NAPA

The cognitive and moral theories of human development are the work of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Kohlberg, and all relate to the ways people develop their thinking and grow into adulthood. Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist (d. 1980), believed that children are intelligent and wired to learn. He believed that children over time construct an understanding of the world, actively building their knowledge by experiencing the world directly through their senses, representing things with words, and using reasoning and other cognitive operations. Piaget identified 4 stages of cognitive development starting in infancy and completing in adolescence. Lev Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist (d. 1934) who believed children learn through a social process of receiving support (“scaffolding”) from the people around them, and that people learn differently based on the culture they are raised in. Lawrence Kohlberg was an American psychologist (d. 1987) who believed people are inherently motivated to become competent at functioning in their environment, including choosing right and wrong actions with increasing sophistication depending on the people and ideas they are exposed to. Kohlberg theorized that people judge actions as right and wrong according to 6 stages of moral development. We can use this information about how humans grow cognitively to help ourselves and the families and children we work with to develop their thinking and meet developmental milestones.