Why use theorists

Child development theorists focus on explaining how a child grows and develops.

It provides a foundation to understand child development. It provides the how a child grows, develops and learns.

Without theories or theorists then any data collected on children cannot be interpreted.

Theories give facts meanings and once we are armed with the knowledge of a theory we can then more accurately explain, predict and analyse children and their experiences and how they will react.

A certain theory can help us to relate to one fact or another.

Understanding early childhood is underpinned by a variety theorists.

The most commonly used theorist are:

• Piaget- Cognitive Developmental Theory
• Freud-Psychosexual Developmental Theory
• Vygotsky
• Erikson- Psychosocial Developmental Theory
• Bandura- Social Learning Theory
• Bowlby- Attachment Theory
• Bronfenbrenner- Ecological systems theory

The philosophies of such theorists inform and guide practice when it comes to early childhood development and learning.

When using a particular theorist in relation to aspects of child development and learning it is important to be mindful that no one theory can predict or explain children and all their behaviours.

Theories overlap.

Experts will often differ on the number and the importance of the specific criteria for what is a good theory.

The usefulness of a theory is generally in relation to the test-ability, the predictability and the inclusiveness of them.

Theories are neither right nor wrong.

They are about being useful. The best theory is the one that most helps in the understanding of the behaviour.

No one theory will explain all aspects of a child and children’s behaviours.

The usefulness of a theory is determined by what you are investigating.

Another factor in the debate about good and bad theories is whether they can describe and understand events and their behaviours and predict future ones.

• Developmental theories– Developmental theories inform and guide developmentally appropriate practice. Developmentally appropriate practice is key as it challenges us to focus is on a child’s learning and development as an individual, as opposed to the focus on acquiring specific knowledge. Erikson, Piaget, Montessori, Steiner, Gardner are developmental theorists.
• Socio-cultural theories– Whereby children’s development needs to be viewed not as universal but interwoven with the social and cultural worlds. The main elements of this theory is fundamentally cultural where a child’s actions are a result of their cultural beliefs and knowledge and zone of proximal development (ZPD) which is developmental growth through the support of adults. Vygotsky, Bruner and Bronfenbrenner are socio-cultural theorists.
• Socio-behaviourist theories- Learning is categorized as being associated with social and physical conditioning such as positive reinforcement as a motivation to learn. This means the focus is on learning and the conditions and environment rather than the development.It is a teacher-directed approach, rather than child-directed. Pavlov, Skinner and Bandura are socio-behavioursit theorists.

1. Stage theories:are the ones that represent the child’s development in relation to their stage. They are the theories that see development occurring in stages as to how they have acquired skills. They see development as occurring in stage like progression, as they have learnt a skill and then the next skill is a progression on that skill.It is believed that you move through each stage in a invariant order and that each child progresses through the same stages and that they cannot skip a stage but they can leave and re-enter a stage at different ages so they believe it is incorrect to equate ages with certain stages.
2. Non- stage theories: are those that disagree with the above claiming that it’s much more useful in understanding the development of a child through looking at the development as a continuous process. They believe that new behaviours develop gradually and directly from earlier learned ones. These theorists believe that development is not continuous with development taking on leaps and bounds.