Education empowers children and enables them to develop into productive members of society. Educated kids can contribute to economic growth, help reduce poverty and inequality, and build strong communities.
Early learning helps children adapt to new situations and make friends. It also helps them develop fine and gross motor skills, and cognitive (thinking) skills.
Social and emotional development
Children develop social and emotional skills through their everyday interactions with peers and adults in school. They learn how to manage their emotions, build healthy relationships and be responsible and caring citizens. These skills are important for a child’s lifelong learning and success.
Lev Vygotsky developed a socio-cultural learning theory that stresses the importance of children’s social and cultural experiences. He also proposed the idea of the zone of proximal development, which describes how children build on and adapt prior knowledge to take in new information.
Effective education includes a holistic approach that prioritizes all aspects of children’s growth and development, including their social-emotional and cognitive skills. It’s vital to understand how these skills interact and influence each other to ensure that kids have the best chance of achieving their full potential. It’s also important to communicate milestone competencies to parents and educate them on how they can support their child’s social-emotional development at home.
Cognitive development
Cognitive development is how children learn and understand their world. It encompasses many aspects, including perceptual skills, language learning and understanding, and logical reasoning. It is an important area of research for scientists who study children’s growth and development.
One of the most famous perspectives on cognitive development is that of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. He theorized that cognitive development occurs in a series of distinct stages. He believed that each stage has a fixed order and that thinking within the stages differs in fundamental ways.
For example, in a classic experiment with 3- to 6-year-olds, researchers placed a dog mask over the head of a cat named Maynard. Despite this, most children at this stage still identified Maynard as a cat. This is a classic demonstration of the distinction between perception and reality that Piaget called object permanence. It is an important concept for children to grasp at this stage.
Physical health and safety
Educators must keep safety in mind with nearly every aspect of their classroom environment and day-to-day operations. From the layout of rooms to the materials used in craft projects, a safe environment is a must. It is also vital to regularly inspect playground equipment for damage and sharp edges that could lead to injuries.
Children require frequent opportunities for physical movement to develop the motor skills and confidence that promote ongoing participation in health-enhancing activities. School-based physical education curricula are designed to provide these developmentally appropriate experiences and the trained teachers who deliver them have the unique knowledge and skill set to do so.
Unfortunately, many barriers stand in the way of children exercising their right to quality education – conflict, natural disasters, poverty, geographic isolation and social exclusion. UNICEF’s Let Us Learn initiative aims to level the playing field and remove these obstacles. It provides out-of-school children with alternative ways to learn and helps strengthen formal education systems for fully enrolled students, paying particular attention to girls and children with disabilities.
Personal development
In addition to general knowledge of child development, educators need to have a deep understanding of each individual in their care. They need to know what each child knows, what they are interested in learning, and what cultural assets each brings to the classroom. This allows educators to provide the right amount of scaffolding for each child as they learn, based on the knowledge and skills that children already have.
Personality development helps children develop a positive attitude toward life and an ability to bounce back from setbacks. It also teaches them to be more patient and empathetic with others, which can help them build strong relationships at school and home.
The social and emotional competencies that support personality development are shaped by a complex interplay of social, biological, and representational influences. These include the family contexts that support children’s developing social and emotional competences and underlie temperamental individuality, the relationships they have with peers (including their friendships), and the ways they interpret these experiences in relation to their growing representations of themselves and the world.