COURSEWORK ON MARIA MONTESSORI AND PHILOSOPHY ON CHILD DEVEOPMENT
1. Discuss the meaning of imagination in the first two planes of development. Imagination is a conscious mental process of evoking ideas or images of objects, events, relations, attributes, or processes never before experienced or perceived. This is particularly true when their content consists of sensory images. Imagination can be either passive or active, according to Anderson, R. Cognitive psychology and its Implications. 4th ed. Freeman, 1995. Psychologists occasionally distinguish between imagination that is passive or reproductive, by which mental images originally perceived by the senses are elicited, and imagination that is active or creative, by which the mind produces images of events or objects that are either insecurely related or unrelated to past and present reality.
Cognitive Psychology being a study of imagination, therefore defines it as a creation of mental images.
The best-known cognitive theory was by Jean Piaget. According to Piaget,
J. The Essential Piaget. Ed. Howard, E. and Jacque, V. Basic, 1997.
Aronson, 1995. Based on his studies and observation, Piaget theorized that children proceed through four distinct stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor stage (birth-age 3), the preoperational stage (age 3-6), the concrete-operational stage (age 6-11), and the formal-operational stage (age12).
During the sensorimotor stage, which lasts from birth to about age 3, understanding is based on immediate sensory experience and actions.
Thought is very practical but lacking in mental concepts and ideas.
In preoperational stage, which spans the preschool years (about ages 3 to 6); children 's understanding becomes more conceptual. Thinking involves mental concepts that are independent of immediate experience, and language enables children to think about unseen events, such as thoughts and feelings. The young child 's reasoning is
References: Anderson, R. Cognitive psychology and its Implications. 4th ed. Freeman, 1995. Piaget, J. The Essential Piaget. Ed. Howard, E. and Jacque, V. Basic, 1997. Aronson, 1995. Roopnarine Jaipul and James Johnson, in their book, Approaches to Early Childhood Education, University Press, 2003. Winnicott, D. Thinking About Children-Montessori. Addison Wesley, 1996. ... Read more: http://www.mightystudents.com/essay/Maria.Montessori.Philosophy.82032#ixzz1Jdb6T6GC