CD - Piaget (1896 - 1980)

from slides
1. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY is a theory that tries to make sense of how elements of COGNITION DEVELOP OVER TIME (such as memory, attention etc..)
  1. cognitive developmental theories are significant for EDUCATIONAL theories, as the skills we consider important are cognitive skills, e.g. reading, maths etc..
  2. genetic epistemology (branch of philosophy) - the child is not a tabula rasa, the mind is constructed through interaction with the environment. children actively select and interpret information in their environment, not passive. children are DIFFERENT THINKERS from adults, they are not just mini-adults. knowledge of the world is a continuous process of small experiences.
2. EGOCENTRISM
  1. The young child has problems with the idea that other people have a different view from them, they know other people exist but can't put themselves in their place.
    1. REALISM - attribute physical substance to psychological events
    2. ARTIFICIALISM - regards physical phenomenon as products of human creation.
    3. ANIMISM - attribute life to inanimate things
  2. Egocentrism is lost when interaction occurs with people who have different viewpoints, through social experience and realising that there are other ways of thinking.
according to Piaget, development occurs in stages, and at each stage, cognitions get more complex
1. the mechanisms of cognitive development work through 1. Organisation - the internal structure of thought 2. Adaptation - interaction between self and environment
2. structures or SCHEMAS are timeless, abstract and universal laws. a schema is a cognitive framework that guides a person's behaviour. schemas become more abundant as a person grows, therefore an active construct.
  1. Piaget looked at the development of intelligence and formal thought. He noted that children go through the same stages of development in the same order and no stage can be missed out. However some children may not attain the later stages, and the rate which children develop is different for individuals.
THE STAGES
1. STAGE ONE - SENSORIMOTOR STAGE - 0 - 2 YEARS. infants develop a sense of object permanence, where everything has a life of its own even if not in sight. they interpret through actions and doing. they learn sensorimotor problems, such as finding hidden toys.
2. STAGE TWO - PREOPERATIONAL - 2- 7 YEARS. - conservation tasks used at this age, e.g. taller, thinner container and shorter, wider container with same amount of water. preoperational child will say the taller one has more water. thinking lacks logical qualities
3. STAGE THREE - CONCRETE OPERATIONAL - 7 - 11 YEARS. the child begins to conserve at this stage, so will say the two containers have the same amount of water. at this stage, learns to appreciate different perspectives.
4. STAGE FOUR - FORMAL OPERATIONAL - 11 YEARS ONWARDS - during this stage the child becomes a more logical thinker and is now capable of thinking of hypothetical material and can think of all outcomes of a problem. thinking becomes abstract
CRITICISMS OF THE STAGE THEORY
1. METHODOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS - often did not report quantitative information on the number of children tested, social class, context etc.. difficult to evaluate,
2. CROSS-CULTURAL LIMITATIONS - JOHODA - 1983 - 9 year olds in Zimbabwe had a more advanced understanding of economic principles than their peers in Britain
3. when a large number of 16 year olds were tested on formal operational tasks, only 30% had achieved that level of thinking
4. There was no consistency between experiments as no two experimental conditions were the same.
5. Piaget only used small samples in his research and specifically only used children from Geneva
6. VYGOTSKY AND BRUNER CRITICISE PIAGET by saying that developmental stages don't exist at all, but that development is continuous
7. Piaget fails to acknowledge the idea that a child could return to a stage or miss one out and jump to the next - theory is RIGID and unlike an individuals experience.
POSITIVE ASPECTS OF PIAGET'S THEORY
1. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
  1. The curriculum changed as a result of Piaget's work, to ensure that education was age appropriate, a concept that wasn't previously thought of.
  2. Piaget's work also changed the idea that children learn through structured learning to the idea that children learn best through actively exploring and doing
  3. The curriculum changed to include play in children's learning and a more flexible approach to learning for different ages
2. Piaget's conservation tasks are still used to study cognitive development today.
  1. Piaget's experiments allowed people to understand how to communicate with children.
from book
1. Early history - children were believed to be pre-formed mini adults.
  1. ENLIGHTENMENT - LOCKE - tabula rasa, child is born as a blank slate, child learns through social interaction.
    1. ROUSSEAU - children are clean slates that get corrupted by society
    2. 1980s MINNESOTA TWIN STUDY - looked at twins reared apart, LOCKE and ROUSSEAU would say that these twins would be very different, however this wasn't the case. BOUCHARD argued that this showed the importance of GENETICS
      1. 21st CENTURY - there is an interaction between nature and nurture on a continuum.
2. ERIKSON - this theory suggests that our psychosocial development occurs in stages from birth to late adulthood
3. CONTINUOUS VS. DISCONTINUOUS
  1. CONTINUOUS - child becomes steadily more skilled
    1. Recent research has shown that most of child development appears to follow a continuous process
  2. DISCONTINUOUS - child becomes skilled in a series of leaps and bounds separated by periods of calm
    1. PIAGET saw children of different ages as being qualitatively different.
4. Economic development of the western world has caused the ideas that children should be in school, not work and that childhood should be a time of dependency.
  1. In the middle ages the distance between adulthood and childhood was slight.
    1. From the 18th century, the wall of private life was raised between the family and society
      1. schooling became compulsory and the idea that children are naturally innocent and should be protected emerged.
NEO-PIAGETIAN THEORY
1. DOISE AND MUGNY - discrepancies between individual and group performance on tasks, group performances often exceed individual
  1. DOISE ET AL - suggest that two or more peers can enhance knowledge

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CD - Piaget (1896 - 1980)

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	Created by becky.waine almost 11 years ago