Piaget's Cognitive Development (Brief)
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a biologist. he moved into the study of
the development of children's understanding, through observing
them and talking and listening to them while they worked on
exercises he set.
Piaget's work on children's intellectual development.
His view of how children's minds work and develop has been
enormously influential, particularly in educational theory. His
particular insight was the role of maturation (simply growing up) in
children's increasing capacity to understand their world: they
cannot undertake certain tasks until they are psychologically
mature enough to do so. His research has spawned a great deal
more, much of which has undermined the detail of his own, but like
many other original investigators, his importance comes from his
overall vision.
He proposed that children's thinking does not develop entirely
smoothly: instead, there are certain points at which it "takes off"
and moves into completely new areas and capabilities. He saw
these transitions as taking place at about 18 months, 7 years and 11
or 12 years. This has been taken to mean that before these ages
children are not capable (no matter how bright) of understanding
things in certain ways, and has been used as the basis for
scheduling the school curriculum. Whether or not should be the
case is a different matter.
Piaget's Key Ideas
Adaptation What it says: adapting to the world through assimilation
and accommodation
Assimilation The process by which a person takes material into
their mind from the environment, which may mean changing the
evidence of their senses to make it fit.
Accommodation The difference made to one's mind or concepts by
the process of assimilation.
Note that assimilation and accommodation go together: you can't
have one without the other.
Classification The ability to group objects together on the basis
of common features.
Class Inclusion The understanding, more advanced than simple
classification, that some classes or sets of objects are also sub-sets
of a larger class. (E.g. there is a class of objects called dogs. There
is also a class called animals. But all dogs are also animals, so the
1
class of animals includes that of dogs)
Conservation The realisation that objects or sets of objects stay
the same even when they are changed about or made to look
different.
Decentration The ability to move away from one system of
classification to another one as appropriate.
Egocentrism The belief that you are the centre of the universe
and everything revolves around you: the corresponding inability to
see the world as someone else does and adapt to it. Not moral
"selfishness", just an early stage of psychological development.
Operation The process of working something out in your head.
Young children (in the sensorimotor and pre-operational stages)
have to act, and try things out in the real world, to work things out
(like count on fingers): older children and adults can do more in their
heads.
Schema (or scheme) The representation in the mind of a set of
perceptions, ideas, and/or actions, which go together.
Stage A period in a child's development in which he or she is
capable of understanding some things but not others
Stages of Cognitive Development
Stage Characterised by
Sensori-motor
(Birth-2 yrs) Differentiates self from
objects
Recognises self as agent of action and begins to act intentionally:
e.g. pulls a string to set mobile in motion or shakes a rattle to make
a noise
Achieves object permanence: realises that things continue to exist
even when no longer present to the sense .
Pre-operational
(2-7 years) Learns to use language and to represent objects by
images and words
Thinking is still egocentric: has difficulty taking the viewpoint of
others
Classifies objects by a single feature: e.g. groups together all the
red blocks regardless of shape or all the square blocks regardless of
colour
Concrete operational
(7-11 years) Can think logically about objects and events
Achieves conservation of number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight
(age 9)
2
Classifies objects according to several features and can order them
in series along a single dimension such as size.
Formal operational
(11 years and up) Can think logically about abstract propositions
and test hypotheses systemtically
Becomes concerned with the hypothetical, the future, and
ideological problems
The accumulating evidence is that this scheme is too rigid: many
children manage concrete operations earlier than he thought, and
some people never attain formal operations (or at least are not
called upon to use them).
Piaget's approach is central to the school of cognitive theory known
as "cognitive constructivism": other scholars, known as "social
constructivists", such as Vygotsky and Bruner, have laid more
emphasis on the part played by language and other people in
enabling children to learn.
Notes Compiled By : Neha Gupta - 9958010750 :
myclassroom.blogspot.in