Theories of Child Development.
Unit 331 Understanding children and young person’s development.
Task B2 (Ref: 2.3) Theories of child development.
An understanding of child development is essential; it allows us to fully appreciate the cognitive, emotional, physical, social and educational growth that children go through from birth and into early adulthood. Child development is a multidisciplinary subject; it draws on various academic fields, including psychology, neuroscience, sociology, paediatrics, biology and genetics. Child development is a non-negotiable study subject for everyone who works with children, child care educationalists and care workers need to be trained thoroughly and that means learning about every aspect of how children develop and learn.
There are many different approaches to studying child development; integrated development looks at whole child under different areas of development for example Physical, Intellectual, Language, Emotional, Social and Spiritual (PILESS). Whilst the traditional approach to child development has been to look at normative development; the stages and milestones of development and the ages in which a child will normally be able to achieve them. Many psychologists have studied how we develop and these studies led to theories. Theories help people to predict how a child may develop in the future. The theories behind the study of child development came from the work of a few people and the ideas they got from the research they conducted. This research has provided us with evidence for and against the differing theories of how children develop.
Historically theories of child development have tended to fall into two groups, the ‘leave it to nature’ or ‘Laissez Faire’ theory, where they take the view that learning is closely linked with development, and the social-constructivist theory, which says that children learn what they are shown by adults.
In the 18th century the ‘leave it to nature’ theory was born, it stated that children
Task B2 (Ref: 2.3) Theories of child development.
An understanding of child development is essential; it allows us to fully appreciate the cognitive, emotional, physical, social and educational growth that children go through from birth and into early adulthood. Child development is a multidisciplinary subject; it draws on various academic fields, including psychology, neuroscience, sociology, paediatrics, biology and genetics. Child development is a non-negotiable study subject for everyone who works with children, child care educationalists and care workers need to be trained thoroughly and that means learning about every aspect of how children develop and learn.
There are many different approaches to studying child development; integrated development looks at whole child under different areas of development for example Physical, Intellectual, Language, Emotional, Social and Spiritual (PILESS). Whilst the traditional approach to child development has been to look at normative development; the stages and milestones of development and the ages in which a child will normally be able to achieve them. Many psychologists have studied how we develop and these studies led to theories. Theories help people to predict how a child may develop in the future. The theories behind the study of child development came from the work of a few people and the ideas they got from the research they conducted. This research has provided us with evidence for and against the differing theories of how children develop.
Historically theories of child development have tended to fall into two groups, the ‘leave it to nature’ or ‘Laissez Faire’ theory, where they take the view that learning is closely linked with development, and the social-constructivist theory, which says that children learn what they are shown by adults.
In the 18th century the ‘leave it to nature’ theory was born, it stated that children