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Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory posits that an individual’s development is influenced by a series of interconnected environmental systems, ranging from the immediate surroundings (e.g., family) to broad societal structures (e.g., culture).

These systems include the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem, each representing different levels of environmental influences on an individual’s growth and behavior.

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Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory views child development as a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment, from immediate family and school settings to broad cultural values, laws, and customs.

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The work of Lev Vygotsky (1934) has become the foundation of much research and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades, particularly what has become known as sociocultural theory.

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory views human development as a socially mediated process in which children acquire cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society.

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Vygotsky’s theory focuses on the role of culture in the development of mental abilities e.g., speech and reasoning in children.

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Jean Piaget is famous for his theories regarding changes in cognitive development that occur as we move from infancy to adulthood.

A child’s cognitive development is not just about acquiring knowledge, the child has to develop or construct a mental model of the world.

Cognitive development occurs through the interaction of innate capacities (nature) and environmental events (nurture), and children pass through a series of stages.

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According to Vygotsky, adults in society foster children’s cognitive development by engaging them in challenging and meaningful activities. Adults convey to children how their culture interprets and responds to the world.

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Cognition refers to thinking and memory processes, and cognitive development refers to long-term changes in these processes. One of the most widely known perspectives about cognitive development is the cognitive stage theory of a Swiss psychologist named Jean Piaget. Piaget created and studied an account of how children and youth gradually become able to think logically and scientifically.

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To study a child’s development, we must look at the child and their immediate environment and the interaction of the larger environment.

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Bronfenbrenner divided the person’s environment into ﬁve diﬀerent systems: the microsystem, the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macrosystem, and the chronosystem.

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They show the meaning they attach to objects, events, and experiences. They provide the child with what to think (the knowledge) and how to think (the processes, the tools to think with).

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The interactions with others significantly increase not only the quantity of information and the number of skills a child develops, it also affects the development of higher-order mental functions such as formal reasoning

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Vygotsky argued that higher mental abilities could only develop through interaction with more advanced others.

Vygotsky proposed that children are born with elementary mental abilities such as memory and perception and that higher mental functions develop from these through the influence of social interactions.

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Vygotsky agreed with Piaget that the development of cognitive abilities takes place in stages, and he also agreed broadly with the description of the stages; however, he viewed cognitive development as a social process where children learn from experienced adults.

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Vygotsky stated that language has two functions. Inner speech is used for mental reasoning, and external speech is used to converse with others.These operations occur separately.

Indeed, before age two, a child employs words socially; they possess no internal language.Once thought and language merge, however, the social language is internalized and assists the child with their reasoning. Thus, the social environment is ingrained within the child’s learning.

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Piaget believed that learning proceeded by the interplay of assimilation (adjusting new experiences to fit prior concepts) and accommodation (adjusting concepts to fit new experiences). The to-and-fro of these two processes leads not only to short-term learning, but also to long-term developmental change. The long-term developments are really the main focus of Piaget’s cognitive theory.

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After observing children closely, Piaget proposed that cognition developed through distinct stages from birth through the end of adolescence. By “stages” he meant a sequence of thinking patterns with four key features:

1. The stages always happen in the same order.

2. No stage is ever skipped.

3. Each stage is a significant transformation of the stage before it.

4. Each later stage incorporated the earlier stages into itself.

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The microsystem is the most inﬂuential level of the ecological systems theory. This is the most immediate environmental setting containing the developing child, such as family and school.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory has implications for educational practice.

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Basically, this is a “staircase” model of development. Piaget proposed four major stages of cognitive development, and called them (1) sensorimotor intelligence, (2) preoperational thinking, (3) concrete operational thinking, and (4) formal operational thinking. Each stage is correlated with an age period of childhood, but only approximately.