Theories of Development - Essay Example

" When the theory of cognitive development is applied to one's individual life, it can be surely said that it has got its own influence. This statement can be justified in the following way. As individuals, we learn many things as we grow up. Our knowledge levels are not the same when compared to our childhood days to our present-day life. As we progress in our learning period in schools, colleges, and universities, our knowledge levels definitely improve, and the number of things about which we get aware increases drastically.

Socio-cultural Theory The socio-cultural theory was brought into light by a psychologist named Lev Vygotsky who hailed from the Soviet Union. According to sociocultural theory, thinking and speaking are two different concepts. Though according to the socio-cultural theory, thinking and speaking are two separate concepts, both of them are strongly interrelated. According to Vygotsky, individual cognition occurs in a social situation. They cannot be separated which correlates with the integrated nature of holism.

The group is therefore vital to the learning process for all initiates who learn higher forms of mental activity via more knowledgeable peers and adults who jointly construct and transfer this activity primarily through language (Jaramillo, 1996). "Constructivism has a spectrum of contributors whose divergent theoretical orientations subsequently provided this theory with a range of teaching styles. Although one end of the spectrum is delineated by Piaget's notion that we learn in various stages of development, rather than in leaps and bounds, Vygotsky's view is a nonlinear learning sequence, which constitutes the other.

Vygotsky's version of constructivism, then, is a non-development view of education whereby a child's intellectual personality and socio-moral knowledge are "constructed" by students internalizing concepts through self-discovery (Jaramillo, 1996). In the classroom setting, students learn through interacting with their peers, teacher, manipulative, and their contextual setting (Jaramillo, 1996)." This theory when applied to individual lives is something different from the cognitive theory of development.