Development

Development is understood as the process from which we obtain psychological functions mainly through the physical and socio-cultural context which, as development is increased according to our age and biological processes, it increases make it wider. It involves different dimensions such as the cognitive, corporal and the socio-affective.  

Culture and environment have an important role in the development of any child. Culture here is not just what other people do and can be observed by someone, also implies models that children can have in order to imitate some behaviors or on the contrary avoid them, symbolic systems -language, gestures, etc.- and intentional universes. The main idea that can be extracted from this is that development is changed when interacting with people.

Vygotsky has three basic premises about the social development: 

• Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (inter-psychological) and then inside the child (intra – psychological) – Vygotsky, 1978. 
• Society is the main basis according to Vygotsky, stating that children (or maybe we should say students in this context) need interactions, participation in cultural organized activities, they must develop their creativity in order to achieve greater results. It requires the participation of someone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, and this person will lead the learner to achieve the hoped abilities. 
• The Zone of Proximal Development is the distance between what a learner can do with the guide of an adult -and sometimes even a peer- and the ability of the learner to do by himself something which he used to need help with. This distance is overcame with scaffoldings which is a help that requires interaction between the learner and the adult. Scaffoldings are not the same for every child. Individual capacities should be taken into account when developing scaffoldings. To make the scaffolding more effective, the kid must be conscious of this help. Education is the main aspect in this ZPD as pushes development. In a school, scaffoldings are a tool for a teacher to provide students the opportunity to expand their actual skills and knowledge. For that, the teacher must engage students’ interest, simplify tasks in order to be more manageable for them, as well as motivate students so they can achieve the established goals.
  When the help comes from a peer, it can improve their relationship and students themselves can be aware of the importance of interaction among equals and the benefits of working with peers. 
  Here is an example of how teachers deal with the Zone of Proximal Development:

One direct from which development is being due is from the biological processes through the conscious elements of our mind and the behavior which we can self-regulate, so a previous planning about our actions is required. It is far from obvious that the biological compounds are a huge influence on our development. When we talk about biology and psychology as interrelated concepts we are making reference to the interaction between heritance, which is what has been transferred to the individual through the genes, and the common elements that every person acquires just by the mere fact of being born. 

Biology can be considered as an easy conception of the development in terms of learning development because we all share the same biological patterns so every child, in general, is capable of the same things in a specific period of their life. For example, a teacher of a classroom of four year old children cannot make them write a review of a book that they have seen as they, biologically, have not developed the enough language skills to do this activity. 

The second element is the dependency, also known as the personal autonomy. Children have an average reading competence at a certain age, but if a child reads regularly just because of the pleasure of it, he can improve this skill and have a better reading competence than his peers.

Environment in this content is understood as skills related to the expression as a general concept, the relation with the elements that surround us, the communication and therefore relationships, representation and explanation, which are some skills that increase progressively during the life of a human being and can be improved or can help its acquiesce through education. 

Another way to learn is from the direct action with objects which involves a reflexive and experimental phase. Children have to be curious in order to develop more skills and grow, and this can be only acquired if they think about the consequences of an act, by observing their environment and experimenting.  Also the role of the emotions is very important in the development as having a control and an emotional balance eases the development of a child regardless of their way of being at home and in the school, which usually tend to be a little bit different.