Teaching the Concrete Operational Child

During the first weeks of the Teaching Practicum I course we have studied different theories that exist about physical, psychosocial, and cognitive development of children. With the objective of getting as much information as possible about this topic, we performed a research about the theories of Jean Piaget, Lev Vigotsky, Erik Erikson, and Lawrence Khelberg. Each one of them had a theory about the way human beings develop in their childhood, and I have to say that I found this information fascinating, and extremely interesting and useful.

I believe that most of us give for granted the way that we have all gone through a process of development in different areas of our lives during the first years of our existence, and by studying the theories previously mentioned I have realized that such process is influenced by many external factors that we should pay attention to, to be able to understand the way children behave. For example, Jean Piaget stated that we go through a cognitive development when we are children, and that we must go through different stages: from acquiring knowledge, until we actually learn how to use it.  Lev Vigotsky, did not disagree with Piaget's theory, but he added an external factor: social interaction, and created his own theory about how social interaction influences in one's development. Similarly, Erik Erikson took into consideration social interaction to create a theory that, to my opinion, puts Piaget's and Erikson's theories together; the Psychosocial Development theory. Finally, Lawrence Kehlberg decided to study the Moral Development of people, going through different stages in which humans acquire and develop a sense of morality.

As a future teacher, I believe it is really important for us to know about this theories and to consider them in order to understand the way our young students will behave. After studying each of them carefully I realized that all of them have a degree of certainty. I think we should not try to stick to only one of those theories, because time changes, and so does people, so just one of those theories might not completely explain the way children develop nowadays. I believe that it is important to consider all of those theories and try to get the best from each one. I have really liked this topic, because it is important to keep in mind that we will not be working with machines, but with human beings that have emotions, feelings, and principles. We must learn to understand them, and to influence in a positive way in their development process.