Key Theories Used in Educating Young Children, Research Paper Example

Abstract

Few issues command societal interest as does that of the education of its youngest members, the children.  This being the case, educators have long sought to apply behavioral, psychological, and developmental theory to the matter in a way promoting the best interests of children’s learning, with a necessary eye as to their inevitable standing as adults within the society.  To that end, the theories of Piaget, Vygotsky, Bowlby, and Transmission Theory appear to be key, or the models upon which other theories have been developed.  Each is well-established, as each has its adherents, advantages, and potential issues.  Ultimately, however, an examination of these theories reveals that identifying one as consistently benefiting the education of young children is a task likely to occupy educators for some time to come, as the developmental processes of children themselves render application of theory inherently problematic.

Introduction

An interesting and seemingly inevitable dilemma presents itself when efforts to apply behavioral and/or psychological theories to education are made, both historically and today.  Simply, the domain of education is inherently one of practice, not theory.  Certain theories may certainly reflect upon aspects of education, but they nonetheless remain distanced by virtue of their intrinsic, theoretical constructs.  Then, and as is traditionally evident in the field of education, pragmatic consequences are the primary object, so there is a reluctance to even marginally apply theory to the arena (Olson, 2003,  p. 6).  At the same time, any applied study, such as education, frequently matures to a point where theory arises from it, and is consequently poised to be of benefit to it.  What has in fact occurred is that theory and education, particularly in regard to young children, have been “chasing” one another; as practice generates undesirable or inadequate results, theory is turned to, and developed, to perhaps meet these challenges and offer a viable framework.

To that end, certain key theories of education have been studied and employed, for the purposes of educating children.  The most dominant is likely that of Jean Piaget, whose developmental work has been perceived as being especially pertinent to the subject.  Similarly, Attachment Theory merits consideration, as do Transmission Theory and Vygotsky’s Theory of cognitive development.  Variations of these central theories exist and are utilized, yet evaluating these alone provides a basic understanding of how educational theory today is being employed to educate young children, or may be beneficial in that regard.   As will be seen, theories applied to children’s education generate dilemmas unique to each, as each also offers evidence of significant benefits.  It will also be seen that, no matter the characteristics of individual theory, the nature of childhood learning itself does not lend itself to a specific, working model.

Examination of Theories

As noted, Piaget remains very much prominent in regard to psychological theory as applied to education.   His theories defining developmental stages in human thought, based on increasingly expanding states of both awareness and capability, are in fact mirrored in how he approached development in children.  It may even be argued that, as development is typically more visible as young children acquire cognitive skills, they provided an ideal template for his adult work.  Essentially, in regard to children’s learning, Piaget establishes that considerations removed from actual intelligence significantly go to development.  He asserts that a child’s understanding of space, time, causality, and morality may be viewed as: “A series of progressive cognitive reorganizations that take the child from a narrow, nonperspectival view to a more comprehensive…frame of reference” (Snowman, MCCown, & Biehler, 2011,  p. 135).  Many of these reorganizations are, not unexpectedly, internal, but Piaget acknowledges as well how social concerns and circumstances contribute to the transformational process.

Piaget is important to the subject in other ways, most notably in that he is concerned with processes, rather than with results or gradations in learning.  His theory, moreover, emphasizes states of development both vastly established by research and critical in understanding precisely how a child’s mind progresses in learning, based on the child’s capabilities and surrounding influences.  For example, he distinguishes the types of logic the average child will comprehend and employ within certain age parameters.  On one level, he asserts that invariant functions apply to learning at any age, in that the processes of organization and adaptation remain relatively fixed.  On another, systematic changes in schemes occur at identified intervals.  The child of seven or eight, for example, first assembles patterns of order in a cognitive sense.  They are able to classify and number, and consequently assign a rudimentary logic to what is placed before them.  When the early years of adolescence are entered into, this logic expands into more abstract expression; the child is then enabled to move from the concrete to the theoretical (Piaget, 2008, p. 158).   The functions in both age ranges, then, go to promoting the alterations in schemes.  At the same time, it is important to reiterate that Piaget does not assign levels of achievement to these processes beyond the basic acquisition of them.  Consequently, as concerns children’s education, an emphasis of Piaget dismisses intelligent quotient standards as irrelevant, at least to an extent.  Put another way, Piaget’s theory is of great value because it addresses education, and not specific achievement.  It is then easily understandable that Piagetian theory would be widely embraced by educators of children seeking to encourage development, rather than generate standardized results. This endorsement notwithstanding, there remains the reality of society’s need to establish some type of measurement of actual educational gain in the child.

Predating Piaget is the work of Lev Vygotsky, whose theories are deemed more appropriate for education as a training process.  The inescapable reality is that Vygotsky, undergoing massive shifts in society in his native Russia, reformulated his developmental theories over time.  Nonetheless, they tend to consistently reflect an emphasis in keeping with his background, in that he perceived education for children as a process in which the state, or society, sets the parameters within which the child must learn:  “What is relevant to social needs and issues determines the curriculum, preferably in such a way that the child sees social needs as its (own) needs” (Langford, 2005,  p. 124). Vygotsky, echoing Hegelian thinking, believes that an underlying “spirit” provides a child with a plan, not consciously known, that directs learning and development.  He did not discount factors of individual personality and inclination as profoundly motivating educational growth.  At the same time,  Vygotsky holds that society is obligated to channel these preexisting factors in ways directing the child to an acknowledged good, or goal (Langford, 2005,  p. 125).  It is hardly surprising, then, that Vygotsky is enjoying something of a resurgence in favor in modern education, and in Western cultures wherein measures seen as overly progressive are thought to have failed to provide children with essential education.  His views are most definitely embraced in adult circles, as in corporate training, for they support a kind of manipulation of natural impulses to meet established ends.

It is then all the more startling that Vygotsky’s theory greatly emphasizes the role of play in a child’s education, and particularly between the ages of three and seven.  Vygotsky asserts that, in these years, play is the most dynamic force shaping the child’s personality, and consequently honing or developing learning capabilities (Langford, 2005,  p. 198).  Vygotsky’s acknowledged appreciation of “spirit” may certainly be seen here, but what is more important is his comprehension of the totality of the child’s being as central to learning.  In a sense, he asserts that play is as meaningful to a child as instruction, for children are always inherently involved in efforts going to self-discovery.  The difficulty, for Vygotsky and for educational systems adhering to his ideas of development, lies in ascertaining when “play” takes on too dominant a role, and growth is impeded in favor of enjoyment.  Such a dilemma, in fact, could be said to represent that facing Western education in the late 20^th century, as ideas promoting individual expression from children resulted in a societal backlash.  At the same time, extensive studies reveal that public perceptions are largely misinformed; while American society is undergoing a reversal of strategy, and a more urgent movement  towards reinstating conservative schooling for young children, the reality is that liberal types of education cannot be responsible for poor performance, simply because the vast majority of elementary schools always adhered to basically traditional methods (Hyslop-Margison, Sears, 2006,  p. 106).

Despite Piaget’s traditional dominance, opinion is divided as to which theory remains most applicable to modern education for children.  Interestingly, while it is widely believed that older, traditional models reflecting Transmission Theory are outdated and rarely in practice today, it seems that the demands of the Information Age may be witnessing a return to them.  In Transmission Theory, the educational formula is basic: at any age, knowledge is virtually poured into the student in order to create a kind of training process, and enables the student to grow into an advantage to the society ( Freire, 1998, p. 4).  If more progressive theories, particularly in regard to young children, gained in momentum and acceptance in the mid-20^th century, educational philosopher Paulo Friere believed that the pendulum was swinging once again in favor of this indoctrination mode of instruction.  There is strong research indicating that Friere was not mistaken.  In simple terms, it has been well established that the child-centered approaches of the middle and latter decades of the 20^th century have been increasingly  in disfavor in education: “Societal pressure on schools has been growing, due to increasingly vocal demands on schools for economically valuable outcomes and accountability” (Van Oers, Duijkers, 2012,  p. 1).  As noted, this impression is not necessarily well-founded, yet it certainly influences educational trends.  Given the pressures of modern commerce and technology, then, there may well be a shift to theory at least marginally incorporating Transmission Theory, and for young children.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Attachment Theory, first proposed by John Bowlby in 1951.   Largely discredited as a relevant educational model, the circumstances of the theory’s conception, in fact, appear to explain its falling into disfavor. In Attachment Theory, there is a pronounced cultural emphasis on the importance of maternal bonds with regard to child development; consequently, Bowlby’s work was negatively construed as idealizing motherhood to an unrealistic degree, reflecting post-war ideas (Cameron, Moss, 2011,  p. 106).  The theory, then, was increasingly viewed as irrelevant with regard to education, simply because it went to psychological needs largely centered on familial relationships, and subsequently not applicable to actual, educational concerns.  This same factor, however, has also generated a more recent resurgence of interest in the model.  Essentially, the connection has been acknowledged between a child’s emotional demands and their potentials to learn.  Proponents of Attachment Theory in the educating of young children emphasize that relationship-building is crucial at this level, and is necessary before the child can effectively take in knowledge.  Then, the role of the teacher as a secure base is reaffirmed, which must both benefit the child and augment the teacher’s position.  Lastly, it is believed that the inherent disadvantage to Attachment Theory, in that it creates an overlapping of psychological and educational concerns, in fact provides opportunities to develop new tools in education (Riley, 2010,  p. 11).  Of equal importance is the understanding that, benefits and drawbacks of the theory notwithstanding, it is established that young children will typically seek to form attachments, a process hardly unexpected when the child’s environment is no longer the home.  Children require assurance and a sense of safety; they will, then, actively pursue the adult who appears most likely to provide it (Greenberg, Cichetti, & Cummings, 1993, p. 465).

In more recent years, theories of social and emotional learning seem to echo the essential concerns of Attachment Theory.  “Social situations require that young people extend their awareness and understanding of feelings and other personal attributes to others” (Payton, Wardlaw, Graczyk, Bloodworth, Tompsett, & Weissberg, 2000,  p. 182).  It is interesting to note, then, a similarity of dilemma between this theory and that of Vygotsky, in that naturally occurring processes are deemed both vital and potentially negative. Just as play, crucial to growth and development, may eclipse actual learning and become the sole focus of interest, so too does it seem likely that attachment, providing a relationship foundation important for a child’s learning, may take on too dominant an aspect.  This in turn indicates perhaps the greatest irony of all, and one intrinsic to all educational theory regarding young children; namely, that the processes inevitably present in the state of childhood enable learning as significantly as they may hamper it.

Conclusion

If, as noted, application of theory and education typically do not merge, there is nonetheless a consistent effort to devise or uncover some form of developmental theory which will promote education in young children.  Theories, in a word, abound, and older work is adapted and modified to accommodate new perceptions and societal ambitions.  Chief among these theories are those of Piaget, stressing phases of development, rather than accomplishment; Vygotsky, who combines something of a socialistic imperative with a careful regard for individual spirit; Transmission Theory, which decidedly favors a more direct and calculated mode of instruction; and Bowlby’s Attachment Theory, modified in modern incarnations but still reflecting the child’s need to be protected in a relationship as paramount.  Each theory has its benefits, certainly, as well as its drawbacks.  All share, however, a factor derived from the commonality, in that the education of young children, conducted to both do the greatest good for the child and for the society the child will enter as an adult, seems to perpetually defy theory itself.

References

Cameron, C., & Moss, P/  (2011).  Social Pedagogy and Working with Children and Young People: Where Care and Education Meet.  Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Freire, P.  (1998).  Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civil Courage. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Greenberg, M. T., Cichetti, D., & Cummings, E. M.  (1993). Attachment in the Preschool Years: Theory, Research, and Intervention. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hyslop-Margison, E. J., & Sears, A. M.  (2006).  Neo-Liberalism, Globalization, and Human Capital Learning: Reclaiming Education for Democratic Citizenship. New York: Springer.

Langford, P.  (2004).  Vygotsky’s Developmental and Educational Psychology. New York: Psychology Press.

Olson, D. R. (2003).  Psychological Theory and Educational Reform: How School Remakes Mind and Society.  New York: Cambridge University Press.

Payton, J. W., Wardlaw, P. M., Graczyk, P. A.,  Bloodworth, M. R., Tompsett, C. J/. & Weissberg, R. P.  (2000).  “Social and Emotional Learning: A Framework for Promoting Mental Health and Reducing Risk Behaviors in Children and Youth.”  Journal of School Health, 70 (5), 179-185.

Piaget, J.  (2008).  “Intellectual Evolution from Adolescence to Adulthood.” Human Development, 57, 40-47.

Riley, P. (2010).  Attachment Theory and the Teacher-Student Relationship: A Practical Guide for Teachers, Teacher Educators and School Leaders.  New York: Taylor & Francis.

Snowman, J., McCown, R., & Biehler, R.  (2011).  Psychology Applied to Teaching. Belmont: Cengage Learning.

Van Oers, B., & Duijkers, D.  (2012). “Teaching in a Play-Based Curriculum: Theory, Practice and Evidence of Developmental Education for Young Children.”  Learning, Culture, and Social Interaction, 1 (1), 57-65.