most private nurseries use ‘key workers’ to monitor and nurture a select group of children's development. This ensures that the child has more ‘one on one’ contact with adults.
Another example is a child learning to read. This begins with a lot of adult input, learning letter sounds, putting the sounds together and recognising words, reading simple words with adult assistance, adults slowly increasing the complexity of the words and assisting in recognising them until the child can read independently with confidence.
Vygotsky’s theories of cognitive development had several differences to Piaget’s even though they were analysing the same subject.
Piaget believed that children are egocentric and separate from others for a long period of development (0-7 years) but gradually begin to socialise.
Vygotsky thought differently, stating that children learn a sense of self through interaction with others.
Piaget said that adults provide the stimulants and environment to learn but too much interference can damage a child's natural development.
Vygotsky believed that social interaction is crucial. The adult role in teaching is very important e.g. providing assisted learning.
Vygotsky also said that language is a tool for thought whereas Piaget believed that thought develops independently of language.
Both men have been extremely influential to childcare today.
In my current placement, in the reception class, children are shown what to do with constant assistance offered. But they are also encouraged to attempt things alone with assistance given only when required.
In my baby placement, children were encouraged to play together as well as being left to play independently and explore their environment.
All childcare settings offer a wide variety of activities to encourage cognitive development. Babies will be given puzzles including colour, shape, words, young babies are constantly developing cognitive skills as they take in the world around them, all activities will help gain more knowledge and in turn language.
Language Development.
Language is often used to describe the process of speaking and listening. But it is much more than verbal communication. Our ability to use language relies on the use of recognised systems and symbols and a common understanding of what those symbols mean. Anybody could make up their own language but they would not be able to communicate with anyone unless they shared the system or code with them. In this country we speak English, but anyone living in an English speaking society who could not speak the language would struggle to survive. There are many other systems of language throughout the world.
Babies and young children are not able to use our complex language system, it takes time for them to learn the code of their particular home language. Whilst they are learning they use other methods to communicate their needs and feelings, this can be frustrating for both adults and children as it isn’t always obvious to the adult exactly what the child is trying to say.
There are several different viewpoints as to how babies and young children learn to communicate-
The ‘nurture’ theory
This is a behaviourist theory based on the work by John Locke (1600’s) and was developed by psychologists such as Pavlov (1950’s). this theory suggests that a baby is born with a ‘clear mind’, meaning babies have to learn everything, including language, from scratch. Parents and carers shape the way language is learnt by encouraging sounds and words. Children learn language by copying sounds, words and phrases around them and through positive reinforcement of their attempts to communicate.
When my child was learning to talk, one of the first phrases he learnt was ‘what’s that?’ we then spent hours walking around answering to whatever he was pointing at, in time he copied what we were saying and with encouragement hasn’t stopped speaking since!
At baby placement there were posters with animals etc all round the room, we used to take them off the wall and sit with individual children pointing and talking about the picture. One child in particular loved hearing the noises the animal made and could name them all at a really young age.
The ‘nature’ theory
This is a nativist theory by Noam Chomsky (1960’s) it states that babies are born with some knowledge of language. He argued that language is too complex to be learnt entirely by copying adults. He said language is innate and all humans have a genetic pre- disposition towards learning language.
Chomsky concludes that humans have a ‘language acquisition device’, which allows use to process and use language. He pointed out that all children learn language the same way and the early stages of language are the same for all children no matter which language they are learning to speak.
The ‘social interaction’ theory
This is a social constructivist theory. Vygotsky( 1930’s) and Burner (1970’s) suggested that children learn language as a means to communicate more affectively with others. This theory is similar to behaviourist theories in that children learn language through interaction with others, but this theory differs in that very young children are seen as active participants in their language development. For example research has shown that babies can initiate and control pre-verbal conversations with their parents/ carers rather than the other way round; babies make adults pay attention to them using body language, crying, babbling and they end conversations by breaking eye contact or falling asleep. The role of the adult is to provide the social context in which communication can take place.
This theory stresses the link between language development and cognitive development. Language is learnt due to a need to understand the environment and from social interactions with others.
I agree strongly with the social interaction theory, my child lived a year with just me and a few of my friends and family to talk to, he also suffered with glue ear for 3 months, so his speech was delayed. We spent a lot of time teaching him words and pointing to things, but when he started nursery and had lots of adults and children his own age to talk to everyday he showed a lot of frustration. But as his language improved his frustration slowly disappeared, I believe the need to socialise drove the need to communicate and in turn understand the world around him.
Childcare settings provide a huge range of activities to promote language and communication skills, the activities tend to fall into the following topics.
Exploration
- Toys and other interesting objects to look at and play with such as activity centres.
- Sounds to listen to including voices, music, songs, rhymes, and musical mobiles.
- Noise makers such as rattles, simple musical instruments
- Construction toys such as wooden and plastic bricks like Lego
- Natural materials like water, sand, play dough.
- Creative materials like paint.
- Outings like visits to the park.
- Animals, including trips too a farm.
Description
- News time
- Recording events
- A variety of books and stories.
Conversation
- Talking about their day and experiences.
- Talking during imaginary play activities such as role-play.
- Talking about special events such as a birthday.
- Talking whilst doing activities.
Discussion
- Problem solving activities
- Follow up to activities, like after a story
- Co-operative group work.
- Games and puzzles
- Appropriate television programmes
Instruction
- Preparation before an activity.
- Explanation of what to do
- Instructions during an activity to keep the child on task.
- Step by step instructions.
Language is encouraged in all sorts of ways, all childcare settings encourage language just by talking to the children, along with language comes cognitive development as the children learn more about the world around them through conversation, instruction, exploration and discussion.
