Human Development
Sociocultural
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY (VYGOTSKY) - It asserts three major themes: Social interaction, the more knowledgeable other, the zone of proximal development.
Social Interaction - Social learning precedes development. Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first on the social level and later on the individual level
MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE OTHER (MKO) - refers to anyone that has a higher learning ability than the person who is learning. Normally thought of as a teacher, coach, or older adult; but can also be peers, computers, or younger people.
ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT (ZPD) - The distance between a student's ability to perform a task under adult guidance/peer collaboration and their ability to preform the task independently. A child can increase in competence if they receive assistance to perform a task that is just slightly above their ability.
Biological
Neuroplasticity - The ability to develop and change in response to the environment. Human brains are made for lifelong learning. Neural connections can be made for lifelong learning.
Pruning - PET scans have demonstrated that glucose metabolism steadily increases and reaches adult levels around the second year of life. After this it exceeds adult levels, dropping to adult levels again during adolescence. This appears to be due to a surplus of synaptic connections, which allows the individual brain to learn and retain the synapses that are used, and eventually to eliminate those that are not.
Case (1991) - hypothesizes that the pattern of the brain changes taking place between 5 and 7 years of age enables the frontal lobes to coordinate the activities of other brain centers, so that more complex behaviors become possible. These include attention control, forming explicit plans,and engaging in self-reflection.
Cognitive
Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development - Interaction with the environment changes people, and cognitive development is dependent on how the individual child interacts with the social and physical world. He suggested that children use strategies in thinking and problem solving that reflect different stages of cognitive development.
Sensorimotor (age: 0-2) - Knowledge develops as a result of sensations and actions
Pre-operational (age: 2-7) - Increase in use of symbolic thought and self - awareness, but dominated by the visual appearance of things; language development; egocentrism
Concrete operational (age: 7-12) - Logical resoning based on real objects that can be manipulated; understanding of converstaion
Formal operational (age: 12+) - Ability to use abstract reasoning and logic