By Sidney Kawimbe

Many parents who have sent their beloved little ones to private schools at a premium to acquire a decent primary level education, may have intuitively or accidentally observed that some of the stuff that their little loved kids are learning are the same or similar stuff that they may have learnt when they were probably in grade 7 or even 8. The question therefore is “are our little kids more intelligent due to exposure to more information through ICT such that they are able to learn and assimilate this material or are we rushing our kids to learn things that are not helping them”? In this discourse, I will bring to bare the processes that go on in the kids minds for effective learning to take place.

2nd August, 2013 was open day when my son Chomba who is 8 years old and in grade 3 at a primary school in Chalala closed school. I went to collect the report book. As a concerned parent like most parents are, I was eager to see his performance and noted that he passed number 5 in a class of 23. I also collected his books. Upon checking his social studies/science test book, the first question from their end of term test read and I quote” What is a metamorphic or changed rock? The second question was and I quote “List the components of blood?” Apparently, my son got both questions right. Then I said to myself, have they learnt all this??

The cognitive perspective insists that learning involves ‘knowing’ and knowing involves the process by which the sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, recorded and used. These processes aim at uncovering and understanding the internal activities underlying cognition, motivation and organization of memory. Numerous research documents have been presented by different scholars and psychologist on the processes that are internally at play when people learn and how children in particular learn. Piaget (1896-1980), the world-renowned Swiss psychologist has been best appreciated for his pioneering work on the development of intelligence in children. It has been widely recognised that his studies have had a major impact on the fields of psychology and education particularly with regard to planning the complexity of material to be taught in relation to the mental age of the supposed learners.

Piaget believed that from childhood individuals develop schemas, some kind of mental maps and clusters of accumulating knowledge onto which to fit new information. Now these mental structures are presumed to gradually change with age – a feature that compelled him to develop a stage theory of cognitive development. He identified the four stages of mental growth and related each with an age range and typical learning behaviours.

1. The sensory motor stage (0-2 years): The child is concerned with gaining motor control and learning about physical objects by touching and feeling them.

2. Pre-operational stage (2-7 years): the child is preoccupied with verbal skills. At this point the child can name objects and reason intuitively.

3. Concrete operational stage, about 7-12 years old, the child begins to deal with abstract concepts such as numbers and relationships.

4. Finally, in the formal operational stage, (12-15), the child begins to reason logically and systematically.

From this listing of stages and typical behaviours or preferences for learning, complete with age groups, Piaget recommended that teachers ought to be careful to structure the learning experiences in such a manner as to create the greatest natural appeal to the learners.
This explains why even in modern policy to the delivery of learning, the topics become progressively complex and difficult as the academic grade rises. Chirwa (2007) writes: Bruner had a slightly different opinion – claiming that a child is capable of learning things that are way off his/her age category as long as there has been sufficient preparatory exposure. Vygotsky had something of a compromise between the two contemporaries above although he introduced the social aspect of learning and material that is synonymous with psycholinguists when he talked about internal verbalisations as critical in learning.

In a nutshell, the exposition here has been on the theories of three of the world’s most quoted cognitive psychologists to make comparisons among them, to identify any points of contrast and finally to comment on the implications their theories impose on education.
Bruner and Piaget were both concerned with the way information about the world is coded, manipulated, stored and ordered. Vygotsky observed and took note of the influence of culture and social interaction on learning.

Further, Bruner, J (1915-1990) identified three stages of growth in the way that children come to represent in their minds, the world around them and these stages are; enactive stage, iconic stage and symbolic stage. He propagated that the enactive stage is characterized by behaviours like holding, moving, biting, rubbing and touching as activities that provide the needed experiences with the object of the world.
At this stage a similarity between Bruner and another popular cognitive psychologist (Piaget) emerges very clearly as both assert that objects are what the child does with them, Gage and Berliner, (1998).

Bruner then developed a stage theory containing three modes by which children learn beginning with the enactive mode: This is the basic or primitive mode by which a child begins learn. In the enactive mode, pupils learn through playing with objects. Toys and other real objects are very appealing to the children as items from which to gain learning.
This is why in pre-school a significant amount of time is devoted to the playroom where children can explore their environment through play. The iconic is the second mode. The learners think in terms of images or pictorial representation. At this stage of development, pupils learn by using concrete experience. This means that the experimental arrangement must be presented in form of a diagram and pupils must relate the diagram to the actual experiment. The symbolic stage: now learners think in terms of images or pictorial representation.

At this stage of development, pupils learn by using concrete experience. This means that the experimental arrangement must be presented in form of a diagram and pupils must relate the diagram to the actual experiment. While experiencing the symbolic stage the child uses language to hypothesize and also to go beyond the information given. Bruner (1998) elaborates: “To instruct students in how to use the tools, especially language, instruments and technologies at their disposal is to amplify and express their own powers.” In this way, the teacher helps to increase the pupils’ knowledge and their capacity to learn. One educationist named Wilson summed it up by charging that and I quote “some parents and educators believe that a child is like a huge container. To ensure the child’s success, they think it is their job to fill it up with as much information as possible, as quickly as possible. This misconception is damaging the brilliance of millions of our youth.”

In concluding, it is apparently clear here that while we would like to fast track our young learners to completing school at a very tender age by exposing them to multitudes of knowledge which they might not usefully comprehend, it is cardinal that we appreciate the mental disposition of our children. There have always been some over-zealous parents and or teachers who want their children to do well, so push them into trying anything and everything. Learning as has been shown above moves in a very un ambiguous trajectory, that of moving from concrete to abstract, known to unknown and simple to complex. It is therefore imperative that the responsible ministry, the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training takes a keen interest in what may be going on behind the scenes as some private schools may have little or no guidance when it comes to curriculum discharge.