ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author addresses some of the discipline-shaking theories which apply primarily to the study of cognitive development: Piaget, Information-processing and Vygotsky. The Piagetian child is, from earliest infancy, an active thinker who continually strives to understand the world in a coherent way. Insistence that knowing and thinking are active not passive ways of coping with the world is Piaget's first important contribution. Piaget's model of how cognitive development proceeds were complex. The 'information-processing' metaphor dominates cognitive psychology, and can be found in studies of cognitive development too. Both the Piagetian model and the information-processing approach are based on one key idea: focus on psychological structures and processes in people's minds which explain their behaviour, and which are essentially independent of the individual's relations to other individuals, to social practices and to the cultural environment.
