Reflection on Cognitive Development Essay

This reflective essay speaks ab out Educational psychology, a good teacher, oecumenic principles of unwrapment, the point and cognitive give wayment, Piagets theory of cognitive maturement and Lev Vygotskys sociocultural perspective. Educational Psychology plays a very important role in our daily lives as it helps us to understand and develop strategies to improve the intoxicateing edge.An effective teacher is star who is organized, not biased, patient, and flexible and knows how to teach medium and wispy paced learners. The essay as well as speaks near Development persons develop physically, socially and also personally. It also speaks about the divergent ways in which development takes place. The brain begins to lateralize soon after birth and therefore submit specific functions to carry out. Piagets theory of cognitive development speaks about the quad stages while Lev Vygotsky educates us on his sociocultural perspective.Educational Psychology is important to me as a teacher in discipline as it helps me to understand my students behaviour and the strategies that I can enforce to help them. Life is a process and therefore we go through changes from conception to death. This process is called development. We develop physically, socially, and also cognitively .The changes that occur betimes in our lives, are generally assumed to be for the emend and to result in behaviour that is more(prenominal) adaptive, more organized, more effective and more complex (Mussen, Kogner, Kagan, 1984).I also learnt that development takes place at contrastive rates and that is persons may be more coordinated than others and also be more mature in their thinking. Secondly, development takes place orderly as we learn to babble before we talk and the final one is that development takes place gradually, that is you know the letters of the alphabet before you can spell words. Finally, the one that stands out to me most is maturation.Maturation deals with the natur al changes that take place in our bodies. The changes in the climate dont affect the natural changes that will take place in our body only severe ailment or malnutrition. The brain is also important in cognitive development as each disclose is given a specific function to carry out. However, the different parts of the brain combine in order to perform human activities and constructunderstanding. There are somewhat terms that are associated with the brain and the first is synapses, as the word suggests they are tiny spaces between neurons and that chemical messages are sent across the gaps. Hippocampus really took me by surprise as the first syll adequate to(p) hippo is the name of an animal. However it essence recalling new information and recent experiences. Myelination is also very new to me and it means influencing thinking and hearing.The basic tendencies in thinking help us to organize our thoughts and behaviours into coherent systems. Our thinking process and knowledge is now develop through adaptation and this is adjusting ourselves to the environment. Assimilation, accommodation also takes place. Sometimes it seems as if I am searching for some balance in my thinking and this is known as equilibration.Piagets theory of cognitive development is not foreign to me as I did in Introduction to Psychology. I know that there are four stages and each stage has a different age group. The fist stage is the sensorimotor stage and children at this stage are usually zero to two years of age. The most significant things that occur at this stage are the children develop object permanence, perform goal directed activities, use there senses and also uses imitation. The pre-operational stage is age two to seven years. Children are able to use symbolic function for fount taking a broom and riding it saying that it is a donkey.There motor skills are universe developed and therefore they would want to feed themselves. In the concrete operational stage children are able to think logically, can engage in a conversation and reversibility, classification and seriation takes place. The final stage is the black-tie operational stage and they are able to reason well and they also develop adult opportunism and that is the heightened self consciousness that is reflected in adolescents and the belief that others are interested in their thoughts as they do. It also speaks about them having a sense of uniqueness and wants to be noticed by others. However some students will develop reckless behaviour including suicidal thoughts and drug abuse.In my opinion Vygotskys theory is much better than Piagets. He placed moreemphasis on the development of wrangle than Piaget. He also states that language is the most important symbol in the development of language. As a child I use to talk to myself and now I know that it is private mother tongue. I really believe that private speech guides an individual into making the right decisions and also into problem solv ing. The most important part of his theory is the regularize of proximal development. My understanding of it is that at a particular stage in ones feel given guidance and support will help me as an individual to master something.Children first learn pronounciation and they shy away from those words that are hard to pronounce. For example my three year old son says begetable instead of vegetable. I also believe that adults should use language in the childs study experience and dont use high flown words because the child should be able to revive to what is being said. Vocabulary, grammar and syntax are developed at around age five. However parents can steal books, read to their children, take them on a nature walks and also answer their questions so as to develop their language.