Cognitive Psychology in Education

Authors Avatar

Cognitive Psychology in Education

In recent years a child’s cognitive development has been greatly taken into consideration when developing methods used in education throughout the world. As Bruner (1973) said, “Some environments push cognitive growth better, earlier and longer than others, it makes a huge difference to the intellectual life of a child simply that he was in school”. Therefore cognitive theories do not neglect the role of the environment on learning but strive towards improving a child’s environment to enable the child to hone its cognitive abilities such as memory and processing. Educational practice around the world has been heavily influenced by theories by Piaget and Vygotsky.

Jean Piaget was very interested in knowledge and how children come to know their world. A central component of his theory of learning is that the participation of the learner is crucial. To put simply, education should be focused not on the teacher teaching, but the student learning. Therefore the teacher’s task should not be to feed the child with information but to “focus on preparing and arranging a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child” (Dr Maria Montessori). Knowledge is not merely transmitted verbally but must be constructed and reconstructed by the learner. According to Piaget, the learner must be active and not a vessel to be filled with facts. Piaget's approach to learning is a readiness approach. Readiness approaches in developmental psychology emphasize that children cannot learn something until maturation gives them certain prerequisites (Brainerd, 1978). The ability to learn any cognitive content is always related to their stage of intellectual development. Children who are at a certain stage cannot be taught the concepts of a higher stage.

Join now!

To apply Piaget’s theory in education, teachers should realize their role as a facilitator, aiming towards the indirect imparting of knowledge and not direct tuition. As Piaget said, ‘every time we teach a child something we prevent him from discovering it on his own’. Teachers should focus on the child’s learning process and not the end product. The teacher should also assess the level of each student’s development to be able to attend to individual needs of each student. Based on the readiness approach each child is different and it would not be effective for the teacher to give a ...

This is a preview of the whole essay