1.

0 Introduction

Child development is the process of change and stability in children from conception through
adolescences (Papalia, Olds & Feldman, 2008). When an infant arrives in the world they are
helpless tiny humans who depend on adults for every need from love, to feeding them. It is
amazing how these tiny babies grow into adults able to make decisions and become self-
dependent. The early years of a child's life is essential for cognitive, social and emotional
developments. Therefore, it is important that parents take every step necessary to ensure
that children grow up in environments where their social, emotional and educational needs
are met. Besides that, National Philosophy of Education (NPE) also plays an important role in
child development. NPE is very important because it enlighten the guidance and direction to
nation and act as a basic consideration of the objectives of national education. NPE is also
responsible and capable of achieving a high level of personal well-being as well as being able to
contribute to the harmony and betterment of the family, the society and the nation at large. Thus
to create a better generation in future it should be development from the child itself. So basically
to have a good education system, child development plays a major role in producing individuals
who are intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, physically, socially balanced and harmonic.

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2.0 Theory of child development, educational issues and
ways to overcome the issues.
According to Piaget's theory ,cognitive development is a broad theory about the nature and
development of human intelligence. Piaget state that cognitive development is an advancing
reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and experiences
experienced in the individual environment. Children build an perception of the world around
them, then experience differences between what they have known and what they find out in
their surroundings. There are four stages of cognitive development outline by Jean Piaget.
he first stage, is called the sensorimotor stage which extends from birth to age about two ( 0-
2 years). In this stage, infants build an understanding of the world by integrating with
experiences such as seeing and hearing with physical, motoric actions.

The second stage is called the preoperational stage during a child ( 2-7 years).  At this
stage, children begin to represent the world with words, images and drawings.Piaget also
identified that preoperational children’s thinking is hugely influenced by egocentrism. This is
the tendency to assume that one’s way of thinking is the only possible way.Although young
children make great progress during this stage, their thought has limitations which are
egocentrism. Egocentrism can be say as children can’t put themselves in someone else’s
shoes, and believe everyone else thinks exactly as they do .Imagination level of children in
this stage will usually increase and they are more curious to all things instead of being
logical. Unlikely the first stage, in this second stage children will spend more of their time by
putting role while they are playing. For instance, children always pretend a box is a house for
them to shelter. 

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2.0 Theory of child development, educational issues and ways to overcome the
issues.

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Piaget’s third stage in child development is concrete operational stage which is from the age
of 7 to 11 years (Santrock, 2011). During this stage, children are able to think logically about
the concrete events and starting to eliminate their egocentrism which means they started to
learn to view other’s perspective too. Supposingly at this stage child is capable of creating
logical structures that explain his or her physical experiences and abstract problem solving.
But there are certain issues in Malaysia Education System such as teacher-centered
education, where students put all of their focus on the teacher. Teachers talk, and the
students exclusively listen. During activities, students work alone, and collaboration is
discouraged. For instance, when students work alone, they don’t learn to collaborate with
other students, and their communication skills may suffer. Besides that, the teacher-centered
instruction doesn’t allow students to express themselves, ask questions, and direct their own
learning.Children need to explore, to manipulate, to experiment, to question, and to search
out answers for themselves. During this stage, most children will be very nervous to share
their opinion as they are very shy to expose themselves to the surrounding
environment. Teachers should be able to assess the child's present cognitive level in their
strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, teachers should encourage student-centered as
much as possible where children should have opportunities to communicate with one
another, to argue and debate issues. Student in the classroom will mingle among
themselves and help each other out to keep the flow of knowledge open and transparent.
Besides that, shuffling among students will helps to engage students better with each other
and see a particular topic from different perspectives as well. Students will be more
interested in learning activities when they can interact with one another and participate
actively. There certainly is no need to "spoon-feed" the knowledge or teach them.The
purpose of doing this is because to increase the self- esteem of children and to let them
hear others views too so that their level of egocentrism can decrease as state by Piaget.

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Paragraph 4

The last and final stage is formal operational stage, where children are between 11-15 years
of age. They begin to think in abstract and logical ways, develop images of ideal
circumstances and use logical reasoning to solve problems such as mathematics and
hypothetical ethical issues. In this age, children begin to take notes about the possibility of
the consequences of every events they experienced and also started to think in a formal
way. In this final stage also children will develop their problem solving activities. When
entering adolescence, they are able to do systematic planning in their life and also make a
hypothesis, inference far better than stages before. During at this stage, children tend to
face problems in their language for communication. According to the Malaysia Education
System, Language barriers in the classroom have become a major problem due to the
growing number of minority students who do not speak English. If students do not learn how
to speak or do not get an opportunity to speak in the language classroom they may soon get
de-motivated and lose interest in learning. Students often shut down, isolating themselves
out of fear or embarrassment. Teachers who put energy, enthusiasm and creativity into their
lesson plans don't usually have to deal with this language barrier. To overcome this
language barrier in class, teachers can focus on calling on weaker students in the class to
answer questions. If the right activities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a
lot of fun, raising general learner motivation and making the English language classroom a
fun and dynamic place to be. If students feel really shy about talking in front of other
students, then one way to go about breaking this cultural barrier is to create and establish
own classroom culture where speaking out loud in English is the norm. Through this method,
students will tend to communicate with each other and break the language barriers as well
as they are used to the language to communicate.

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Paragraph 5

The most famous issue in Malaysia Education System is the teaching of 21st century
student. In today world, 21st century teaching is highly encouraged in Malaysia by the
Minister of Education, Dr. Maszlee Malik. This is proven in the statement of Dr. Maszlee
where he stated that most of the students today are referred as 21st century learners
because of their exposure towards technology and have a higher level of digital literacy.
Different learning styles in a classroom can approach teaching and learning for students of
different abilities such as a slow learner in the same classroom through content, process,
product and learning environment. As a result, the principles of KBSR focuses on the
development of the 21st century. It combines several elements of JERIS such as knowledge,
skills, and values to integrate the physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual aspect. The
integration of these elements occurs in four ways which are skills cohesion, infusion,
integration of two elements and intellectual aspect. A good 21st century teacher is aware of
the career opportunities that will be in the coming years for their students. They will always
advocating towards forward thinking and planning to ensure all students will not be left
behind.In this 21st century teaching and learning, technology offers the potential to provide
students with new ways to develop their problem solving, critical thinking, and
communication skills, transfer them to different contexts, reflect on their thinking and that of
their peers, practice addressing their misunderstandings, and collaborate with peers on
topics relevant to their lives and using more engaging tools. By integrating technology,
students are able learning experience to a different level. Sharing links and offering digital
discussions as opposed to a constant paper flow allows students to access and share class
resources in a more organized fashion. Moreover, teachers should use more concrete props
and visual aids whenever possible in their classroom. For example teachers can use songs
to make students memories scientific terms easily as this is one of the methods in the 21st
century learning skill. Children can learn effectively through songs and rhythms. This skills
will help to develop a child’s remembering which involve the cognitive thinking by Jean
Piaget which refers to the changes that occur in children’s mental skills and abilities over
time.

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3.0 Conclusion
In conclusion, Piaget emphasized universal cognitive change and natural line.Piaget’s theory
had changed people’s view about children development.The implementation of cognitive
theory in children development is very effective as it will be very helpful towards the children
themselves as this theory help to influence children in the aspects of biological maturation,
activities, social experiences and equilibration. Besides that, congnitve development of a
child helps to develop the Education System too as they can think logically and maturely to
solve a problem. Moreover, implementation of KBSR, it is a proof that KBSR will lead to the
realization of the aspirations of National Philosophy of Education in Malaysia to produce
individuals which have stability of physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual. Thus, as a
future teacher, it is essential for us to used different approach to the students as they have
different learning style or use differentiated instruction which is suitable use to recognize the
learning style.

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4.0 References
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Essays, UK. (November 2013). Jean Piagets Theory Of Cognitive Development Psychology
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cognitive-development-psychology-essay.php?vref=1

Oakley, L. (2004). Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. In Cognitive development (pp.

29-52). Routledge.

(2009, April). Retrieved from simplypsychology:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html

Beetham, H., & Sharpe, R. (Eds.). (2013). Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age: Designing
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(MOE), M. o. (2010, April). Retrieved from falsafah-pendidikan-kebangsaan:

https://www.moe.gov.my/index.php/en/dasar/falsafah-pendidikan-kebangsaan

Keating, D. (1979). Adolescent thinking. In J. Adelson (Ed.), Handbook of adolescent

psychology, pp. 211-246. New York: Wiley.