Reflection on Cognitive Development

Children are all unique individuals.  They don’t develop at the same rate, they are all raised in different household and cultures, have different physical traits and distinct personalities.  Most researchers agree that these differences are due to both the child’s biology (nature) as well as their environment (nurture).  With all these differences, it seems almost futile to try and generalize the process by which a child’s mental capacity grows yet many theories of cognitive development have been created to do just that.  What I am learning most during this quarter in class is that there are very few hard and fast rules on how a child develops, but a teacher needs to use these development theories as a framework to guide their lessons with enough flexibility to allow for the individual differences.

I am planning on teaching early elementary so I was most interested in reading about Piaget’s preoperational and concrete operational stages of development.  How well a child performs on conservation tasks or the level of abstract knowledge that a student possesses are great tools for evaluating their level of cognition.  This can help me, as a future educator, determine how to tailor the lesson so as to maximize its effectiveness.  Knowing that most children in the concrete operational stage can readily solve problems when given concrete objects to manipulate yet struggle with abstract or hypothetical situations stresses how important it is for me to provide them with lessons that are highly creative and visual (Pressley, p. 64, 2007).  Counting currency, practicing place value with groups of objects and picture book story times are all beneficial for students in the first grade.  Another proposal of Piaget’s which really resonated with me was that of cognitive conflict, which is “the situation that occurs when a learner does not have cognitive structures that permit understanding of environmental stimuli” (Pressley, p. 90, 2007).  If a student encounters a problem that requires just slightly more cognitive ability than they possess then this results in cognitive effort being put forth to solve the problem.  This in turn causes their mental capacity to grow and they start off towards the next level of development.  This helps me understand why it is important to challenge a student with a lesson, yet not to overwhelm them with a feeling of hopelessness by giving them something too far beyond their ability.  It’s a fine line to tread.

My growing knowledge of cognitive development theories is being paired with that of the biological processes by which the brain functions.  I find Medina’s Brain Rules to be the most fascinating (and entertaining) information this quarter.  By viewing everything through the purely biological lens of how a brain works, Medina has really opened my eyes as to how we should be teaching the next generation to be successful learners.  I will certainly make every effort to implement practices that align with the brains ability to function to its fullest capacity in my classroom.  This will mean properly spacing the information in manageable chunks, with lots of rest and repetition, as well as separate environments and stations for different subjects.  Most importantly I intend to implement lessons that contain a lot of exploration and discovery involving a lot of “learn by doing” activities.  School should be less about the memorization of facts and more about the development of concepts through inductive learning.  My favorite brain rule of Medina’s is the one he isn’t able to prove and that is the importance of curiosity (Medina, p. 259, 2014).  Fostering that desire for knowledge without squashing it is my number one goal as an educator.

Medina, J. (2014). Brain rules. Seattle: Pear Press.

Pressley, M., McCormick, C.B. (2007). Child and Adolescent Development for educators. New York: The Guilford Press.