Piaget's theory of cognitive development Flashcards
Who and what did Piaget do?
Piaget produced an influential theory of cognitive development - realising that children do not simply know less than adults do - INSTEAD Piaget realised that children think in very different ways from adults
Piaget divided childhood into stages - each represents the development of new reasoning
Piaget also looked at children’s learning - role of motivation in developments and question of HOW knowledge develops
explain the Schema in terms of cognitive development
- as children develop, they construct a more and more detailed/ complex mental representation of the world
According to Piaget - children are born with a small number of schema - enough for them to interact with the world and other people
from the beginning - in infancy - we construct a new schema ‘me-schema’ which all the child’s knowledge about themselves is stored
- cognitive development involves the construction of progressively more detailed schema for people )including ourselves / objects/ physical actions and later more abstract ideas e.g. justice/ morality
‘Motivation’ to learn - disequilibrium and equilibrium
motivation to learn is a key aspect in Piaget’s theory.
According to the theory, we are pushed to learn when our existing schema do not allow us to make sense of something new
this leads to unpleasant sensation - disequilibrium - to escape this, we have to explore and develop our understanding - by doing so we achieve equilibration - a preferred mental state
how does learning take place - assimilation and accommodation
Piaget saw the process of learning as adapting to the new situation so we understand it - identifying two processes by which adaptation takes place
assimilation - takes place when we understand a new experience and equilibrate by adding new information to existing schema
Accommodation- takes place in response to dramatically new experiences - child has to adjust to these by either radically changing current schema or forming new ones
e.g. child with pet dog may think of cats as dogs as they have 4 legs and tail - but then recognise the existence of separate category - this accommodation will involve forming a new ‘cat schema’
Strength - research support (HOWE)
Strength of P’s theory is existence of evidence for the individual formation of mental representations.
P’s theory of learning - suggests children will form quite individual representations of the world - even when they have similar learning experiences
Howe demonstrated this in a study - children aged 9-12 placed in groups of four to investigate and discuss the movement of objects down a slope .
- following the activity - all children found to have increased their understanding - but crucially - their understanding had not become more similar
- instead, each child had picked up different facts and reached different conclusions
So - this means that each child formed an individual mental representation of how objects move on slopes - as Piaget expected
Strength - real world application (TEACHING)
Strength of the theory is that it has been applied in teaching.
P’s idea that children learn by actively exploring their environment and forming their own mental representations of the world has changed classroom teaching.
since P’s theory gained popularity in 1960s, the old fashioned classroom had been replaced by activity orientated classrooms where children actively engage in tasks that allow them to construct their own understanding of the curriculum
discovery learning can take different forms - early years may investigate the physical properties of sand and water
At A Level, discovery may take form of ‘flipped’ lessons - students read up on the content - forming their own basic mental representations of the topic prior to the lesson
So - this shows how Piaget- inspired approaches may facilitate the development of individual mental representations of the world.
counterpoint for TEACHING strength (LAZONDER AND HARMSEN)
Piaget’s theory has influenced modern practice in teaching and learning - but there is no firm evidence showing that children learn better through discovery learning
review by Lazonder and Harmsen concluded that discovery learning with considerable input from teachers was the most efficient way to learn but it seems that input from others - not discovery is the crucial element of effectiveness
Limitation - Role of others in learning (VYGOTSKY)
limitation of P’s theory is he underestimated the role of others in learning.
Piaget saw other people as useful to learning in the sense that they are potential sources of information/ learning experiences
contrasts to other theories - see learning as a more social process - supported by more knowledgeable others
in particular Vygotsky - saw knowledge as existing first between the learner and the more experienced other and only then in the mind of the learner
there’s strong evidence supporting this idea - that learning is enhanced by interaction with others - maybe better explained by other theories
means that Piaget’s theory may be incomplete explanation for learning as it does not put enough emphasis on the role of other people in learning
EXTRA - role of motivation
Piaget suggested that children (and people) acquire new knowledge to escape the unpleasant sensation of disequilibrium - so the desire tp learn is innately motivated - born with the desire to learn about the world
BUT it has been suggested that Piaget overstated the role of motivation in learning - possibly due to the fact Piaget studied an unrepresentative and highly intelligent sample of children - initially by himself then those in a university nursery - maybe they were more motivated to learn that most?
