Assessing Children's BehaviorThe exercise of observing and evaluating children formalizes the link between theory and practice. Much of observing a child today is focused on what is wrong with them and how we can intervene to help that particular child. Early childhood specialist Carolyn Seefeldt agrees: "observation is probably the oldest, most frequently used, and most rewarding method of assessing children, their growth, development, and learning." (Practical guide to observing children, Christine Hobart) It is important to know how to observe in order to collect the necessary data in the most useful, accurate and efficient way. The value of carefully planned observation and evaluation cannot be overemphasized. Observing children helps the observer to get a true picture of the particular child's development, any triggers and any accidents that may occur. Observation also reduces the chance that children will be unfairly labeled, which can create a variety of problems. For any observation to have value, it is important that the observer is as objective as possible and that several observations take place. This is to ensure that the observation is correct and accurate. (B Tec Early Years Yvonne Nolan) One particular observation technique commonly used to observe children is sociograms. These are used to indicate the social relationships of a particular child within a group, or to observe the friendship patterns of all children within a group. Sometimes this highlights the unpopularity of a particular child and might motivate setting the placement to... middle of paper... thoughts. He felt that this was an ongoing process, which helped the children adapt and grow. Although Piaget is one of the best-known theorists, his research methods have been criticized. Piaget used clinical interviews as a research method; this method was open to bias, as the type of data Piaget collected is qualitative, but very informative. Piaget was said to underestimate children's level of thinking. He suggested that children's cognitive development was linked to maturation and that children could not be "fast-tracked" through these stages. However, some research suggests that children can learn different tasks by giving them experiences and opportunities, for example Bruner believed that 5 and 6 year olds could be taught to conserve, although the training is not entirely effective.