Jean Piaget and Age Essay

1. Summarise the main development of a child from the age range 0-2 years, 3-5 years and 5-8 years:

Developments are the various skills and abilities humans have, including how we acquire them.
It is important to realize that all children are individuals, so although they will go through all the stages of development they will not necessarily do so at the same time.

The term ‘average child’ is often used when talking about children’s development. We should not, as practitioners, consider any child to be average, but focus on the child as whole.
There are four stages of human growth, which are:
Childhood (which in stages are known as infancy, early childhood, pre-school and school age), Adolescence, as well as Adulthood and Later Adulthood.

Main development of a child aged 0-2 years:

The first two years of a child is when childhood begins, known as the infancy stage, this lasts from birth up to eighteen months of age. A baby develops from a new born, to lifting their head, sitting unsupported, and will be able to kick or throw a ball at the age of two years.

Paraphrasing:
Atherton J S (2013:2) learning and teaching; Piaget’s development theory
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a Swiss biologist who became interested in the intellectual development of children. Piaget studied children’s understanding through observing, talking and listening to them while they worked on exercises he set. ( Atherton, 2013)

Piaget applied the same principles of adaptation to human cognitive development. To study the development of any human kill, birth is a good starting point.

From birth to approximately two years is a time when infants have relatively little competence. This is called the sensorimotor stage, this means that the child is not aware of objects or people, who are not always present at any given moment in time. A lack of permanence, according to Piaget, means if a person or object has disappeared, to the infant it is gone forever.

Arnold Gesell (1880-1961) was an American psychologist and a pediatrician, who believed that development, can be explained as a biological process that automatically occurs over time in a predictable and sequential stage.

He was one of the first psychologists to systematically describe children’s physical, social and emotional achievements, particularly in the first five years of life. It is thought the children will acquire knowledge automatically and naturally the older they become and physically grow, on the condition they are healthy.

To look at a three month old baby and at a three year old child, the difference would be obvious. The first few years of a child’s life they grow and develop at a rapid rate.
A three month old is completely dependent on their carer for everything, whereas a three year old has become their individual with likes and dislikes and are mobile, and can communicate.

All children grow and develop at different rates, realistic milestones should be considered, ensuring we do not underestimate children, nor expect too much from them.

The term given to the growth of babies through childhood is called ‘Child development’. Children will go through the same stages of development, and do so at carrying speeds. For example, same child will be confident at walking by their first birthday, whereas others will only start to take their first steps closer to the age of two.

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was born in Russia, and was interested in the role culture played in child development. He believed that hands on experience and interpersonal interactions within particular culture groups were the way children learnt.

Vygotsky introduced the notion of the zone of proximal development, this being an innovative metaphor describing the distance between the actual development level of a person as potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance.

He uses the term ‘scaffolding’ to describe changing levels of support provided to the learner. Over time of teaching

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