Importance Of Concrete To Abstract Principle

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What is ‘concrete to abstract’ principle?
The ‘concrete to abstract’ principle, otherwise known as Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) approach, is used widely in Singapore’s educational system and closely related to Bruner’s Enactive-Iconic-Symbolic (EIS) representation. According to Leong et al., 2015, CPA is similar to EIS because both “concrete” and “enactive” discuss about children reconstructing roles and events using their bodies, gestures, sounds, words and objects. It is the most basic form of representing a child’s experience and very common in early childhood years. For this instance in Activity 3, children use different tools of measurements such as uni-cubes, paper clips or even ice cream sticks to measure the length of the plants.
This is because implementing activity plans which rely on abstract approaches too soon, children may choose to parrot what adults tell them instead of truly understanding the essential concepts. For this case, teachers provide the children with many firsthand experience with concrete objects before progressively introducing greater abstractions. Concrete experiences allow the children to be involved in physical contact with real object using their sense of taste, touch, smell, see and hear. Getting the children to use their senses is the most concrete way to enhance their learning interest and knowledge. On the other hand, abstract experiences allow teachers take a step forward and expose children to less concrete materials which otherwise perceive to be more abstract to
According to Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (Berk, 2013), children’s learning take place within the zone of proximal development through scaffolding, a form of teaching interaction which uses concrete materials such as puzzles, model making and picture matching. Even in make-believe play, children use concrete items such as dolls which can be considered as enactive representation. Furthermore, Vygotsky saw how a child’s ability to think logically develops in stages. Hence, he outlined the four stages of conceptual development, namely: thinking in unordered heaps, thinking in complex stage, thinking in concepts stage and thinking in true concepts stage. Through these stages, children’s cognitive development matures as they undergo concrete to abstract representation.
For example, children first use concrete materials to trial and error (thinking in unordered heaps). Next, they form connections between objects in an inconsistent manner (thinking in complex stage). Following that, they should be able to think in more abstract concepts and make associations (thinking in concepts stage). Finally, they can manipulate a number of abstract concepts (thinking in true concepts stage). (Nixon & Aldwinckle, 2003) Therefore, using concrete to abstract representation is crucial in children’s cognitive

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