• Compare And Contrast Two Theories Of Human Development

Theories of child development have been researched and published over the years. These researches have been done by popular theorists four of whom are Piaget (1896 –1980), Vygotsky (1896 –1934), Ausubel (1918 –2008) and Kohlberg (1927 –1987). First and foremost let me define the term theory. A theory is a collection of related statements; the principal function of which is to summarize and explain observations. It is in a sense an invention designed to make sense of what we know or suspect. Developmental theory on the other hand is a systematic statement of principles and generalizations that provides a coherent framework for understanding how and why people change as they grow older. The writer in her essay will outline two theories of development Lawrence Kohlberg and Jean Piaget who spoke about the moral and cognitive development respectively.

In this essay I will compare and contrast the theoretical approaches, Cognitive Development and Social Learning, to children’s development. Cognitive Development is the ability to think and understand. Many theorists based their research on cognitive development within children, one of the most common theorists being Jean Piaget, who formed his ‘theory of cognitive development’ (McLeod, 2009).

Theories of Development Three different theorists were considered in this assignment. Two children were used to explore the theories of development by Piaget, Vygotsky and Kohlberg. One child tested was a fourteen-year-old female named Kari. Kari is currently at the grade 8 level and performs well academically.

In this essay I intend to discuss two psychological theories of development; The psychodynamic approach and the behavioural approach. In order to do this, I will outline each theory and explain how it accounts for psychological development, health and behaviour of the individual. In addition to this, I will explain how an understanding of these theories relates to care and would help a care professional to support an individual in a care setting.

The development of children differs from individual to individual, depending on their unique temperament, leaning style, family, and upbringing. Research theorists such as Jean Piaget and Erick Erickson have endeavored to organize child development into universal, predictable sequences of growth that typically occurs in most children. In this paper I will be discussing my life story from infancy to adolescence and intergrading the theorists, domains, models that I have learned in child development classes.

Many psychologists have studied psychosocial development. The two examples are Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) and Erik Erikson (1902-1994). Piaget was the first psychologist to efficiently study cognitive development. His work includes a theory of children’s cognitive development, comprehensive observational studies of cognizance in children, and experiments to reveal different cognitive abilities. According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure which are inherited and then developed. To Piaget, cognitive development was an advanced restructuring of mental procedures as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience (nature-nurture). Children construct an understanding of the world around them, and then experience inconsistencies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment.

What makes a person what they are? Why does a person do what they do? Where does personality come from and how does it grow? These are some frequently asked questions when discussing the topic of personality. The latter of the questions is actually an answer in itself. Personality does originate from a specific point, and from then on it continues to grow and become exponentially more complex. This core point from which personality begins and the growth of it will be discussed in the sections to follow, but first we must look at certain assumptions that are commonly made when developing a personality theory. Assumptions The first of these assumptions concerns whether one believes that the behaviors, any type of action, a person exhibits are produced by conscious choices and decisions, also known as free will, or "determined" by forces beyond one's control. I believe in the free will explanation, but not the type of free will commonly imagined. Humans do ultimately have the power to choose their actions, however the extreme influence of other factors, such as heredity, environment, and learned behaviors, may make it seem like a persons actions were predetermined. For example, if a starving people were put into positions where they could either eat a Subway turkey round placed in front of them or just sit there and stare and stare at it, common sense shows that these people would eat. However, it is possible that one person, like an anorexic, would just sit and stare at the sandwich.

Although there is a number of famous psychologists in the world that have found notable discoveries, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson and Lawrence Kohlberg are twentieth century scholars. In 1936, Jean Piaget developed a systematic study of cognitive development. In 1958, Lawrence Kohlberg established stages to moral development based off of Piaget’s earlier theory. Erik Erikson developed a theory on psychosocial development in 1959. Each theory is unique in understanding the mind and its behaviors. These developments are similar in the sense of psychology but focus on different aspects of life.

The developmental theories of Jean Piaget’s should help us understand that the things the the children are going through are all normal. And helps us understand what stage the child is going through and what other parts of that stage to expect. And when the child is misbehaving you understand why they are behaving that way. Erik Erikson’s theory on the developmental theories is very similar to Jean Piaget’s, but when a child is misbehaving it helps us also see at what age they had developmental issues and how we could try to fix them.

Since human development explained differently by many developmentalists, some explanations are agreeable and some are not. But their ideas still influence many of us. The methods which are used to study children’s development, helps understand changes across the human lifespan. We have learned from Jean Piaget’s the cognitive theory that there are stages, and substages for logical thinking, and how the child builds different types of scheme, and the universal changes in thinking happen in the early childhood. I agree that this exercise assisted me to gain understanding the point of the theory.