Bacharel

Developmental and Learning Theories
Freud Erikson Piaget Maslow

Questions Asked
• Questions asked by educators include: – How do children develop? – What do children learn and in what order? – What affects learning? – Do all children develop in the same ways? – What are the similarities and differences in growth and development? • Early Childhood Education draws from several fields of study in order to answer these questions. • Educators then apply the finding from research to their classroom practices.

Skinner Vygotsky

Gesell Gardner

Bandura

Bronfenbrenner

The Nature of Development
• The child is a blend of many parts that interrelate in different ways and change with growth over time. Biological processes describe changes in the body. • Cognitive processes are those changes in one’s thought, intelligences and language. • Socioemotional processes reflect changes in an individual’s relationships with other people, emotions and personality. • (Gordon and Browne, pages 130-131).

Nature vs Nurture
• Is a child’s development due more to maturation or experience?
– Heredity versus environment

• Rousseau
– Child is born with natural, or innate goodness

• Locke
– Tabula rasa – Children entered the world with a clean slate on which all experiences and learning is written – Asserted that is was nurture that mattered

• Educators continue to ask:
– Is growth smooth and continuous or more stage-like?

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Developmental and Learning Theories
• Psychodynamic Theory – Sigmund Freud • Psychosocial – Erik Erikson • Behaviorist Theory – B.F. Skinner • Cognitive Theory – Jean Jacques Piaget • Sociocultural Theory – Lev Vygotsky • Ecological Theory – Urie Bronfenbrenner • Multiple Intelligences – Howard Gardner • Maturation Theory – Arnold Gesell • Humanistic Theory – Abraham Maslow

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Main points Experiences in early childhood influence later development. Assumes sexual factors are major factors, even in early