The concept of childhood differs widely between different cultures, societies and communities

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The best and most universal approach to understanding childhood has to be the scientific approach.  “How far is this statement true in comparison to the social constructionist approach?”

The definition of a child often remains controversial.  It can be determined according to the child’s age, physical appearance (for example size and dressing) and also his or her ability to think and reason. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNRC) defines a child as one who falls under the age of eighteen years.  Despite the establishment of the legal age, concepts of childhood and children often differ widely between different cultures, societies and communities.  In order to make sense of childhood, scientific and social constructionist approaches have been involved.  Scientific approach involves devising theories such as how children’s thinking capacities develop.  Thus, it seeks empirical knowledge about children by devising theories and testing them through observations and experiments.  At the same time, the social constructionist approach involves looking at the different images and ideas about childhood and how these are products of one’s world view.  In this essay, we will first examine the differences between the scientific and the social constructionist approaches.  From there, I will discuss how each approach is applied in the studies of childhood in relation to cognitive development, moral development and criminal responsibility of children.  Lastly, I will conclude with the scientific approach being a better and more universal approach to understanding childhood in the aspects of cognitive and moral development.  One point to note is that what we define as the ‘best and most universal approach’ is one that often offers the most comprehensive explanations which can be accepted by most cultures and communities.

The scientific and the social constructionist approaches look at children and childhood from different perspectives, focusing on different issues and concerns, thus leading to different ways of answering questions about children and childhood.  The scientific approach views knowledge (Rogers, 2003) as objective, value-free and independent from the process of gaining it.  It assumes that childhood can be understood through establishing objective facts.  As such, the scientific approach is designed to discover facts.  It involves observing phenomena, devising a theory, making certain predictions based on the theory, and lastly testing the predictions through experiments.  All these build heavily on systematic research.  On the contrary, the social constructionist approach views knowledge as always being socially constructed and holds that no form of knowledge is universally true.  It deems childhood not as a fact of nature but that of social constructions.  In the studies of childhood, the social constructionist approach mainly uses discourses to explicate and explore different societal belief systems behind different cultural practices at a particular time frame.

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In view of the cognitive development of children, the scientific approach seems to have given a more comprehensive understanding. As understanding of the cognitive development of a child requires us to know what is going on in the child’s mind, the psychologist inevitably needs to provide evidence to illustrate such an abstract subject.  Thus, by adopting a systematic research through experiments and observation, the scientific approach has provided grounds for their findings and claims.  Piaget, (Rogers, 2003) one of the most influential theorists, developed his theory of cognitive development through systematic observations of children.  Through an observation of a ...

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