PRIMARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM AND IMPACT ON COGNITIVE LEARNING – A REVIEW BASED ANALYSIS

Abstract

Objective: During initial phases of a child's life, there are 4 main areas of development: motor, communication, social/emotional and cognitive (thinking ability, knowledge, skill, and activities related to brain). We aim to study the primary school curriculum and its impact on the cognitive learning/development. Methodology: Piaget's theory is one of the theories of paramount importance, while we discuss on cognitive development in the children.Huitt and Hummel (2003) studied the implications of this theory that segregates cognitive development into 4 stages namely 1. Sensorimotor stage 2. Pre-operational stage 3. Concrete operational stage, and 4. Formal operational stage. Marwaha et al. (2017) studied the implication of Piaget's theory in children and their correlation with IQ. Basis Piaget’s theory it is recommended that the student's abilities should be challenged by teachers, but they should not present a curriculum which is beyond the child's level as that can adversely impact the cognitive development of the child. The current study has been carried out by analyzing the secondary data available through various research papers to derive a correlation between primary school curriculum and child's cognitive development. We also studied the deficiencies of the current primary school curriculum in getting the desired cognitive impacts on children. Results and Implications: The study will help understand the primary school curriculum in India, studying the impact of curriculum on cognitive development and identification of important factors/aspects in the curriculum ((content, teaching pedagogy etc).