Cognitivist Learning Theory

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Introduction
Education is essential to every student’s life as well as their future. Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Learning involves a person acquiring the knowledge or skills that is being taught to them. Learning can occur through methods such as observation, listening or through hands on learning.
Students come to school from different cultural backgrounds and with different learning styles. In order to cater to the students teachers have to work hard to try and meet the needs of all their students to promote free, equal access to quality education. Therefore knowledge, skill, beliefs and attitudes are important for understanding and improving educational …show more content…

Cognitivist focuses on how people think, understand, and know, to solve problems and learn on the thinking domain. Learning becomes meaningful when it is connected to what already know. That is, when new information is connected to old knowledge. Learning involves obtaining and modifying knowledge, skills, strategies, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors to understand old or new information. Learners role are actively participated in the learning process. Students use various strategies to construct and process their own understanding using their brain. Piaget divided the process of cognitive development into four periods and subordinate stages: the period of sensory-motor intelligence (ages 0-2), preoperational period (ages 2-7), concrete operational period (ages 7-12), and formal operational period (ages 12-14) (Piaget, 1952, 1969; Piaget & Inhelder, 1969). Piaget believed that all children try balance between assimilation and accommodation, which is achieved through a mechanism Piaget called equilibration. As children progress through the stages of cognitive development, it is important to maintain a balance between applying previous knowledge (assimilation) and changing behavior to account for new knowledge (accommodation). Equilibration helps explain how children can move from one stage of thought into the next. Anderson and Krathwol (2000) have slightly modified Bloom’s original taxonomy, adding ‘creating’ new knowledge. Cognitivism is "the psychology of learning which emphasizes human cognition or intelligence as a special endowment enabling man to form hypotheses and develop intellectually”. The aim for education, according to Piaget, is to make individuals who are critical, creative and inventive discoverers. Pupils play an active role in an active classroom where learning is predominantly happen by discovery techniques, with emphasis on creative

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