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| Jean Piaget
(1896-1980) was a biologist who originally studied molluscs (publishing
twenty scientific papers on them by the time he was 21) but 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 owed much to his early studies of water snails"
(Satterly,
1987:622) |
| 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. |
| Piaget's
Key Ideas
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Adaptation |
What it says: adapting to the world through
assimilation and
accommodation |
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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. |
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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. |
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Classification |
The ability to group objects together on the basis of common features. |
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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 class of animals includes
that of dogs) |
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Conservation |
The realisation that objects or sets of objects stay the same even when
they are changed about or made to look different. |
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Decentration |
The ability
to move away from one system of classification to another one as
appropriate. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Schema (or scheme) |
The representation in the mind of a set of perceptions, ideas, and/or
actions, which go together. |
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Stage |
A period in a child's development in which he or she is capable of
understanding some things but not others |
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Stages of Cognitive Development
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Stage |
Characterised by |
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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 (pace Bishop Berkeley) |
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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 |
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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)
Classifies objects according to several features and can order them
in series along a single dimension such as size. |
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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 constructionism": others, 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.
This brief overview is here more for completeness than its direct
relevance to teaching post-16 learners, but some of the ideas are explored
in
more detail elsewhere.
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| Piaget Reading
DONALDSON M (1984) Children's Minds London Fontana (readable and
critical)
SATTERLY D (1987) "Piaget and Education" in R L
Gregory (ed.) The Oxford Companion to the Mind Oxford, Oxford
University Press
WOOD D (1998) How Children Think and Learn (2nd edition) Oxford;
Blackwell Publishing.
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