DISCUSS HOW THE COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH HAS HELPED US UNDERSTAND ONE CONTEMPORY ISSUE OF YOUR CHOICE

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“Discuss how the Cognitive Developmental approach has helped us understand one contempory issue of your choice”.

        In the Cognitive Developmental approach, mental processes (such as thinking) are seen as being of high importance in understanding people. However, in the learning theory and the psychodynamic theory, the importance of behaviour and emotion are emphasised instead. Piaget and Vygotsky are the main theorists in this approach, both having very different reasons why cognitive processes change with age, not to mention a more recent theory, the modular approach. Firstly, Piaget understood that children think in a less sophisticated way to adults purely because they think in a completely different way to begin with, rather than the thought that they have less knowledge. He also emphasised the importance of agency, where the environment plays a big part in helping children explore the world in order to create their own mental representation of reality, which contributes to their existing understanding. Vygotsky, on the other hand, emphasised the importance of social interaction, especially from more experienced children or adults in developing children’s understanding. Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development shows the difference between how much the child can understand on its own and what it could understand with the help of social interaction, emphasising its importance in learning. In contrast, modular theorists, from the domain-specific approach, see different mental abilities developing independently of one another.

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        In the whole class vs. small class teaching debate, Piaget and Vygotsky ‘s theories have featured greatly, due to their contrasting views on how children learn. Piaget’s theory greatly supports the method of whole class teaching, where teachers should adapt to children’s way of understanding the world and facilitate discovery learning. The necessity for teachers to adapt to children’s understanding of the world is in order to avoid misunderstandings on the child’s part, due to their high level of egocentrism; especially at a young age. Their inability to decentre and think about what the teacher may have meant could ...

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