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Learning theory and its importance
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Piaget's cognitive development theory paper
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Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development Jean Piaget was born on August9, 1896, in the French speaking part of Switzerland. At an early age he developed an interest in biology, and by the time he had graduated from high school he had already published a number of papers. After marrying in 1923, he had three children, whom he studied from infancy. Piaget is best known for organizing cognitive development into a series of stages- the levels of development corresponding too infancy, childhood, and adolescence. These four stages are labeled the Sensorimotor stage, which occurs from birth to age two, (children experience through their senses), the Preoporational stage, which occurs from ages two to six, (motor skills are acquired), the Concrete Operational stage, which occurs from ages six to eleven, (children think logically about concrete events), and the Formal Operational stage, which occurs after age eleven, (abstract reasoning is developed here). (www.psychcentral.com). (Bee and Boyd 149). The focus of this paper will be on the Preoporational stage and how the child’s cognitive abilities develop according to Piaget. The Preoperational stage is Piaget’s term for the second major stage of cognitive development. It is in this stage that Piaget states that children acuire symbolic schemes, such as language and fantasy, that they use in thinking and communicating. Piaget saw evidence of symbol use in many aspects of children aged two to six. As a Pre-School teacher myself, I have witnessed many of the same behaviors that Piaget himself observed while developing his theory of cognitive development. Children this age begin to pretend in their play. The dramatic play area in my classroom is always one of the most busy areas of the room. The children love to role-play and create imaginary games. According to Piaget, such symbol use is also evident in the emergence of language and in the preschoolers primitive ability to understand scale models or simple maps. Dramatic play gives the children the chance to role-play. If they work through situations in their classroom, they’ll be better prepared for real-life scenarios. Through role-playing, children not only express emotions, but also exercise creativity and develop skills like cooperation and problem solving. During the Pre... ... middle of paper ... ...get viewed children as little philosophers and scientists building their own individual theories of knowledge. By focusing on what children con do as well as what they cannot do, he was able to understand and explain their cognitive growth and development. His theory is a valuable “road map” for understanding how children think. However, many psychologists are convinced that Piaget gave too little credit to the effects of learning. For example; Children of pottery-making parents can correctly answer questions about the conservation of clay at an earlier age than Piaget would have predicted. According to learning theorists, children continuously gain specific knowledge; they do not undergo stage-like leaps in general mental ability. (Coon 109). Thus, the truth may lie somewhere between Piaget’s stage theory and modern learning theory. Works Cited 1. Coon, Dennis. Essentials of Psychology. 9th Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2003 2. Bee, Helen and Boyd, Dennis. The Developing Child. 10th Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004 3. http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.cfm?term=Egocentrism 4. http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/Jean_Piaget
Piaget: Concrete Operational Stage Introduction When applying Piaget’s theory to middle childhood or children between the ages of 6 to 12 years, most fall into the concrete operational stage. According to Piaget, children between the ages of 7 years to 11 years fall into this third stage of development (Shaffer & Kipp, 2010). During the concrete operational stage of development, children rapidly develop and acquire cognitive operations (Shaffer & Kipp, 2010). During the concrete operational stage, children also approach ideas and events more flexibly and logically, can solve problems more systematically than before, and able to operate more efficiently when working with and analyzing concrete objects (Seifert, 2015).
Throughout Piaget’s studies he focuses on how children develop intellectually as well as perceive the world around them. His ultimate goal was to shed light on young children’s development in which he grouped into stages to help encourage developmentally appropriate activities. Piaget’s wanted to make sure that as educators each child was being taught within their realm of knowledge and environmental appropriate settings. Through his teaching young children are being taught by hands on experiences that includes regulated time of structured teaching, self-selected activities, physical activities and proper rest time.
Formal operations (beginning at ages 11-15) – Conceptual reasoning is present and the child’s cognitive abilities are similar to an adult’s (Atherton, 2010).
The first stage is called sensorimotor which defines behaviors associated with infants up to two years of age. During the sensorimotor stage, children are seeking everything in which they can obtain a new taste, sound, feeling, and sight. Generally, children do not have understanding of these new experiences; it is more of exposure. The second stage is called preoperational which includes children from ages two through seven. “Children at this stage understand object permanence, but they still don’t get the concept of conservation. They don’t understand that changing a substance’s appearance doesn’t change its properties or quantity” (Psychology Notes HQ, 2015, Section Preoperational Stage). Piaget conducted an experiment with water, two identical glasses and a cylinder. Piaget poured the same amount of water in the two glasses; the children responded that there was indeed the same amount of water in the two glasses. He then took the two glasses of water and poured them into the cylinder. When asked if the tall beaker contained the same amount of water, the children responded that the beaker had more water than the glass. However, by the age of seven years of age, children can understand more complex and abstract concepts. At this point, the child is operating in the concrete operational stage. Children also can learn different rules; sometimes, they lack the understanding associated with those rules. When a child
Piaget is most commonly recognised for his work in forming a theory explaining how children’s thinking evolves to become more complex with age (Passer & Smith, 2012). For more than fifty years, Piaget researched the area of child thought processes, proposing a step-wise sequence of child mental development involving four distinct stages (Passer & Smith, 2012, p. 422). According to Passer and Smith (2012), a core belief of Piaget’s was that “cognitive development results from an interaction of the brain’s biological maturation and personal experiences” (p. 422). Piaget’s research has since received considerable attention and debate as to its validity. Many assessments of his work detail a greater level of criticism than praise; this criticism presumably being in place to support recent scientific discoveries and assist in the evolution of particular elements of his theories to what is regarded as relevant today (Flavell, 1996). Despite those who doubt his work, many sympathetic theorists (labelled neo-Piagetians) have opted to adopt and
Piaget is considered as the leading, influential psychologist in concerns to cognitive development. He is best known for his theory of cognitive development or genetic epistemology. Epistemology is a branch in philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge. Piaget was not only curious about the nature of thought, but moreover, how genetics contributes to the process. Piaget suggested knowledge was the product of direct motor behavior.
In stage three, concrete operational, the child now rationalises logically about concrete, real experiences. They have the ability to mentally reverse actions and are able to focus simultaneously on different features of a problem.
After many years of his career in child psychology Jean came up with four stages of mental development called a schema. Jean Piaget categories these stages by age but he has said ...
His cognitive development theory over the way children think, changed the aspect of education from providing knowledge to how we guide children age appropriately as they learn about the world. Piaget didn't want to children to learn to resemble the typical adult of their society. He thought children needed to be taught as little creators, future inventors, innovators, educators. Although Piaget's theory isn't directly related to education or teaching, it definitely applied. He influenced discovery learning which is the idea that children learn best through doing and exploring. One of the main influences Piaget had in classrooms was the importance of active learning. He didn’t believe that children can learn by only being taught verbally. Teachers commonly use active learning in this century. They also use his research from cognitive development regularly. First, they use his research to guide the students. Instead of pushing a lot of information onto students while they just sit there, they take his advice to let them actively engage. They also use hands-on activities to teach. He also influenced letting students learn from their classmates especially in the concrete operational stage. Teachers also take Piaget's advice when they allow their students to make mistakes. Piaget believed that children learn from trial and error. Teachers could also be using Piaget's advice when they focus on their student's creative differences. For example, when a student starts on their artwork from a different angle than they’re shown but end up with the same result. Piaget's theory also shines through when teachers respect each child's interest and limits. Teacher's normally don’t stick to one learning style because they pay attention to each student and adapt to each of their learning
He believed that children think in different ways from adults (Gordon & Browne, 2014). He developed four stages of cognitive development (Gordon & Browne, 2014). Each stage has a key concept associated with the stage (Gordon & Browne, 2014). All but the last stage are during the early childhood years (Gordon & Browne, 2014). The first stage is sensorimotor which is based on object permanence (Gordon & Browne, 2014). This stage occurs from birth to 2 years of age (Gordon & Browne, 2014). During this stage the child learns about the physical world and gains an understanding that when an object disappears, it still exists (Gordon & Browne, 2014). The second stage is preoperational and based on symbolic play and language (Gordon & Browne, 2014). Ages 2 to 6 or 7 years of age are at this stage of development (Gordon & Browne, 2014). During this stage children develop the ability and capacity to think (Gordon & Browne, 2014). This is when imaginative play develops (Gordon & Browne, 2014). The third stage during early childhood is concrete operational, occurring between ages 6 to 12 (Gordon & Browne, 2014). The basic concept during this stage is reasoning during which children develop the ability to think logically (Gordon & Browne, 2014). This stage helps children carry out actions mentally (Gordon & Browne,
Piaget created four stages of cognitive development, those being the sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage and the last stage which is the formal operational stage (Nagel & Scholes, 2016). In the first stage of development, which is birth to two, Piaget believed that children develop the skills to be able to understand the world through their senses and develop object permanence at the later end of this stage, it is also in this stage that children begin to develop their own concept of language (Nagel & Scholes, 2016). Piaget’s theory of cognitive develop states that it is within the preoperational stage, from 2 to 7 years old, that children develop the skills to be able to form language and other symbol systems, and can start thinking logically (Nagel & Scholes, 2016). Children in this stage have the ability to use intuition and problem solving, and use sounds, signals and begin using words within their vocabulary successfully (Nagel & Scholes, 2016). The preoperational stage is the ideal stage for parents to be involved in their children’s literacy and numeracy development (Nagel & Scholes, 2016; Skwarchuk et al.,
Children’s from this stage remain egocentric for the most part but to begin to internalize representations. (Piaget, 1999). Concrete operational stage is children to age seven to eleven. They develop the ability to categorize objects and how they relate to one another. A child’s become more mastered in math by adding and subtracting. If a child eat one brownie out of a jar containing six. By doing the math there would be 5 brownies left by counting the remaining brownies left in the jar because they are able to model the jar in their
Jean Piaget was an individual constructivist. According to Piaget, a child’s cognitive structure helps the child understand the world around him. This structure develops into complex mental activities. He believed that childhood plays an important role in the growth of intelligence and a child learns through doing and exploring. Piaget believed that hands
“{No theory of cognitive development has had more impact than the cognitive stages presented by Jean Piaget. Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, suggested that children go through four separate stages in a fixed order that is universal in all children. Piaget declared that these stages differ not only in the quantity of information acquired at each, but also in the quality of knowledge and understanding at that stage. Piaget suggested that movement from one stage to the next occurred when the child reached an appropriate level of maturation and was exposed to relevant types of experiences. Without experience, children were assumed incapable of reaching their highest cognitive ability. Piaget's four stages are known as the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.
Throughout history, many people have made amazing contributions to the school of psychology. One of these was Jean Piaget and his theories on the cognitive development stages.