Piaget

Question 1

What are Piaget’s main assumptions?

Answer 1

Children construct knowledge through experience
Child learns when cognitively ready and mature
Child’s thinking develops in stages and is qualitatively different to adults
Schema development underpins all cognitive development

Question 2

Is Piaget’s theory nature or nurture?

Answer 2

Both- maturation is nature, learning through experience is nurture

Question 3

What are functional invariants? Give an example

Answer 3

Fixed structures, processes that assist with discovery and understanding knowledge. For example, intelligence is the process of adaptation through assimilation and accommodation

Question 4

What are variant structures? Give an example

Answer 4

Changing structures that develop as knowledge is discovered. For example, schemas and operations

Question 5

What is a schema?

Answer 5

A cognitive framework of beliefs and expectations that help us to organise and interpret information

Question 6

What is assimilation?

Answer 6

Fitting new environmental experiences into existing schema

Question 7

What is accommodation?

Answer 7

Altering existing schema to fit in new experiences

Question 8

Describe Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

Answer 8

Placed in new environment, attempt to assimilate information, creates disequilibrium, accommodation occurs in order to restore equilibrium

Question 9

What did Piaget believe about language?

Answer 9

Language follows thought, cognitive maturity is a prerequisite for language development

Question 10

Research support for Piaget

Answer 10

Fantz (1961) face schemas-
4 day old infants shown 2 face like shapes, one with natural features and one with jumbled features, infant drawn to natural face.

Question 11

What real world applications are there?

Answer 11

Revolutionised classroom teaching-
Old-fashion classroom of students sitting silently and listening replaced with activity oriented teaching, teacher responsible for providing materials for discovery learning

Question 12

Criticism of Piaget’s focus?

Answer 12

Although he acknowledged the importance of others in learning, Piaget did not focus on it, whereas Vygotsky proposed that learning is a social process and children are capable of learning much more with others

Question 13

What methodological issues were there?

Answer 13

Overplayed importance of equilibration, as children vary intellectual curiosity
Middle class, clever sample
Some aspects of his theory are not testable concepts