piaget

Question 1

what is maturation

Answer 1

causes changes in the way children think

Question 2

what are schema

Answer 2

Units of knowledge (ideas and understanding) representing a particular aspect of the world - based on our experience.

Question 3

how are we motivated to learn

Answer 3

We are motivated to learn when our existing schema do not allow us to make sense of something new. This leads to an unpleasant feeling (disequilibrium). Equilibration is restoring balance between experience and schema by exploring and learning to achieve cognitive equilibrium.

Question 4

how does learning take place

Answer 4

Assimilation and accommodation

Question 5

what is assimilation

Answer 5

we equilibrate by adding new information to existing schema, e.g. has pet dog, child learns more breeds.

Question 6

what is accommodation

Answer 6

Radically change schema, or add new ones e.g. pet dog then meet a cat. Child alters pet schema/ add a new cat-schema.

Question 7

strengths of piagets theory

Answer 7

• Supporting evidence – children do learn by forming mental representations (Howe et al.). Procedure: Children (age 9-12) in groups of four discussed and studied objects moving down a slope. Findings: Afterwards they came to different conclusions. Therefore, Piaget is right that children form their own personal mental representations.
• Applications in education: Piaget’s idea that children learn by exploring the world and forming new mental representations (discovery learning) has changed education, e.g. led to activity-based classrooms and flipped learning.

Question 8

limitations of piagets theory

Answer 8

Piaget underplayed the role of others in learning. Lev Vgotsky proposed that children learn largely from other people in a social process enabling them to learn more complex ideas, this is ignored by Piaget.

Question 9

what are Piagets stages

Answer 9

Children progress through four stages of intellectual development each with a different level of cognitive reasoning.

stage 1 = sensorimotor stage
stage 2 = pre-operational
stage 3 = concrete operations
stage 4 = formal operations

Question 10

what is stage 1

Answer 10

Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years) Basic coordination and language

Object permanence develops at 8 months. The understanding that objects still exist when they are out of sight. <8 months children look away from an object when it is out of sight, >8 months they continue to look for it.

Question 11

what is stage 2

Answer 11

Pre-operational stage (2-7 years)
Egocentrism to see the world from one’s own point of view. Three mountains task (Piaget and Inhelder, 1956). Children asked to pick a picture that shows what a doll can see. Preoperational children struggle to select one that shows a view other than their own, i.e. can’t decentre.

Lack of class inclusion – Class inclusion is the idea that classifications have subsets. Piaget and Inhelder (1964) Pictures of 5 dogs and 2 cats. ‘Are there more dogs than animals?’ Under 8s say more dogs, i.e. can’t simultaneously see dog and animal class.

Struggle with conservation - the mathematical understanding that quantity remains constant even when the appearance of objects changes, e.g. pouring water between beakers.

Question 12

what is stage 3

Answer 12

Stage of concrete operations (7-11 years) Can now conserve; less egocentric; better at class inclusion. Struggle with abstract thinking.

Question 13

what is stage 4

Answer 13

Formal operations stage (11+)

Abstract reasoning develops, e.g. understand syllogisms, ‘All yellow cats have two heads. Charlie is a yellow cat. How many head does Charlie have?’

Question 14

strengths of Piagets stages

Answer 14

• Application to education: Children are not biologically ready to learn certain things, e.g. pre- operational children learning abstract maths. This has had a big impact on what is taught in primary schools, e.g. Plowden report (1967) drew extensively on Piaget and led to major changes.
• Piaget and Inhelder’s research supports the theory that there are distinct stages with different reasoning levels, e.g. three mountains task, conservation tasks etc.

Question 15

limitations of piagets stages

Answer 15

• Piaget may have underestimated young children
• Siegler and Svetina (2006): Young children were capable of class inclusion. 100 5-year-olds had 3 sessions of 10 class inclusion tasks – mistakes explained in between. Responses improved.
• Hughes (1975) argued Piaget’s three mountains task was overly complicated. He found children of 3.5-year-olds could decentre when the task was more realistic. Two policeman and a ‘naughty boy’ doll. Children asked to place doll where police couldn’t see it.
• Baillargeon – Object permanence from 3 months
• Piaget may have overestimated adolescents. Bradmetz (1999) found most teenagers could not do formal reasoning tasks. Longitudinal study, 62 children from seven to 15-years-old. Only one at 15 could reliably complete the tasks. Similarly, Dasen (1994) claims only a third of adults ever reach formal operations stage, and generally not in adolescence.