Piaget's theory of Cognitive Development

Question 1

Cognitive Development

Answer 1

the development of all mental processes, in particular thinking, reasoning and our understanding of the world

Question 2

What did Piaget propose?

Answer 2

that children do not know any less than adults do, instead they think entirely different from grown ups

Question 3

What is Maturation and Environment the key to?

Answer 3

how children thinking changes: as children get older, certain mental operations become possible, and at the same time through interactions of the world

Question 4

What two aspects did Piaget look at in children’s learning?

Answer 4

• the role of motivation in development

- the question of how knowledge develops

Question 5

Schema

Answer 5

• A mental structure containing all the information we have about one aspect of the world..
• They become more complex during development as we acquire more information about an item, developed from experience
• Mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing

Question 6

What does Piaget claim children are born with?

Answer 6

• small number of schemas, enough to allow to them to interact with other people e.g. sucking, crying
• these are developed over time as a consequence of the child’s interaction with its environment

Question 7

Me-schema

Answer 7

• child’s knowledge about themselves is stored

Question 8

‘Motivation to learn’

Answer 8

we are motivated to learn when our existing schemas do not allow us to make sense of something new, leading to disequilibrium

Question 9

Disequilibrium

Answer 9

• creates motivation to learn as there is a sense of uncomfort
• children experience an imbalance between what is understood and what is encountered

Question 10

What happens to children as a result of disequilibrium?

Answer 10

• to escape this mental state and adapt to new situations, the child learns and explores more through developing new schemes or adapting old ones.
• This results to them being in the state of equilibrium

Question 11

Equilibrium

Answer 11

• A pleasant state of balance and occurs when experiences of the world match the state of our current schema
• the preferred mental state

Question 12

How is new information built into our understanding of a topic?

Answer 12

via assimilation or accommodation

Question 13

Assimilation

Answer 13

When new experience is understood within existing schema. It doesn’t radically change our understanding of the schema so we can incorporate the new experience into our existing schema

Question 14

Example of assimilation

Answer 14

Child with a dog at home meets another breed of dog, the child will add the information about the dog into dog schema

Question 15

Accommodation

Answer 15

When new experiences require major schema change. It is very different from our current schema so it involves the creation of a whole new schema or wholescale changes to existing ones. The child adapts existing schema in order to understand new information that doesn’t appear to fit

Question 16

AO3 - + There is supporting evidence

Answer 16

• Howe et al put 9-12 yr olds in groups to discuss how objects move down a slope
• It was found that the level of children knowledge and understanding increased after the discussion
• but the children did not reach the same conclusion or pick up the same facts about movement down the slope
• this supports Piaget’s idea that children learn through their own personal mental representations as suggested in the study that the children had different thought and opinions despite discussing and learning of the same item

Question 17

AO3 - + Piaget’s ideas has application in education in the sense that it revolutionised teaching

Answer 17

• Early years classrooms learning is focused around play and discovering new aspects of the world
• Activity based classrooms allow children to learn in a more natural way
• As children actively engage in tasks, this allow them to construct their own understanding of the curriculum
• This replaced old fashioned classrooms whereby children sat silently in rows copying from the board
• This is therefore a strength as it has had a direct positive impact on education and so it enables us to continue to seek out active ways of allowing learning to occur