Education is a key to building self-reliance and helping people achieve their potential. It enables them to acquire the knowledge they need for success, contribute to economic growth and build better lives.
Quality education fosters children’s social and emotional development, improves their language and literacy skills, and increases their thinking (cognitive) abilities. It also helps them develop lifelong learning habits.
Social development
Children need to learn how to relate with others and develop a sense of self-worth. This is a major component of social development, which occurs as a result of interactions with family members, teachers, peers and other caregivers. Children also learn how to recognize emotions and understand turn-taking in group activities.
UNESCO works on social development in education through policy advocacy, research, knowledge sharing and partnerships with civil society. It promotes integrated approaches that combine health, nutrition, learning and protection for children and their families.
A quality education is essential to children’s health, well-being and future prospects. It improves cognitive development, increases earning potential and builds skills for lifelong learning. It enables children to contribute to their communities and become responsible, contributing citizens. It also enables them to take advantage of opportunities for personal growth, nurtures self-confidence and resilience and helps them become active agents of change. But many children don’t have access to quality education. This includes lack of trained teachers, inadequate education materials and limited school infrastructure.
Emotional development
Emotional development is the process of identifying and understanding emotions. It includes learning to recognise one’s own feelings, as well as those of others. It also involves learning how to manage these emotions effectively. It is important for school-age children to develop a strong foundation of emotional development. This will allow them to successfully engage with their social and academic environment.
Around 3 years of age, a child typically learns to control their aggression and cooperate with peers. They begin to experience a range of emotions, including fear, anger, sadness and empathy. They can use their imagination and role-play with their peers. They also start to understand the difference between reality and fantasy.
By middle childhood, children can distinguish between positive and negative emotions. They also understand that a single event may trigger mixed emotions. They are also able to identify situational determinants of emotion. For example, they understand that a sibling leaving for college is likely to be both sad and happy.
Physical development
Children learn about their bodies and how to use them by exploring the world with their senses. Their physical development helps them grow and strengthen their bones, muscles and abilities to move around. It is important that they have a well-balanced diet and are physically active throughout the day to improve their health and wellness.
This area of development focuses on infants and toddlers growing their muscles, bones and bodies to be able to explore their environment. It is referred to as the motor domain and includes both gross and fine motor skills.
As infants grasp toys with their hands they develop small muscles (fine motor skills). Toddlers build with blocks and play with clay to hone their fine motor skills. They use crayons to scribble and eventually begin to write their names and other words (communication).
As children become older they gain more knowledge of the world through their senses, focusing on noticing details, making discoveries and asking questions about things around them. They start to understand how to solve problems and become more aware of their emotions.
Cognitive development
Cognitive development refers to the growth of a child’s thinking and reasoning abilities. Children in the preschool years learn to think abstractly through symbolic representation, which is a way of using objects and words to stand for other things. They also learn to solve problems and develop their ability to read and write.
For example, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development states that children in the sensorimotor stage of life touch, manipulate, and look at objects. These actions are necessary to learn about the world around them and form their early understanding of it. Children in this stage are also egocentric, meaning they assume that other people have the same experiences and emotions as themselves.
Research has shown that cognitive development is a collaborative process between children and their environment. Analyzing development as a collaboration has led to new questions for researchers. For example, how does a child’s context support or hinder high level performances known to be within his or her reach?