Interactional Cognitive Theories of Mental Development
Interactional Cognitive Theories of Mental Development
The interactional theories play a significant role in terms of causing mental growth and development amongst the students. The teachers have to lead the students into the realm of the educational exploration so that they can increase the existing body of knowledge. The teachers have to do their job effectively in order to create a successful nation into the future. The neuroscientist, Jean Piaget argueed that humans go through four distant stages of learning and adapting during the early childhood. The featured genius established that first stage of development included processing of sensory information. All of one’s senses gather the sensory information, and then, they develop early knowledge base of the individual that he or she uses in order to form decisions and worldviews as well. The second stage is pre-operational, and during that, an individual is looking and planning to do things on his or her own. The stage of pre-operational fosters the will and wish of doing practical tasks. The experts call the third stage as concrete operations where the behaviors of the person are solidified with the passage of time. Final stage includes the formalization of behaviors, and that causes people to experience sophistication and growth regarding their behaviors. The cognitive development cannot occur without cultivating objectivism, empiricism, and ability to see and find physical evidence.
The work of Bruner established that there are two stages of cognitive development, and the first one includes the gathering of data and information about the surrounding world. Then, later, the surrounding culture influences the information in the mind of the children and gives them specific meanings as well. The children develop three kinds of representations. The first one is enactive representation that allows them to summarize past events with detail. The second one is selective representation; it includes generating the summary of the past events. However, in a specified and objective manner, and finally, the humans learn to assign symbols and meanings to physical objects of the world in the light of their personal experiences. The educational system has to allow the kids to use all of the methods of representation in order to express and articulate their feelings and emotions respectively. The work of Bruner argues that humans tend to learn, unlearn and relearn as they proceed into the later stages of their lives so there is no end of learning, and the conjuncture of Burner cancels the believes of Piaget that conveyed that humans can only learn during the early stages of their lives only.
Finally, the teacher has to play a powerful role in the process of facilitating learning in students, and for that reason, he or she has to integrate enactive learning with other forms as well. The teacher has to ensure that the students must have an adequate level of theoretical understanding of the subject before they can attempt to solve the relevant problems of the practical nature.
The symbolic representation of the stimulus can jolt creativity and deeper understanding in the students, and experts believe that a picture stands for a thousand words. In the light of the previous discussion, one needs to incorporate pictures and images in his or her teaching style in order to help the students in grasping different natural and artificial processes that operate in the world.
References
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
