Cognitive Development theory
The cognitive development comprehends the development of intellect, mental capabilities, imagination, thinking, emotion, volition and other mental process.
The teacher’s duty is to assist in the development of his abilities. This development is education. Education that does not result in the development is not worth the name. Function of the human brain are three viz, to know experience and reaching a decision. The process of knowing comprehends perception and-cognitive knowledge. The individual makes use of an object in its absence through employing his imagination and memory. Knowledge also includes reasoning and deciding. It is for the teacher to help the young child in perceiving, imagining, reasoning and reaching decisions.
It is equally the duty of the teachers to understand the child’s problem and look at them from child’s view point. This development enables him to do physical work and play games, he could not when younger. ( Here this is related to individual’s physical skills and strengths) Similarly, a child at the time of his birth or in early childhood cannot be expected to perform such task that require high mental abilities. As he advanced in his age, his mental abilities and capacities gradually are developed and he is able to solve the problems he could not when younger. The growth and development of the mental abilities capacities which help an individual to adjust his behaviour to the ever-changing environment conditions or to enable him to accomplish a task that needs complex cognitive abilities is referred to mental or cognitive development.
In actual there are we have three aspects of behaviour :
- Cognitive
- Psycho-motor
- Affective
Cognitive related to knowledge aspect or mental or intellectual development, psycho-motor to physical and health development and effective to emotional and idea development, A teacher to be effective must make a judicious blend of all these aspects.
Cognitive development implies the development of those basic skills which help us in getting to know the environment, The formation of all awareness of the environment rest on the proper development of five sense i.e. touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight. While the sense are the gateways to all experience in the environment, the child learns from these experiences and develops an understanding of the world around him with the assistances of certain skill which are ‘observation’, ‘memory’, ‘classification’, sequential thinking’, ‘reasoning’ and ‘problem-solving’- Thus all these element help in the development of cognitive behaviour.
Cognitive development is not merely acquiring knowledge and adding to its knowledge must be accompanied by understand and wisdom otherwise it is barren. Cognitive is also described as intellectual or mental development.
Cognitive development or intellectual development is the development of mental abilities and capacities which help the individual to adjust his behaviour to the ever-changing environmental conditions or to enable him to accomplish a task that needs complex cognitive abilities. According to J.S Bruner, “ Intellectual development is the capacity to deal with several choices at the same time”.
According to Terman (1921)- “ Intelligence is the ability to think abstractly.”
According to Burner, “ Cognitive development occurs in three phases - enactive (doing), iconic (object models of pictures ) and symbolic ( signs and symbols). For instance, for a young child recognising what an apple means would be touching or holding or tasting it ( enactive mode ) later on he grows up seeing pictures of it or a model of it (iccnic model) and still later gradually deciphering the world “apple” (symbolic mode ).
PROCESS
The cognitive development process implies the progressive change in the mental process which go on from birth to death. Mental process is an activity on the part of the organism which is of a psychological nature or involved in the mind. There are mental tests to evaluate a specific ability or performance. Cognitive development include various aspects such as development of concepts, perception, language, memory reasoning, thinking, imagination and intelligence.
As said above or mental or intellectual development takes into consideration the development of various mental abilities and capacities. Through the development in the areas of various abilities proceeds simultaneously and is continuous, yet the students have revealed possibility of the difference in the rate of overall mental development at various ages. Similarly, it has also been noted that there is a personality of greater growth and development in one aspect or area of mental activity than in other at one or the other stage of life.
Acquiring conception is another important aspect of the child mental development. A concept is generalised meaning. that is attached to an object or idea. It is the result of one’s perceptual experiences and involves both discrimination and generalisation.
Discrimination begins early in life. Something, the child tries to generalise his perceptual experience and thus begins to acquire concepts. Experience is a great factor in concept formation. In early childhood, the concrete experience in the form of actual object helps the child in the formation of concepts. He tries to develop various concepts from direct experiences.
In later period, vicarious experiences offered by reading, watching movies, attending lectures etc. also provide the base for concept formation. In the later years, not only new concepts are formed, the old concepts may also get a new shape. They may be broadened development or the wrong concepts. can be altogether abandoned. At normally during development concepts go from abstract to concrete, to vague to clear and form in exact to definite, depending on the type of experience one receives as one grows older.
In this way, the concepts of the child in the beginning are characterised by vagueness, indefiniteness and inadequacy. e.g. the child has very poor time concepts. As Crow and Crow put it, “ Time as such mean little to the young child. He cannot distinguish among ‘today’, ‘tomorrow’ and ‘next’ ‘week’ except as they represent words rather than actual duration of time”.
Hence, mental growth and development refers to a process responsible for the development of an individual in all cognitive, mental or intellectual abilities ( interrelated to each other ) like sensation, perception, imagination, memory, reasoning, understanding, generalisation, interpretation, language ability, conceptional ability, problem-solving ability and decision-making ability etc. All these aspect of mental growth and development change, grow and mature with increase in the age of the child due to maturation and learning.
In fact maturation and learning are responsible for controlling the process of mental growth and development. Maturation helps in achieving physical growth and development specifically in terms of the organic growth of the nervous system which in turn help in one’s mental development. Learning in the form of experiences and education helps the mental developmental process to reach to its optimum level.
There is neither a universal pattern of mental growth for all individual nor is the pattern same for all mental abilities.
Latest researchers have concluded that age of cessation of mental growth can-be estimated as 20 or little before or little after 20. However, with such cessation of mental growth development in mental power and capacity is not necessarily stopped.
The knowledge of the trend of mental growth and development and the resulting changes in the various types of mental abilities may prove quite useful for the teacher to plan and organise his teaching - learning material, teaching - learning situation and environment to ensure for the maximum growth and development of the mental abilities of his student for their own as well as social welfare.
RELATED RESOURCES
RELATED RESOURCES
0 comments:
Post a Comment