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Schemas Child Development

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Mental frame work or ways we organizing thoughts around aspects of the world are called schemas. We have schemas about people, objects around our lives, and situations. Prior knowledge can shape how we memorize and retain for long term storage and future knowledge. In the next few paragraphs I will discuss in detail how child development theorist, Jean Piaget, believed these schemas developed. For Piaget, schemas are the mental structures in which we organize our knowledge of the world (Robson, pg. 17). An example of an initial schema is when a child begins to understand what a cat is from a picture book that is being read by a parent. The parent may continue reading about what a cat looks like. At this time, a schema is forming. …show more content…

According to study.com website, disequilibrium refers to our inability to fit new information into our schema. Then child assimilates information and returns to a state of equilibrium. According to our textbook, assimilation is the way in which we transform incoming information so that it fits in with our existing way of thinking about that schema (Robson, pg. 18). The child now is thinking “cat, legs, tail, and ears.” When this child goes to grandmother’s house and observes a cat the assimilation process continues and his understanding of what a cat is expanded. When the child checks that this animal has a tail, legs, and ears he determines it must be a cat. Then the cat meows and the child experiences disequilibrium because the child’s schema about cat does not include meowing. In petting the cat, the child realizes that it is furry. Again, the child experiences disequilibrium because his schema does not include fur. The child experiences disequilibrium again when the cat licks him. The child’s schema about cats does not include licking. As part of this assimilation process, the child is an experience …show more content…

To begin with, Piaget’s theory on the four stages of cognitive development has been highly researched. He put little to no emphasis on social factors in his theory and came to the conclusion that children do not think like adults and do not learn from them but by interacting with their physical environment. Vygotsky, on the other hand, differed from Piaget’s thought and believed children learned mostly from others and he called this process, Scaffolding. According to Eutopia website, scaffolding is a teaching strategy that provides individualize support based on the learner’s zone of proximal development (Eutopia, 2015). Proximal development is the distance between the actual developmental level as determine by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determine through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (Bruner,1982). He believed knowledge comes from experiences within their culture and strongly thought that learning came from the outside in. On the other hand, Piaget theory stated that children are only able to perform in certain cognitive stages. He found that human understood whatever information that fit into their view of the world. When information does not fit, then individuals examine and accommodate the new information, is similar to Piaget’s theory on

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