Constructivist Approach To Cognitive Development Analysis

Traditionally the approaches of theorists have been divided into types. These are three key types of approach to cognitive development: • Constructivist approach. This focuses on children as active learners. Theyâ€TMre interested in how children learn from their experiences, and how they learn to understand the world around them. Outlined in Jerome Bruner's theory “that the learners actively construct their own knowledge based upon the things they know now and have known in the past―. • Behaviourist approach. This focuses on the way children respond in response to the various stimuli and reinforcements. Theyâ€TMre particularly interested in the pattern of responses over time. • Social Development Theory. Social development theorists
Theories of Development
Piaget
Psychologist Jean Piaget theory centred on the intellectual development of children. Concepts such as schemas, egocentrism, and assimilation are central to Piaget's theory. According to Piaget, children progress through a series of four key stages of cognitive development. Each stage demonstrates how children understand the world.
Through observations of his own children, Piaget developed a stage theory of intellectual development that included four distinct stages: the sensorimotor stage, from birth to age 2; the preoperational stage, from age 2 to 7; the concrete operational stage, from age 7 to 11; and the formal operational stage, which begins in adolescence and spans into adulthood.
Freud
Psychology's most famous figure is also one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Sigmund Freud's work and theories helped shape our views of childhood, personality, memory, sexuality and therapy. Other major thinkers have contributed work that grew out of Freud's legacy, while others developed new theories out of opposition to his ideas.
While rooted in many of the basic concepts of traditional learning theory, Bandura believed that direct reinforcement could not account for all types of learning.
While the behavioural theories of learning suggested that all learning was the result of associations formed by conditioning, reinforcement, and punishment, Bandura's social learning theory proposed that learning can also occur simply by observing the actions of others. His theory added a social element, arguing that people can learn new information and behaviours by watching other people. Known as observational learning (or modelling), this type of learning can be used to explain a wide variety of behaviours.
Skinner
Skinner was an American psychologist best-known for his influence on behaviourism. Skinner referred to his own philosophy as 'radical behaviourism' and suggested that the concept of free will was simply an illusion. All human action, he instead believed, was the direct result of conditioning. Actions that are followed by good consequences are reinforced and therefore those behaviours are more likely to occur again in the future. Behaviours that result in negative consequences, on the other hand, become less likely to occur