Educational Psychology for Growth and Developmental Process

Question: Discuss about theEducational Psychology for Growth and Developmental Process. Answer: The development theories are based on the various stages of the development of a child. It is argued that although every child is unique, their growth and developmental process are considered universal based on the various principles like cephalocaudal principle, proximodistal principle and maturation. Developmental theories help adults to assess the stages or sequence of development taking place in children along with their integration of many abilities that he/she will in due course of time. Developmental theories are also crucial in the domain of teaching and training children so as to understand their powers (Demetriou et al., 2016). There are several theories and ideas suggested by many scientists and behaviourists. There are different kinds of views about how a person develops physically as well as psychologically throughout the lifespan of the individual. Social learning theories are based on the learning of the human beings depending on what the human beings learn from the so ciety, it is often said to bridge the gap between the behaviorist and the cognitive learning theories. This essay will discuss about two theories, the Cognitive Developmental theory by Jean Piaget and the Social Learning theory by Albert Bandura. The Cognitive Developmental theory proposed by Jean Piaget suggests and explains the ways in which the children make up their minds about the world. Some of the other influential theories interrelated with cognitive theories are Socio-cultural theories, care-knowledge theories and information-processing theories. He did not believe in the idea that intelligence is fixed trait and he explained that development occurs in an individual when that person develops biologically and interacts with the environment or the society (Illeris, 2018). His theory deals with the complex understanding of infant cognitive skills, language development in children, reasoning involving mathematics and science as well as moral development. A thorough understanding of his theories promotes understanding of children in adults that would motivate a faster learning session for the children (Demetriou et al., 2016). Furthermore, the learning theories are truly interesting in their demonstration of how human bei ngs process their mental activities and perform abstract symbolic reasoning. The theory can be used by the parent to support the growth of their children, by the teachers to determine the abilities of the students and can be used by the parent to support the growth of their children (Taylor, 2017). As a part of his career, he was employed to translate English intelligence question papers into French, while working there he became interested in the answers provided by the children and why they marked the wrong answers, he believed that this was the chief difference between the children and adults. According to his theory there are four stages of cognitive development in an individual, sensorimotor stage which occurs from birth to 18 to 24 months, preoperational stage which occurs from 18-24 months and continues up to early stages of childhood. Concrete operational, this stages occur among the children aged 7 to 12 months and formal operational which indicates the journey from adolescence to adulthood. He was the first psychologist to develop a systematic study of the cognitive development in human beings (Gray MacBlain, 2015). His studies included the cognitive developmental stages in a child, the detailed descriptions of detection of cognition in children. He also developed si mple tests to determine the different levels of cognitive development in children. Piaget did not want to measure the efficiency of the children related with their counting abilities, spelling check or determining their I.Q. (Hartley Ho, 2015). Before the research, done by Piaget everyone believed that children were stupid than the adults, but Piaget proved that children have unique intelligence and their way of thinking is strikingly different from that of the adults. Piagets theory is considered to be a major breakthrough as it helped in bringing a radical change in how people experience children. His theories emphasizes on fostering a better understanding of the children to facilitate their learning process. Coming to the Social development theory of Bandura, this theory is somewhat similar to the behaviorist theory and agrees with classical as well as operant conditioning. According to his theory children learns from their own environment, the people from whom they learn from are called models and there are many models whom the children follow and they also imitate their behaviour and actions (Bandura, 2014). The children observe and learn according to their respective role models and they imitate different types of behavior such as masculine, feminine, anti social and others. The children give attention to these models and imitate their behavior which they have observed, they do not think whether their behavior is appropriate for their gender or not, but they learn from the society and start imitating those gender which are appropriate for their gender. At first, the child will try to imitate those people who will seem to be similar to them and most likely is that they will imitate tho se people who will be closer to their gender. Secondly, a child will respond to the stimuli they receive from their environment (Olson, 2016). For example if a child does something good the parents or others appreciate him/her, in this way they learn that they are doing something right and continue doing so. Moreover according to Bandura, a childs satisfaction, sense of accomplishment and pride plays a huge role in their learning and behavior. According to him intrinsic reinforcement or internal reward has a substantial role to plan instigating children to faster learning. Banduras stress on the internal reinforcement apart from the external factor emphasizes the complicated nature in understanding childrens learning process. In understanding social learning theory it s also essential to consider that learning does not induce a change in behavior amongst the children. His observations are in stark contrast to the Behaviorist notion that emphasizes learning leads to a permanent chang e in behavior. To compare both the theories the cognitive development theory by Piaget is depends on the biological factors, which contribute toward the growth of a person and the social developmental theory by Bandura. The cognitive theory by Piaget tries to find out how the human beings are able to process the various mental activities. Piaget was interested to know how the human beings understand things or gather information. According to him, the chief difference between humans and other creatures is that the humans are able to make out an abstract meaning or find out reason in things. While working with Binet and studying the knowledge ability of young children he observed that every child had a different thought process and they did not answer in the same way as their peers (Fu Hwang, 2018). He theory developed by Piaget focuses more on the ability of the human beings to process the information they receive and the reasoning capability, the social learning theory by Bandura studies the relat ionships of one human with another and how the society teach individuals. Bandura tried to find out link between three things, the psychological process of a person, the behavior of the person and the link between the person and the environment. Bandura is considered to be the father of the cognitivists movement. Both the theories rely somewhat on behaviorism, as they both believed that the environment of a person hugely affects the person in various phases of his/her life (Esmaeili, Tafti, 2016). Piaget was a biologist and he was interested in understanding the way in which a biological organism functions. Bandura stresses that behavior stems from the environment round the individual through the process of observational learning and taking into considerations minute details surrounding the individual. A major chunk of this learning, according to Bandura, includes the process of encoding the behavior of people. Children therefore learn through acute observational process try to imitate these behaviors. If the satisfaction on doing the same is rewarding th ey most likely will repeat the behavior.Behavior is controlled with the help of mental states called schemes an individual utilizes these schemes to designate actions in the world. In the social learning theory according Akin, in the experimental method, the standard procedure is to manipulate one variable, and then measure its effects on another. All this boils down to a theory of personality that says that ones environment causes ones behavior (Strauss, 2017). Thereby proving to the assertion that both theories have a bearing on behaviorism. Both the social learning theory and cognitive theory involve some stages which can be followed. Thus to conclude, this can be said that the two theories have a lot in common and are different in other ways as well, but both the social learning theory and the cognitive developmental theory the human beings learn from their environment adapting with the behavior of the people around them as well as taking note of their attitudes and behavior. The theories make people understand how people learn through observation and imitation. Learning theories therefore help people to possess a constructive idea of how they perceive the world around them. Reference List Bandura, A. (2014). Social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. InHandbook of moral behavior and development(pp. 69-128). Psychology Press. Demetriou, A., Shayer, M., Efklides, A. (Eds.). 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