Piaget and Maslow: Teaching the whole child Exceptional educators keep their fingers on the pulse of what their students need, in order to teach them effectively. Examining Piaget and Maslow’s theories, and applying them to the classroom will facilitate achieving this goal. Considering Piaget’s focus on development, and Maslow’s prioritization of human needs, one can integrate these ideas into classrooms and lesson plans that are optimized for student success. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development Piaget asserts, children are born with inherited scripts, called schema, these schema are building blocks for cognitive development. As a child grows, he acquires more of these building blocks; moreover, these building blocks become more complex as the child progresses through different stages in development (Huitt, Hummel 2003). Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development are as follows. First, The sensorimotor stage where an infant has rudimentary motor skills, and can eventually …show more content…
These demands are ranked in the order that they most preoccupy the individual. To illustrate, an individual is not preoccupied by physiological needs such as hunger or thirst, he is then free to seek out that which gives him a sense of safety; moreover, if the individual isn’t preoccupied with finding a safety, warmth, and shelter, he can spend time time seeking out companionship (Huitt, 2007). Maslow proposes 8 levels of motivational needs, the first four, termed the deficiency needs, need to be fulfilled before the second four, the growth needs, can be adressed. The deficiency needs are: bodily needs, the need for safety, social needs, and self esteem. The Growth needs are: the search for understanding, the need to be aesthetically pleased, self actualization, and finally, self-transcendence, which is the highest level, where one has acquired wisdom (Huitt,
It proposes four distinct phases in the cognitive evolution of children (Berger, Kathleen Stassen, 2008) these are the Sensory Motor Stage, Pre operational stage, Concrete operations stage and the formal operations stage. As the baby is under one year old the only relevant stage to be discussed here is the sensory motor stage. Piaget’s concept of this first stage was based on the assumption that the in order to understand the world around them infants must create schemas, Schemas are subjective mental representations of the objective world around us. Infants will incrementally build up knowledge and insight of their surroundings via coordinating sensory experiences with physical interactions involving objects in their environment. A normal healthy infant will progress from instinctual reflex actions (palmer grasp, rooting) to informed voluntary actions as it acquires information about objects and the methods by which they may be manipulated (Bernstein, Penner, Clarke-Stewart).
Much of middle school curricula requires students to engage in formal operational cognitive processes, even though most students seldom reach the levels of understanding that teachers might expect in each subject area” (eric.gov.edu) Maslow have five different stages in his prevention theory. These stages include self-actualization, Cognitive needs, Respect and esteem needs, belongingness and love needs, and safety needs. Piaget’s theory explains how children develop in stages. Piaget’s has four stages of development.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development states four stages of cognitive development. During the first Sensorimotor Stage which Piaget
Piaget proposed four basic stages through which the development of thinking abilities must pass. He labeled these stages “Sensorimotor” (0-2),” Pre-Operational” (2-5),” Concrete-Operations” (6-10), Formal-Operations” (11 to
It is crucial to understand Piaget’s theory of learning; he believes that this is as a dynamic development as information is formed from the individuals themselves. Kamii (1974) emphasizes on the idea argued by Piaget which is that intellectual development is that children must be allowed to do their own learning (Halpenny and Pettersen, 2014, p. 152). To substantiate, Anne Marie Halpenny and Jan Pettersen (2014, p. 153) supports this statement in how educators can acquire and assimilate the concepts in educator’s pedagogy by claiming, that ‘active learning’ within allowing children to explore the environment is is the greatest approach for children to acquire knowledge. This suggest, that the responsibility of educators is to construct certain methodologies within their pedagogy to be able to adapt and develop aspects of Piaget’s theory to offer a learning situation where children are offered to cogitate and consequent to having children have the ability to develop as themselves. In addition to this, using Piaget’s theory in the approach of understanding that primary children from year 3 to year 6 would be distinguished as concrete operational individuals.
Jean Piaget, known for his interest in the Epistemology in children is seen as the pioneer of Developmental Psychology. Piaget 's Cognitive development theory led to a great deal of research work in the field of educational philosophy . But in the discipline of Psychology, every theory has been faced with a counter theory or an alternative. So is the case with Piaget 's theory. Lev Vygotsky, a soviet psychologist came up with the socio-cultural theory, which is another strong theory emphasizing child development and is seen as a major counter theory to Piaget 's work (Saul McLeod, 2004).
Piaget believed that children go through 4 stages which children can’t miss any stage to continue to develop cognitively. Every individual child has to
The four stages: Piaget’s theory of cognitive development advances from an understanding that there are a series of stages which children are specific to. The four stages are: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational, the four stages are divided up into age brackets that are birth to two-year-old, two to seven years old, seven to eleven years old and twelve and up. Each stage has a set of skills that children will acquire as they progress in age and cognitive ability and development As a future early primary teacher, I focused primarily on sensorimotor and preoperational as early education ranges from birth until six, meaning that the age bracket branches over two stages. The sensorimotor is from birth until two years old and is based on children learning, growing and developing based on understanding an influence from the world around them, this time is considered a time of tremendous grow and change.
Piaget’s theory of development consists of four phases. The sensorimotor, the pre-operational stage, the concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage (Piaget, 1952). In the Sensorimotor stage which is the age of zero to two years, the infant’s knowledge of their environment developed through their senses, experiences and physical movements. Physical development increases the chances of the infant to develop new intellectual abilities.
Piaget’s theory is a comprehensive theory about how children’s brain develops. His theory includes Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational and Formal Operational stages. The Sensorimotor stage occurs between 0-2 infancy, ages when the child begins to interact with the environment (Berk, 2014). The Preoperational stage happens between ages 2-7 in early childhood is when children begin to think more reasonably (Berk, 2014) and begin to put objects into words. An example of this would be children playing make believe.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Countless psychologists have theorized about human behavior, but few theories have had the impact that Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has had. Maslow was looking to explain the motivation behind people’s actions. He developed his theory to represent the needs people need to meet to be comfortable in their living situations. Based on Maslow’s theory, phycologists can determine why people partake in the actions they do. For example, people who do not feel belonging and love as children are more likely to join gangs or other organizations to gain a sense of belonging.
Maslow proposed five-level classification of human needs as physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualisation. He suggested that physiological needs are the basic needs and these needs should be satisfied first and then subsequent needs emerge. Self-actualisation is the highest order of needs and to fulfill this need a person should be biologically efficient, usually in better health, both mentally and physically. The degree of satisfaction is resulted by fulfillment of these hierarchy of needs. However, these needs can vary individual to individual regarding their personal characteristics, pathology, and health care settings.
Piaget is considered a ‘constructivist’, empowering
Piaget, Vygotsky and Erikson are three developmental theorists whose works were driven by a passion for how knowledge develops in an individual. Each defined theories they used to describe their views of developmental acquisition. There are some similarities between each of the theorists, in addition to many differences between them. Each have played a role in the development of curriculum for educating children. While some teachers may be more prone to support one over the other, the knowledge of each theorist aids in a greater understanding of child development.
Maslow's Hierarchy is a five tier model of the basic human needs. Maslow thought that people were motivated to achieve certain needs, and that some needs were more important than others. The five tier model can be divided into two separate categories, Growth needs: Transcendence, self actualization, aesthetic needs, cognitive needs, and Deficiency needs: esteem needs, love and belonging needs, safety needs, physiological needs. Maslow believed that individuals must lower their deficit needs, before moving n to the higher level growth needs. This paper will describe that five tier model, and it will give an in depth analysis on what types of characteristics that are commonly found in the people who achieve those needs.