Cognitive Development: The Theory of Jean Piaget ( Teaching Notes)

 

Cognitive Development: The Theory of Jean Piaget

Cognition refers to thinking and memory processes, and cognitive development refers to long-term changes in these processes. One of the most widely known perspectives about cognitive development is the cognitive stage theory of a Swiss psychologist named Jean Piaget. Piaget created and studied an account of how children and youth gradually become able to think logically and scientifically.

                     Piaget was a psychological constructivist: in his view, learning proceeded by the interplay of assimilation (adjusting new experiences to fit prior concepts) and accommodation (adjusting concepts to fit new experiences). The to-and-fro of these two processes leads not only to short-term learning, but also to long-term developmental change. The long-term developments are really the main focus of Piaget’s cognitive theory.

He is most famously known for his theory of cognitive development that looked at how children develop intellectually throughout the course of childhood. After observing children closely, Piaget proposed that cognition developed through distinct stages from birth through the end of adolescence. By stages he meant a sequence of thinking patterns with four key features:

1.     They always happen in the same order.

2.     No stage is ever skipped.

3.     Each stage is a significant transformation of the stage before it.

4.     Each later stage incorporated the earlier stages into itself.

Important Concepts

To better understand some of the things that happen during cognitive development, it is important first to examine a few of the important ideas and concepts introduced by Piaget.

The following are some of the factors that influence how children learn and grow:

Schemas

A schema describes both the mental and physical actions involved in understanding and knowing. Schemas are categories of knowledge that help us to interpret and understand the world.

In Piaget's view, a schema includes both a category of knowledge and the process of obtaining that knowledge. As experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add to, or change previously existing schemas.

For example, a child may have a schema about a type of animal, such as a dog. If the child's sole experience has been with small dogs, a child might believe that all dogs are small, furry, and have four legs. Suppose then that the child encounters an enormous dog. The child will take in this new information, modifying the previously existing schema to include these new observations.

Assimilation

The process of taking in new information into our already existing schemas is known as assimilation. The process is somewhat subjective because we tend to modify experiences and information slightly to fit in with our pre-existing beliefs. In the example above, seeing a dog and labelling it "dog" is a case of assimilating the animal into the child's dog schema.

 Accommodation

The process of changing or altering our existing schemas in light of new information known as accommodation. Accommodation involves modifying existing schemas, or ideas, as a result of new information or new experiences. New schemas may also be developed during this process.

Equilibration

Piaget believed that all children try to strike a balance between assimilation and accommodation, which is achieved through a mechanism Piaget called equilibration.

            As children progress through the stages of cognitive development, it is important to maintain a balance between applying previous knowledge (assimilation) and changing behaviour to account for new knowledge (accommodation). Equilibration helps explain how children can move from one stage of thought to the next.

The Stages

Through his observations of his children, Piaget developed a stage theory of intellectual development that included four distinct stages:

The Sensorimotor Stage

Ages: Birth to 2 Years

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes

·       The infant knows the world through their movements and sensation.

·       Children learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking and listening.

·       Infants learn that things continue to exit even though they cannot be seen (object performance)

·       They are separate being from the people and objects around them.

·       They realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them.

·       During the sensorimotor stage that children go through a period of dramatic growth and learning.

·       They also learn a great deal about language from the people with whom they interact.

The Preoperational Stage

Ages: 2 to 7 Years

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes

·       Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects.

·       Children at this stage tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others.

·       While they are getting better with language and thinking, they still tend to think about things in very concrete terms.

·       The foundations of language development may have been laid during the previous stage, but it is the emergence of language that is one of the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development.

·       At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy.

For example, a researcher might take a lump of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then give a child the choice between two pieces of clay to play with. One piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball while the other is smashed into a flat pancake shape. Since the flat shape looks larger, the preoperational child will likely choose that piece even though the two pieces are exactly the same size.

The Concrete Operational Stage

Ages: 7 to 11 years

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes

·       During this stage children begin to think logically about concrete events.

·       They begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass.

·       Their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete. Children begin to use inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle.

·       While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in development, they become much more adept at using logic.

·        The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as kids become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation.

·       Kids at this point in development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.

The Formal Operational Stage:

Ages: 12 and above

·        Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes

·        At this stage the adolescent or young adult begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems.

·        Abstract thoughts emerge.

·        Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning.

^·             The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas.

·        At this point, people become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.

·        The ability to plan systematically for the future and reason about hypothetical situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this stage.

Conclusion:

It is important to note that Piaget did not view children's intellectual development as a quantitative process; that is, kids do not just add more information and knowledge to their existing knowledge as they get older. Instead, Piaget suggested that there is a qualitative change in how children think as they gradually process through these four stages. A child at age 7 doesn't just have more information about the world than he did at age 2; there is a fundamental change in how he thinks about the world.

 

 

 

Educational Implications of Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory.

Piaget’s theories have had a major impact on the theory and practice of education.

1.     A focus on the process of children’s thinking, not just its products. In addition to checking the correctness of children’s answers, teachers must understand the processes children use to get to the answer. Appropriate learning experiences build

2.      

3.     on children’s current level of cognitive functioning, and only when teachers appreciate children’s methods of arriving at particular conclusions are they in a position to provide such experiences.

4.     Recognition of the crucial role of children’s self-initiated, active involvement in learning activities. In a Piagetian classroom the presentation of ready-made knowledge is deemphasized, and children are encouraged to discover for themselves through spontaneous interaction with the environment. Therefore, instead of teaching didactically, teachers provide a rich variety of activities that permit children to act directly on the physical world.

5. A deemphasis on practices aimed at making children adultlike in their thinking. Piagetian-based educational programs accept his firm belief that premature teaching could be worse than no teaching at all, because it leads to superficial acceptance of adult formulas rather than true cognitive understanding.
6. Acceptance of individual differences in developmental progress. Piaget’s theory assumes that all children go through the same developmental sequence but that they do so at different rates. Therefore, teachers must make a special effort to arrange classroom activities for individuals and small groups of children rather than for the total class group. In addition, because individual differences are expected, assessment of children’s educational progress should be made in terms of each child’s own previous course of development, not in terms of normative standards provided by the performances of same-age peers.
7. Adaptation of instruction to the learner's developmental level: An important implication of Piaget's theory is adaptation of instruction to the learner's developmental level. The content of instruction needs to be consistent with the developmental level of the learner. The teacher's role is to facilitate learning by providing a variety of experiences.
8. Piaget proposed that children progress through the stages of cognitive development through maturation, discovery methods, and some social transmissions through assimilation and accommodation.
9. In the classroom, teachers can apply Piaget's notions of assimilation and accommodation when introducing new material. They can help students approach a new idea through the lens of what they have already learned. When they can achieve what Piaget called equilibrium, they can then move forward to again advance their knowledge.
10. One key element for teachers to be cognizant of is their students' particular age and relative development. Preschool teachers can look at Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage and help children learn to recognize simple shapes and colours.
11. Teachers who have classrooms for Preschool children through approximately grade 2 should take a close look at the Preoperational Stage. It's important to note that children in this stage will not have a grasp of logic. Rather, their thoughts and behaviours will be egocentric and more intuitive. Teachers can thus put their lessons and student interactions in this context.
12. Teachers can approach the two later stages, Concrete Operational and Formal Operational, in much the same way. They can assess where their students are within the age-appropriate stage and then help them transition to the next. 
13. For older students in the final stage, teachers can build on the basic tools of adaptation and build lesson plans that ease the acquisition of new knowledge and skills.