The Stage of Development of a Child

Article Review 2:

Educational Implications on Piaget, Vygotsky, and Erikson's Theory

Talathia A. Robinson

Liberty University

The stage of development of a child into adulthood has greatly been recognized by the change in personality and growth of people being competent in their fields due to management of these stages. Piaget, Vygotsky and Erikson are theorist that has developed stages and how they contribute to education of a child up to adulthood. Jean Piaget was a biologist who studied mollusks but later moved to study the development of understanding in children by psychological observation. He suggested that children before ages of 18months, 7 years and 11 years are not capable of understanding things in certain ways but undergo sensorimotor, preoperational and concrete operational stages. Piaget's theory had a major impact on education by observing the developments and instructions suitable for students in terms of physical and cognitive abilities and also the emotional needs. Vygotsky suggests in his themes of social development that social interaction plays a basic role in cognitive development and the more knowledgeable other (MKO) as a person with a higher ability level than the learner when it comes to a specific task or process. Vygotsky's theory promotes learning that students play a major role in learning and therefore teachers should collaborate with students to facilitate construction of meaning of ideas to the students. The theory of Erikson basically entails personality in psychology. He believed that personality develops in series of stages which describes the impact of social experience with other people across his/her lifespan. It says that during the growth of a person, he or she is subjected to several environmental activities which may both be negative or positive in the time of upbringing. Erikson theory has the element of ego identity as the sense we develop through social interaction.

Understanding transitions using a sociocultural framework by Crafter and Maunder looked at how transition is viewed and how it could be better understood using a sociocultural framework. Through the utilization of work done by Vygotsky, these authors present three frameworks for addressing sociocultural transitions. The first framework is that transition is consequential; the second is that transition rupture and identity change and the third analytical framework are transitions within community of practice. Although each of the framework discussed present a different perspective on transition, there are important commonalities, which reflect their sociocultural underpinnings. One commonality is the broad conceptualization of transition, and the many forms it can take (Crafter & Maunder, 2012). As a result there were some suggested implications for a personal,