Mrs. Maneri's Blog: Development and Learning Theories

Throughout history there have been philosophers that have come up with many theories to explain how humans develop and learn. Some of the more famous philosophers include Vygotsky, Piaget, Kohlberg, and Erikson. This blog post will talk about 5 learning theories that came from these philosophers and how they can be implemented in a classroom setting.

1. Piaget: Cognitive Development
Piaget did not believe that intelligence was fixed, he believed that it was molded by biological maturation as well as how the child interacts with its surroundings. There are three parts of his theory Schemas, Adaptation, and Stages of Cognitive Development. I am going to focus on the stages of cognitive development. Here is a chart that shows each stage.

psyc479.weebly.com/genetic-epistemology.html

Its important to note that even though most diagrams label an age group for each stage Piaget did not claim that the stages would be reached at or by a particular age.

Implementing this theory into the classroom would first involve knowing which stage the student or students were currently in. Once I understand the stage I could manipulate my lesson plan so that the students could better understand the concepts. Our text book gives a great example of a student who is entering the concrete phase. "If, for example, we wish to teach him about fractions, we should not draw diagrams... we should allow him to divide concrete objects into parts." (Crain page 144).

2. Piaget: Schema
Next we are going to talk about another aspect of Piaget's theory, Schema. This is the idea that repeatable actions build meaning. When a child is in a familiar situation they are able to explain and perceive what is around them. For example, when I was a young child I understood what happened in a drive thru restaurant, we would drive up, order, pay, get our food at the window, and while at the window you could smell the food cooking inside. One day, I was about 3 or 4 year old, my mother said we were going to get Mcdonald's, what I didn't know what that we were going to the bank first (drive thru ATM). When we pulled up to the bank window I assumed we were at Mcdonalds and proclaimed loudly "MMMM I can smell those fries!!", which was probably something my mom had said at some point before. My mom loved to embarrass me with that story, but its a great example of Schema.

In the classroom Schema can be implemented specifically in a daily routine, if students know that everyday when they return from lunch they are expected to pull out a book a silently read, they will start to do it automatically. In the bigger picture Schema is started on the first day of preschool or kindergarten, students learn that if they have something to say they need to raise their hand or if they have to use the restroom they need to ask for permission. These are rules that stick with them throughout their education.

3. Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development: Stage 1
Kohlberg theory of moral development had 3 main stages, and each stage has sub stages. The three main stages are Pre-conventional morality, Conventional Morality, and Post conventional Morality. This section is going to focus on the first stage, pre-conventional morality. This stage is when the child does not have its own moral code, but instead bases their code on the code that their parents and other authority members have shown them. This children know the rules based on the consequences they are given for breaking the rules, and fear of consequences is enough to keep them from breaking the rules. There are two substages within this stage.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html

This stage is usually for children below the age of 9, and would be seen in classrooms below 4th grade. This can be seen very strongly in kindergarten and first grade classrooms that use a colored card behavior chart as classroom management. This classroom management technique starts all students day with a yellow card, if they are good they get to move up to a green card, and if they are disruptive or not following rules they have to move down to a red card. Students know what expectations are to earn a green card or a red card, and are usually very upset when they have a red card, because they know its a negative consequence. This technique does now work for older students because the red card itself isn't a punishment if you know better. Imagine an adult instead of going to jail for committing a crime the judge just made you change your card from yellow to red.

4. Vygotsky: Language and Private Speech

Vygotsky believed that social interactions were the main way that humans learn language. He believed that in the beginning parts of life language and thought are separate until joining together around the age of 3. Thoughts become less of a general memory of things and more of a internalized verbal conversation. Children use private speech to plan activities and strategies, the book gives an example of a mother telling her child that they are going to the park and she should grab her shovel and pail. Later when the child is in the private speech phase they are able to recall this and when the mother says they are going to the park the child will ask themselves where their shovel and pail is. Children are more likely to use private speech when they don't have a parent or teacher readily available to help them work through a problem.

In the classroom the teacher can help students create private speech while reading independently by giving them examples of questions to ask themselves. The teacher can do this by reading out loud to the class often and asking the same questions like "what is a theme in this story?", "which characters are the main characters?", "does this story have a moral?". Repeating these questions and discussing them out loud withe the class will help the students ask themselves these questions while reading independently.

5. Erikson: Stages of Psychosocial Development: Stage 4
Erikson believed that throughout life humans go through 8 stages of psychosocial development, with 5 of the stages being before the age of 18. Each stage gave the person a crisis that could have a good or bad effect of their personality development and each stage built off of the stage before it. The stage I am going to focus on today is stage 4, Industry vs Inferiority. Stage 4 takes place between the ages of 5 and 12, which is basically all of elementary school. In this stage parents, teachers, and peers will be a major source of building or hurting the child's self-esteem. The child will want to gain approval from the important people in their life by showing competence in areas that are valued by society and will gain pride for accomplishments and shame for failures.

As a teacher it is important to help students going through this phase by encouraging them to work hard on things they are struggling with, let them know that it is okay to fail as long as you keep trying. The teacher should help their peers to make positive and helpful criticism if another student is struggling. Basically just make sure that the student feels supported in their faults and modesty in their accomplishments.

Work Cited

Crain, W. C. (2016). Theories of development: Concepts and applications. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Genetic Epistemology. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://psyc479.weebly.com/genetic-epistemology.html

Jean Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html