Comparing Cognitive Developmental Theory by Piaget and Social Learning Theory by Bandura

Running head: EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
Educational Psychology
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1EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
The development theories are based on the various stages of the development of a child.
It is argued that although every child is unique, their growth and developmental process are
considered universal based on the various principles like cephalocaudal principle, proximodistal
principle and maturation. Developmental theories help adults to assess the stages or sequence of
development taking place in children along with their integration of many abilities that he/she
will in due course of time. Developmental theories are also crucial in the domain of teaching and
training children so as to understand their powers (Demetriou et al., 2016). There are several
theories and ideas suggested by many scientists and behaviourists. There are different kinds of
views about how a person develops physically as well as psychologically throughout the lifespan
of the individual. Social learning theories are based on the learning of the human beings
depending on what the human beings learn from the society, it is often said to bridge the gap
between the behaviorist and the cognitive learning theories. This essay will discuss about two
theories, the Cognitive Developmental theory by Jean Piaget and the Social Learning theory by
Albert Bandura.
The Cognitive Developmental theory proposed by Jean Piaget suggests and explains the ways in
which the children make up their minds about the world. Some of the other influential theories
interrelated with cognitive theories are Socio-cultural theories, care-knowledge theories and
information-processing theories. He did not believe in the idea that intelligence is fixed trait and
he explained that development occurs in an individual when that person develops biologically
and interacts with the environment or the society (Illeris, 2018). His theory deals with the
complex understanding of infant cognitive skills, language development in children, reasoning
involving mathematics and science as well as moral development. A thorough understanding of
his theories promotes understanding of children in adults that would motivate a faster learning

2EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
session for the children (Demetriou et al., 2016). Furthermore, the learning theories are truly
interesting in their demonstration of how human beings process their mental activities and
perform abstract symbolic reasoning. The theory can be used by the parent to support the growth
of their children, by the teachers to determine the abilities of the students and can be used by the
parent to support the growth of their children (Taylor, 2017).
As a part of his career, he was employed to translate English intelligence question papers
into French, while working there he became interested in the answers provided by the children
and why they marked the wrong answers, he believed that this was the chief difference between
the children and adults. According to his theory there are four stages of cognitive development in
an individual, sensorimotor stage which occurs from birth to 18 to 24 months, preoperational
stage which occurs from 18-24 months and continues up to early stages of childhood. Concrete
operational, this stages occur among the children aged 7 to 12 months and formal operational
which indicates the journey from adolescence to adulthood. He was the first psychologist to
develop a systematic study of the cognitive development in human beings (Gray & MacBlain,
2015). His studies included the cognitive developmental stages in a child, the detailed
descriptions of detection of cognition in children. He also developed simple tests to determine
the different levels of cognitive development in children. Piaget did not want to measure the
efficiency of the children related with their counting abilities, spelling check or determining their
I.Q. (Hartley & Ho, 2015). Before the research, done by Piaget everyone believed that children
were stupid than the adults, but Piaget proved that children have unique intelligence and their
way of thinking is strikingly different from that of the adults. Piaget’s theory is considered to be
a major breakthrough as it helped in bringing a radical change in how people experience