| In Piaget's theory of cognitive development, what does 'stages of development' refer to? | Stages of development are general patterns of thinking for children at different ages or with different amounts of experience. |
| Outline 3 main ideas in Piaget's stages of development (Green & Piel, 2010; Meece & Daniels, 2011; Miller, 2011) | 1. Moving from one stage to another represents a qualitative change in thinking - a difference in the WAY children think, not the amount they know.
2. Children's development is steady and gradual, and experiences in one stage form the foundation for movement to the next.
3. All people pass through each stage in the SAME ORDER but at DIFFERENT RATES. Students at the same age may be at different stages as a result of different experiences in a certain area (Kuhn, Pease, & Wirkala, 2009; Siegler, 2012). |
| There's 4 stages in Piaget's stages of development. Describe them and what are their respective age groups? | 1. Sensorimotor (0-2 years) = goal-directed behaviour, object permanence.
2. Preoperational (2-7 years) = rapid increase in language ability with overgeneralised language, symbolic thought, dominated by perception.
3. Concrete operational (7-11 years) = operates logically with concrete materials, classifies and serial orders.
4. Formal operational (11- adulthood) = solves abstract and hypothetical problems, thinks combinatorially. |
| Describe the sensorimotor stage in the development of infants (0-2 years old). | In the very early stages of life, objects are literally "out of sight, out of mind." Infants don't initially represent objects in memory. Later, they acquire object permanence, the understanding that objects exists even when out of sight.
Young children will learn many concrete concepts (e.g. Mom, Dad, cat) and they form a conceptual foundation for later learning (Rakinson, 2010). Children at this stage also develop the ability to imitate, which allows them to learn by observing others. |
| Describe the preoperational stage (2-7 years old) | Preoperational derives from the idea of "operation" or mental activity. A child who identifies different animals as dogs, cats, and bears, for example, is performing a mental operation.
Perception dominates children's thinking in this stage. Additionally many cognitive changes happen in children's such as enourmous progress in language development, growth in ability to use symbols, and learning a huge number of concepts.
These concepts are concrete, however, and children in this stage have limited notions of abstract ideas such as fairness, democracy, and energy. |
| In relation to Piaget's theory, describe the preoperational thinkers' inability to conserve. | Conservation refers to the idea that the "amount" of some substance stays the same regardless of its shape or the number of pieces into which it is divided. For example a glass in water in different shaped containers. Children's thinking will feature:
1. Centration - where they focus on the most perceptually obvious aspect on an object or event and ignore other features. For example, height of the water in the glass.
2. Lack of transformation - which is the ability to mentally record the process of moving from one state to another, such as pouring the water from the 1st to the 3rd glass. To them it's a new and different container of liquid.
3. Lack of reversibility, which is the ability to mentally reverse the process of pouring the water from one glass to another. |
| According to Piaget's theory, describe egocentrism in preoperational thinkers. | Egocentrism is the inability to see objects and events from other's perspectives. Preoperational thinkers tend to believe that everyone sees the world as they do, and they ignore the possibility that other perspectives exists.
For example, preoperational children will gift gifts that THEY would enjoy, such as a stuffed animal, ignoring the fact that they are giving these to an adult. |
| In relation to Piaget's theory, describe the concrete operational stage (7-11 years old). | The concrete operational stage is characterised by the ability to think logically when using concrete materials. This marks another advance in children's thinking (Flavell, Miller & Miller, 2002).
Concrete operational learners also overcome some of the egocentrism of preoperational thinkers. They are able to understand the perspectives of storybook characters and better understand the view of others, which makes them better able to work effectively in groups. |
| Describe classification and seriation which develops in concrete operational thinkers. | 1. Classification - the process of grouping objects on the basis of common characteristics. They can form subclasses of objects but still have problems with more complex classification systems. For example, white circles vs. black circles. A black square would be with black circles but a different subclass.
2. Seriation - the ability to order objects according to increasing or decreasing length, weight or volume. In doing so, they master transitivity, which is the ability to infer a relationship between two objects based on their relationship with a third.
However, concrete operational thinkers have problems interpreting sayings and phrases such as "make hay while the sun shines" or "don't count your chickens until they hatch". |
| According to Piaget's theory, describe the formal operational stage (11- adulthood) | Formal operational thinkers can think ABSTRACTLY, SYSTEMATICALLY and HYPOTHETICALLY. They would know that "make hay while the sun shines" would mean something abstract. They can find meaning in the study of abstract topics like algebra in maths, or allegory in literature.
Thinking systematically, formal thinkers recognise the need to control variables in forming conclusions. They can also think in about hypothetical scenarios such as imagined conversations in plays and drama.
However, when students can't think abstractly, systematically, or hypothetically, they revert to memorising what they can, or, in frustration, give up completely. |
