EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES

Best Educational Practices To Use In The 21st Century

APA Research Paper

Best Educational Practices To Use In The 21st Century

Introduction

Child development plays an integral role in developing the personality of the child as he grows up. Majority of students confront learning difficulties in schools due to teaching problems. Parents are very concerned and disappointed when their children have trouble in learning at school. The child with learning problems may be highly active in other curricular activities; although he may try hard to follow the instructions of the teacher and pay full attention in class, but may not be able to grasp the information completely (Havelock et al., 2005).

This paper explores some of the best educational practices to use in the 21st Century according to Jean Piaget and Lee Vygotsky. Jean Piaget and Lee Vygotsky identify important factors that must be in place in order for all children to achieve at high levels in education practices. The main objective of this paper is to develop an approach on how to effectively tackle the learning problem of students through adoption of best learning practices.

Cognitive Development and Student Learning Capacity

Child development is distributed in multiple dimensions that differ according to context and impact on child behavior. Numerous things simultaneously influence the mental, physical, and emotional development of the child. Behavioral responses of the child are consequences of experiences he had in his early stages of life. It is essential to address the key areas related to child development that may create potential problems in learning capacity of the child.

Piagetian Theory

In Piagetian theory of childhood cognitive development, children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their surroundings. Piaget asserts that development takes place in stages and is uniform across individuals regardless of the social environment. Emphasizing the biological nature of cognition, Piaget's cognitive-developmental theory suggests that children adapt to the external world as the structures of their minds develop, just as the structures of the body are adapted to fit with the environment (Wolf et al., 2007). This adaptation is innate and inevitable, and augmented with a need to maintain a balance between children's internal structures and information they gather in their everyday environments.

According to Piaget, each sequential stage of cognitive development is characterized by distinct ways of thinking. During the sensor motor stage, which occurs from birth until 2 years, children think by acting on the world with their senses. Between the ages of 2 and 7 years, children experience the pre-operational stage as they develop symbolic but illogical thinking (Harden, 2001). Until the age of 11 years, children experience a phase known as the concrete operational stage, in which thinking is transformed into more efficient reasoning. Finally, during the formal operational stage, thought becomes a complex, abstract reasoning system, characteristic of adolescence and adulthood (Harden, 2001).

Vygotsky's Theory

Vygotsky theory is based on socio-cultural perspective which asserts that cognitive development occurs in a socio-cultural context that influences the form it takes (Wolf et al., ...