The Progression of Knowledge, Competence and Understanding

The Progression of Knowledge, Competence and Understanding

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When thinking about cognitive development from birth, psychologists

generally have traditionally fallen into two categories, believing in

the organismic viewpoint, or the mechanistic viewpoint. The organismic

view of the world is that by continuous interaction with the

environment, and people are proactively helping to shape their own

development. It is this viewpoint that is concerned with stages of

development, and it is important to note that progression to a higher

stage is of course possible, but it is not possible to regress back to

a lower stage. Each stage is different from the previous stage, as it

has incorporated new ideas and values. Of course, psychologists who

think in this way do not necessarily agree at what points in a persons

life such stages would occur, or about the changes that occur. The

Mechanistic viewpoint is held by behaviourists. The emphasis on this

viewpoint is that cognitive development happens in a more continuous

way, rather than at specific stages or points of time. This theory

believes that people are not actively shaping their development, but

have a passive role.

Knowledge, competence and understanding can be seen to all be

components of human intelligence, and intelligence is a way in which

we can assess cognitive development in children (including knowledge,

competence and understanding)

Piaget is perhaps one of the best known example of the organismic