Childhood Development

Child development refers to how children develop abilities to do more complex things as they are getting older. There are different child development stages but the ones taken into account for this course are: infancy from birth to 2 years old, early childhood from 3 to 8 years old and middle childhood from 9 to 11 years old. It is really important to know about this child development stages because as teachers they will guide us to help children (students), understand the way they are developing their abilities and skills, recognize some factors that may have affected or is affecting their development. 

During this weeks we have studied different theories about childhood development. We studied Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Lev Vygotsky and Erik Erikson. 

Jean Piaget whose theory is named Cognitive Development. His theory refers to how children´s mind work and develop. Children, according to Piaget, cannot do certain activities until they are psychologically mature enough to do so. Piaget´s cognitive development theory is divided into four stages:

•  Sensori-motor (o to 2 years): 
• Pre-operational (2 to 7 years): 
• Concrete operational (7 to 11 years): 
• Formal operational (11 to up): 

 Erik Erikson was interested in how children socialize and how this affects personality. Erikson´s psychosocial development theory is divided into eight stages but the first four are related with child development : 

1. Trust vs. mistrust
2. Autonomy vs. shame
3. Initiative vs. guilt
4. Industry vs. inferiority
5. Identity vs. role confusion
6. Intimacy vs. isolation
7. Generativity vs. stagnation
8. Integrity vs. despair

Lev Vygotsky states the importance of social interaction and culture in the development of children. His theory is known as Social development theory. Vygotsky emphasizes on: culture affecting cognitive development,
social factors to contributing to cognitive development and the role of language in cognitive development.

Lawrence Kohlberg develops the Moral development theory. He explain how morality develops through people is growing. The moral development stages are: 

• Pre-conventional 

1. Obedience and punishment orientation

2. Self interest orientation

• Convetional

3. Interpersonal accord and conformity

4. Authority and social order maintaining orientation.

• Post-conventional

5. Social contract orientation

6. Universal ethical principles

It is very important to take into account all these theories and not base in only one. As a teacher it is amazing to increase my knowledge on childhood development in order to put it in to practice and be aware of human changes in the different ages.