Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development (AO1 & AO3) Flashcards
What was Piaget’s belief about children’s intellectual ability?
Children do not simply know less than adults; they just think in different ways.
What are schemas?
Units of knowledge. As children develop they construct more and more complex mental representations of the world. Children are born with just enough schemas to interact. One of these is the ‘me-schema’ which stores all the child’s knowledge about themselves.
According to Piaget, how are we motivated to learn?
When our existing schemas do not allow us to make sense of something new, leading to the unpleasant feeling of disequilibrium. To escape this we must adapt to the situation by exploring and learning what we need to know and then we can achieve equilibrium.
How does assimilation take place?
When we understand a new experience and we equilibrate by adding new information to our existing schemas.
How does accommodation take place?
In drastically new situations when the child has to adjust by altering existing schemas or forming completely new ones.
Give an outline of the AO1
Schemas, motivation to learn, how we learn
How did Howe’s study (1992) support Piaget’s belief that all children form their own metal representations?
- Put children aged 9-12 in groups and asked about movement down a slope
- The children had an increased level of knowledge and understanding
- Critically, the children had not all come to the same conclusions so this supports the idea for children developing their own mental representations
How did Piaget’s theory revolutionise classroom environments?
Piaget’s idea that children learn by actively exploring and engaging resulted in old fashioned classrooms was replaced with more activity orientated tasks to allow them to construct their own understandings of the curriculum.
How did Piaget underplay the role of others in his research?
- Piaget saw learning in terms of the mind of the individual
- Vygotsky said that help from adult peers was essential and allowed for more advanced learning
How did Piaget overplay the importance of equilibrium?
- Piaget saw learning as a motivated process in which children learn in order to equilibrate because disequilibrium is so unpleasant
- However, children greatly vary in their intellectual curiosity
- Piaget overestimated how motivated children are to learn
- His research came from a nursery attached to his university which was made up of a biased sample of middle class children
Give an outline of the AO3
Howe study, application in education, underplayed the role of others, overplayed the importance of equilibrium
