In today’s session we worked in groups that we were put in to last week to research different theorists. Our theorist was Piaget. We researched that Piaget based his theory on the intellectual development. He also based his theory on his daughter where he then found that there were 4 different stages of development.

• Sensorimotor Stage which happens from the age of 0 – 2years. Where a child’s knowledge comes from physical action and their senses (Sight, sound, taste and smell)
• Preoperational Stage which happens from the age of 2 – 7years. Where a child starts to use words, and understand the environment through play.
• Concrete Operational Stage this stage happens from the age of 7 – 11years. This is where the child starts to be able to use their own thoughts.
• Formal Operational Stage is the final stage which happens from the age of 11years through to adulthood. Which is where a child starts to understand logical thought and orderly thinking.

Pound.L (2012) How Children Learn (Digital Edition)

In our groups we had to present our research through a presentation. My group did our presentation by putting notes on Piaget and his theory, we also found that Jean Piaget:

• Piaget was born in 1896 and died in 1980.
• Became a Doctor of Natural Sciences in 1918.
• In 1921 he became Director of Studies at Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva.
• Became a Professor of Child Psychology in 1929.
• Became a Director of Institute for Educational Sciences at the University of Geneva in 1933.
• In 1938 he became Director of Psychology and Sociology at the University of Lausanne.
• In 1940 he became Director of Experimental Psychology at the University of Geneva.

As a group it was different for us as we hadn’t really worked together properly before which benefitted us and helped our presentation skills for the future. I feel doing presentations helps boost our confidence especially mine as I am usually not comfortable with speaking out loud in front of people. So, I feel it will be good preparation for the future if I qualify and become a teacher. We also started to look at Behaviourism, Constructivist Approaches and Social Constructivist Approaches.

We also partially looked at the theorist B.F Skinner who based his theory on Behaviourism. His theories were demonstrated by doing an experiment on rats, which he found showed that animals and people learn through the consequences of their own actions. We found that with behaviourism asking a child a closed question can be more difficult so you must keep the interaction with the child around the area of work activities that helps the child work. Constructivists Approach we found that it helps stimulate the child’s approach to learning through thinking and experiment. It also provides a rich, varied and stimulating environment. Social Constructivist we found helps your self-esteem as a learner and helps you build on something can do.

Throughout this session I learned a lot about the different theorists and how they discovered their theories, some of them based their experiments through animals and some of them based them through people.