ABSTRACT
By now, you have probably come to the realization that effective teachers are opportunists! Successful teachers are always looking for “teachable moments.” Teachable moments expand students’ cognitive structures or mental schemes, and they have a collateral impact on students’ motivation to learn. Hence, effective teachers capitalize on students’ interests and interactions during learning episodes in an effort to bolster their development. However, teachers that endeavor to “move the dial” relative to student academic achievement—those who desire to close the academic gap—must possess a rather cogent understanding of human development or developmental learning theory. This “foundational” chapter discusses the work of quintessential learning theorists and developmentalists like Piaget, Vygotsky, Bronfenbrenner, Erikson, and Maslow and provides a brief summation of behaviorism and social learning theory. While all of us recognize the importance of looking at students holistically and gathering important knowledge about student growth and behavior in each domain of human development (cognitive, physical, social, and emotional) in order to effectively teach, much of the discussion in this chapter will be limited to students’ cognitive, social, and emotional development. Nevertheless, we believe that the content provided in this chapter will provide the reader with a good “grounding” in developmental learning theory, which is essential to teacher effectiveness.
