Five Common Approaches of Psychology

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There are five common approaches of psychology and as an early childhood teacher, one must understand fully and know these common approaches of psychology. Before I even get to these approaches, definition of psychology is very important and is supposed to be known by an early childhood teacher. To begin with, Stanslous Nonde Mulenga (Lecturer Y.M.C.A - 2013) defines psychology as “the systematic study of manifest behaviour of mental processes.” There are a lot of behaviours that happen or rather that goes on in mind and an early childhood teacher must understand the behaviour, explain it, describe it, measure it and predict it. Talking about the approaches of psychology, the first one I would like to discuss is the behavioural approach. In this approach, this is where a child needs to be taught how to be a good child in society, a child who can be appreciated by the people. In this stage, an early childhood teacher has to be realistic to the children. If a child does something good, be real, reward such a particular child by giving her or him a simple present. By so doing, it encourages the child to work even harder and to always be aiming higher. In the same vein, if the child does something wrong, an ideal punishment is important. Moreover, in the Bible, Proverbs (13:24) says “He who spares the rode hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to displine him”. Punishing a child does not mean that you hate a child however, it shows that you are concerned about that particular child and that you do not want that child to become useless in society. The other approach is cognitive approach. The term cognitive psychology came to use with the publication of the book cognitive psychology. However, cognitive psychology revolved the notion that if we want to know what makes people tick, then we need to understand the internal process of their mind. Ulric Neisserin

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