ABSTRACT
Child development has traditionally been one of the foundations for primary education and particularly for early childhood education and the education of children with special educational needs. Theories of child development have been sub-divided into five inter-related aspects: the development of cognition and perception, language development, creativity, social and emotional development, and motor development. Planning of teaching and the promotion of learning are influenced not only by knowledge of child development but also by descriptions of children's learning. There is no single comprehensive, integrated theory of learning and instruction but a wide variety of approaches. The two broad groups are connectionist theories which reflect behaviourist psychology, influenced by Skinner, and cognitive theories which have developed some of the ideas from Gestalt-field psychology. Various early identification procedures have been developed to identify these children as early as possible in their school careers and to match learning opportunities to specific educational needs.
