Lecture 9: Constructivist and sociocultural approaches

Question 1

What is learning?

Answer 1

• A relatively permanent change in an individual’s behaviour
• Changes in the amount or type of knowledge we have or the way in which we reason with the world

Question 2

What is cognition

Answer 2

• Cognitive psychology dedicated to examining how people think
• Cognitive processes include thinking, knowing, remembering, judging, and problem-solving
• ‘Complex conceptual learning can only be understood in humans if internal cognitive processing is deliberately analysed’ (Murtonen et al 2017, p. 115)

Question 3

What is language?

Answer 3

True language is marked by productivity (recombination, recursion, generativity) - speakers can make many new utterances, recombine or expand the forms they already know to say things they have never heard before

Question 4

how do we learn ?

Answer 4

Different approaches in developmental psychology use different techniques to understand processes of learning and cognition
Piaget and Vygotsky
Language acquisition

– Chomsky, Skinner and Bruner

Question 5

cognitive development

Answer 5

Mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment

• Mental processes that include attention, memory, producing and understanding language, learning, reasoning, problem solving
• Thinking and reasoning

Question 6

Jean Piaget 1896-1980–> early influences biology

Answer 6

• Piaget gained a PhD for his study of mollusks
• Can molluscs accommodate to the new environment?
• The molluscs did adapt
• The molluscs reproduced and Piaget argued that the accommodation changed the internal structure of the molluscs, and this change was passed on to the next generation
• Biological theory is prominent in Piaget’s studies of children

Question 7

Piaget and genetic epistemology

Answer 7

• Epistemology – study of knowledge
• Genetic – development or emergence
• How do we come to know something?
• Experimental epistemologist – rejected the armchair approach for empirical data
• Knowledge is a process rather than a state
• Maturation – ‘readiness’

Question 8

piaget and constructivism

Answer 8

• The fundamental problem with the behaviourist approach was that it characterised learning as passive
• Constructivist approaches - we construct new understandings of the world based on what we already know
• Children construct their own knowledge
• Actively select and interpret information
• Active agents and ‘little scientists’ – influences on early education ‘sand’, ‘water’, exploration

Question 9

Piaget and structuralism

Answer 9

• Set of mental operations underlie thinking
• Infant’s cognitive structures are ‘schemes’
• Scheme is a basic unit of understanding
• Cognitive structure that form the basis of organising actions and mental representations so that we can understand and act upon the environment

Question 10

What 3 basic schemas are there

Answer 10

• Born with 3 basic schemes
• Reflective actions that can be performed on objects
• Sucking, looking and grasping

Question 11

Scheme development

Answer 11

• Action schemes we are equipped with at birth develop and multiply
• Descendants of early schemes come to form intelligent thought processes
• Schemes adapt and evolve
• Schemes may be coordinated or brought together to perform complex actions

Question 12

What does Assimilation

Answer 12

the process whereby a new idea is understood in terms of schemata child already possesses
Assimilation is applying an existing scheme to a novel task

Question 13

What does accomodation mean?

Answer 13

Accommodation is modifying a scheme to adapt to a new application

Question 14

Disequilibrium

Answer 14

• How does it feel when learning new things challenge or don’t fit what we know?
• Is this an issue for children and adults?
• How can learners be supported?

Question 15

methodology: Piaget

Answer 15

• Observation
• Classification
• Clinical method - méthode Clinique
• Interested in mistakes
• Manipulation of objects
• Experiments
• Baby diaries

Question 16

What is the stage theory

Answer 16

• Each stage allows a different form of interaction between child/environment
• Stages must proceed in a linear order
• Stages are universal
  Regression is impossible
• Age variations

Children develop more sophisticated ways of thinking mainly as a consequence of maturation

Stages of cognitive development – sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, formal operations

Question 17

Sensorimotor Period

Answer 17

• Infants understand the world through their overt physical actions
• Move from simple reflexes through several steps to an organised set of schemas
• Object permanence - understand that an object still exists even when they cannot see it

Question 18

Preoperational 1

Answer 18

• Roughly 2-7 years
• Egocentrism – inability to decentre
• ‘Collective monologue’ of the playground
• Adult: Have you any brothers or sisters?
• Child: Yes, a brother
• Adult: What’s his name?
• Child: Sammy
• Adult: Does Sammy have a brother?
  Child: No

Question 19

preoperational 2

Answer 19

• Compito delle tre montage- three mountain Task
  Child is seeing it from their point of view
• Inability to see it from the perspective of someone else : egocentrism
• Critic: if you change the language then children can move through this stage

Question 20

Preoperational 3

Answer 20

Difficulty with conversation
The coins and the juice, scheme: longer being bigger, taller is bigger

Question 21

Preoperational 4.

Answer 21

Semilogical thinking
- Piaget: What makes the wind?

• Julia: The trees.
  Piaget: How do you know?
• Julia: I saw them waving their arms.

-Piaget: How does that make the wind?
Julia: (waving her hand in front of his face): Like this. Only they are bigger. And there are lots of trees.
Piaget: What makes the wind on the ocean?
Julia: It blows there from the land. No. It’s the waves…