1.1. After earning his law degree in 1917. Vygotsky began teaching psychology and logic at a local education college and set up the area's first psychological laboratory, all the while proving an energetic organizer of cultural events. At the Second All-Union Congress on Psychoneurology held in St. Petersburg in 1924, he delivered a complex speech from what seemed to be a sheet of notes--it turned out to be completely blank. As a result, Vygotsky was offered a position at the Moscow Institute of Experimental Psychology Many of Vygotsky's ideas centered on what is now called special education; he used a Russian word translated as "defectology." He was the founder of special education services in the Soviet Union. Vygotsky believed that each child with special needs was different, and observers remarked that, while conducting research by interviewing children, he established a rapport with each one and treated that child as an individual rather than a research subject. In the words of the Mozart of Psychology site, he "stressed the importance of the social inclusion of disabled children into the social-cultural life of their community as a 'condition of effective rehabilitation and compensation.'"
2. Maria Montessori
2.1. Maria Montessori, born in 1870, was the first woman in Italy to receive a medical degree. Maria’s early medical practice focused on psychiatry. She became more interested in education, and educational theory. Her studies had her call into question, the prevailing methods of teaching children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (Longe, 2016). She believed that each child is born with a unique potential to be revealed, and not as a "blank slate". Her main theories were: • Preparing the most natural and life-supporting environments for the child • Observing the child living freely in this environment • Continually adapting the environment in order that the child may fulfill his or her greatest potential, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. In 1907, Maria accepted a position to open a childcare center in a poor inner-city district, the first Casa dei Bambini, a learning environment for young children. The children were unruly at first, but soon showed great interest in working with puzzles, learning to prepare meals. She observed how they absorbed knowledge from their surroundings teaching themselves. She designed learning materials and an environment that fostered the children’s natural desire to learn, and by 1910, Montessori schools became worldwide. Maria Montessori theory principles also include the following. 1. Independence: “Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.” – Maria Montessori. • Goals of the Montessori classrooms are to give children opportunities to move, dress themselves and to help adults with task. To increase their self-belief and self-confidence. 2. Observation: • Observation or watching the child and how they enjoy exploring their environment. If they enjoy pushing things room to room, give them something easy to push such as a wagon or stroller, fulfilling their current needs. 3. Following the child: The aim of the children who persevere in their work with an object is certainly not to “learn”; they are drawn to it by the needs of their inner life, which must be recognized and developed by its means.” – Maria Montessori. • Follow children around and see their interests, if they want to climb let them but make it safe for them. Give your child the space to explore and choose what he wants or needs to do and to act on his own and give them choices of materials and or toys. 4. Correcting the child: • When correcting children do it in a calm and nice voice, such as, “oh, you spilled, we should clean this up” and give the child the materials to assist in helping. 5. Prepared Environment: “The teacher’s first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. Its influence is indirect, but unless it be well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual.” – Maria Montessori. • Rooms should include activities for success, that allow freedom of movement and choice and safely. The environment has to be ready, inviting and beautiful so that it invites them to work. 6. Absorbent Mind: • Absorbent minds include how children learn to speak without being taught, it is all absorbed.
3. Jean Piaget
3.1. Jean Piaget Piaget was born in 1896 in the French-speaking Swiss city of Neuchâtel, the son of an agnostic medievalist and a religious mother with socialist leanings. After completing a doctoral thesis in natural sciences (1918) and studies in psychology and philosophy in Zurich and Paris, he joined the Rousseau Institute of Geneva in 1921, which was founded by Édouard Claparède as a center for research on child development and education Jean Piaget is known for his studies of the development of intelligence in children. He identified his domain as genetic (i.e., developmental) epistemology (theory of knowledge). He studied the growth of children's capacity to think in abstract, logical terms, and of such categories as time, space, number, causality, and permanency, describing an invariable sequence of stages from birth through adolescence Piaget spent much of his time researching how children develop an understanding of the rules that govern the world around them. He divided childhood into four stages of cognitive development: • Sensorimotor stage (0 to 2 years): Children develop object permanence, that is, they understand that an object that is no longer in view still exists. • Preoperational stage (2 to 7 years): Children display egocentricism in the younger years and slowly learn that other people have different perspectives. • Concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years): Children develop an understanding of the principle of conservation; for example, when a short fat glass of water is poured into a tall thin glass the amount of water remains unchanged. • Formal operational stage (11 years and up): Children develop the ability to think abstractly and manipulate ideas and concepts in their mind. His work had some direct impact on mathematical and moral education, and reinforced the belief that instruction must be adapted to the child's developmental level. The largest impact of his work on psychology was in the adoption of his investigative techniques and emphasis on the importance of understanding how children learn, develop, and change throughout childhood.
4. Lawerence Kohlberg
4.1. Lawrence Kohlberg earned his Doctorate in psychology in 1958. His dissertation he gave a group of adolescent boys’ moral dilemmas and studied how they responded. This research lead him to identify six types of moral reasoning, each with two stages. The first level, called Pre-conventional, the second is the conventional, and the third is post-conventional. The two pre-conventional begin with stage 1 and 2. The first stage, children that have little to no moral reasoning. The second stage children have more self-interest, testing rules. The stages in conventional level begin with stage 3 when people are more concerned about others approval and tend to follow rules to be accepted or viewed as morally good. Stage 4 people believe law and order exist to protect. Post conventional level begins with stage 5, as people focus on human rights. People at this stage tend to take actions that are in the best interest of others. Stage 6 of this level, people focus fairness and justice and may tend to not follow law. Kohlberg’s studies found that the 6 stages of moral reasoning develop with age, moving from one stage to the next. This is pertinent today to in the teachings and understanding of child psychology and education. To help educators understand how children think, develop and why they make the decisions, they do. Lawrence Kohlberg was known for his moral development stages and psychology. He also helped develop moral education where he used storytelling to teach children to be ethical and deal with moral problems. (Simplypsychology.org, 2013) Lawrence Kohlberg concluded that teachers comprehension on behavior and individual decisions by students helps teachers with understand stage development and moral education encourages kids to develop individual moral reasoning.( Weebly.com, 2018) Many teachers use this moral development in dealing with their students so that they can manage their classrooms and know how to deal with problems with individual students. By using storytelling, it helps the student comprehend what the moral is and how to use it in life. (Weebly.com, 2018)
5. Abraham Maslow
5.1. A central figure in humanistic psychology and in the human potential movement, Abraham Maslow is known especially for his theory of motivation. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and received his PhD in psychology from the University of Wisconsin in 1934. Maslow then began medical studies, which he discontinued within a year, after which he was offered a postdoctoral research fellowship to work with Edward Thorndike at Columbia University. Maslow spent the summer of 1938 doing fieldwork on a Blackfoot Indian reservation in Alberta, Canada, with financial support from the Social Science Research Council. In 1951 Maslow became the head of the psychology department at Brandeis University, where he remained until a year before his death in 1970. Maslow took an optimistic approach to human behavior that emphasized developing one's full potential. Instead of basing his psychological model on people with mental and emotional problems, he used as his point of reference a collection of exceptionally dynamic and successful historical and contemporary figures whom he considered self-actualizers, This hierarchy is portrayed as a pyramid with five levels, ranging from the most basic needs at the bottom to the most complex and sophisticated at the top. the levels are: • Biological needs (food, water, shelter) • Safety • Belongingness and love • The need to be esteemed by others • Selfactualization the need to realize one's full potential. According to Maslow, the needs at each level must be met before one can move on to the next level. With so many other issues to concern them, the vast majority of people never grapple with self-actualization; he condsidered fewer than 1% of the population to be self-actualized individuals.
6. Erik Erikson
6.1. Erik Erikson’s work concentrated on the formation of individual identity from birth to old age (Longe, 2016). Erikson’s theory of personality occurs over the entire human lifespan, in which he put into eight stages. Each stage has its own tasks and crisis. The first five stages include infancy (trust), early childhood (autonomy), preschool (initiative), early school years (industry), and adolescents (negotiation). The next three stages occur in the adult stage, young adulthood, middle adulthood and maturity. The infancy stage, a sense of trust is established and this achievement is considered to very important in moving on to the next stages. Early childhood includes the need for independence and sense of doubt and shame. Learning to deal with rules and social demands, such as toilet training, learning will power and independence (Longe, 2016). In the preschool stage, children begin to explore their surroundings, learning to pursue goals even in the event of risks and possible failures. They learn at this stage the resolution of conflict. The fourth stage of early school years, their social context expands at school. A conflict arises between the ability to work, and feelings of inferiority. The fifth stage adolescents must for an identity and sense of self. Failure to resolve conflicts in this stage results in confusion and can affect the experiences of the next three adult stages. In the adult stages, young adulthood battles the crisis of isolation vs intimacy. Middle adulthood explores stages of self-absorption vs generativity. The quality of work, parenting or the ability to care for others emerges. The final stage is maturity, in which crisis is despair vs age and integrity. The sense of wisdom in which to overcome despair over physical disintegration. Erikson’s developmental stages include triggers by a crisis, and then the person’s search in order to resolve the conflict. The end results of the search leads to the development of another search and/or stage. The mapping of this life cycle has a large impact on the developmental psychology.
