Piaget Theory

   Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is made up of four stages.  The first stage is from birth to two years of age and is called the sensorimotor stage.   The baby learns to coordinate seeing and hearing with movement.  The second one is six to seven years of age, which is named as the preoperational stage.   During this stage the child understands objects and images.  Next is the concrete operational stage, which starts at age eleven and ends at age twelve.   The child can develop proper logic.  The last stage is from age twelve to adulthood, which is called the formal operations stage.   When the individual is faced with a problem he/she is able to contemplate all possible answers which are called hypothetic-deductive reasoning.

Lev Vygotsky theory

 

    Lev Vygotsky was a soviet psychologist that came up with term Zone of Proximal Development or “ZPD”.  This term identifies the range of tasks that a child can properly complete with or without the guidance and assistance of a parent or more capable child.  If the child has a lower the limit of ZPD a child has is the higher their ability to work independently.  If the child has a higher limit of ZPD then he/she has a lower ability to work without guidance and assistance.  Scaffolding is very similar to this but it’s the adjusting of guidance depending on the child recent performance.  An example of this would be a parent teaching a child how to ride a bike by keeping them balanced on the seat while the child pedals.  As the child learns how to balance on the bike while pedaling the parent slowly lets go as the child adjust to the ability to keep balance and pedal at the same time.

Attribution Theory

 

The Attribution Theory is the theory that individuals feel the need to explain the world to others and ourselves.  We tend to explain the cause of the events that takes place in the world thus giving us a sense of control.  This theory is made up of three elements.  The first element is called locus or the location of cause.  This means that when we are successful we are overcome with a feeling of pride but when we fail are self esteem becomes diminished.  The second element is called stability, which deals with the expectations of the future.  This means that if we attribute out failure with the difficulty of what we have failed we will expect to fail in the future.  The third level is controllability, which is the control of the cause.  If we fail a task we can’t really control we feel shame or anger.

Kohlberg Theory

Lawrence Kohlberg created the stages of moral development. In this theory explains that moral reasoning has six developmental stages.  Kohlberg theory was further grouped into three levels with two stages each. The first level is called the pre-conventional. The first stage of this level is obedience and learning how to avoid punishment and the second is the self-interest where the individual is motivated by moral judgment that satisfies his/her own needs. The second level is called the conventional level. The first stage is the avoidance of disapproval or rejection of others. The second stage is more focused on a need not to be criticized by authority. The final level is called post-conventional. The first stage is motivated by the respect of social order and laws.  The second stage is motivated by an individual’s conscience. It is said that you cannot regress in stages nor can you skip stages because each stage provides new perspective.

Carroll’s Theory

In 1962 John Carroll presented the model of school learning. It explained the effort spent in relation to the effort needed. There were six elements to this model. It started with aptitude, which is defined as the time needed. Then it translates into 4 different elements. The first is the opportunity to learn which is the time available to learn in and outside the classroom. The second is the ability to understand instruction that is given, which depends on the learning skills of the student. The third is the quality of instructional events, which means if quality of instruction is bad time needed to complete a task, will increase. The last is perseverance, which is the time a student is willing to spend learning. From these four elements only one output element is present which academic achievement is. He also wrote “The model of school learning assumes that students differ in the amount of learning time they need. If these differences are to be adequately taken account of, considerable skill in classroom management is required of teachers”.

Maslow’s theory

The lowest stage of Maslow’s stage of personality development is physiological which is the most basic. For example it deals with the needs of food, water, and sleep. The next step is safety, which is the security of health, property and employment. The third level is love, which has to do with family and friendship. The fourth level is esteem which focuses on confidence and acceptance. The last level is very similar and is called self-actualization, which deals with the acceptance of facts creativity and morality. Self-actualization is a strong desire of fulfillment and full realization of one’s potential and capabilities. In order to achieve self-actualization all basic needs are must be met. You come into the realization of what you’re capable of becoming.

Pavlov's Theory

A Russian physiologist and researcher Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning.  Classical conditioning is the type in which a neutral stimulus comes to bring about a response after it’s paired with a stimulus that naturally brings out that response.   Classical conditioning is a step-by-step process that starts with a neutral stimulus (NS), which is a stimulus that produces no response.  Then the neutral stimulus is combined with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), which is a stimulus that naturally initiates a response thus resulting in an unconditioned response (UCR). Next a conditioned stimulus is created it (CS).  A conditioned stimulus is the end result of a neutral stimulus that was added to an unconditioned stimulus.  Finally this stimulus results in a conditioned response (CR), which is the learned response.  An example of the process of classical conditioning is if your ex-lover always wore a certain brand of cologne now every time you smell that scent you think of him/ or her and are overcome by a feeling of sadness.  The neutral stimulus is cologne.  The unconditioned stimulus is your ex-lover.  The unconditioned response is you associating your ex-lover to that fragrance. The conditioned stimulus is associating your ex-lover to that fragrance every time you smell it.  The conditioned response is a feeling of sadness every time you smell that aroma.