Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development
Who is Piaget and what did he do?
Swiss biologist and psychologist Jean Piaget produced an influential theory of cognitive development
His contribution was that children do not simply know less than adults instead children think in entirely different ways than adults
Piaget divided childhood into stages, each representing the development of new ways of reasoning. He also studied the role of motivation in development and the question of how knowledge develops
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development:
Cognitive development:
The development of all mental processes, in particular, thinking, reasoning, our understanding of the world
Schemas:
They contain our understanding of an object, person or idea. Schemas become increasingly complex during development as we acquire more information on these
Motivation to learn:
Disequilibrium and Equilibrium:
A key element of Piaget’s theory is the motivation to learn
According to Piaget, we are motivated to learn when our existing schema does not allow us to make sense of something new
This leads to the unpleasant sensation of disequilibrium
To escape disequilibrium we have to adapt to the new situation by exploring and learning what we need to know. By doing this we achieve equilibrium, the preferred mental state
Key definitions:
Assimilation and Accommodation:
Piaget saw the process of learning as adapting to a new situation so that we understand it
He identified two processes by which this adaption takes place:
Assimilation:
This takes place when we understand a new experience and equilibrate by adding new information to our existing schemas. For example, a child in a family with dogs can adapt to the existence of different dog breeds by assimilating them into their dog schema
Accommodation:
It takes place in response to dramatically new experiences. The child has to adjust to this by either radically changing current schemas or forming new ones
So a child with a pet dog may at first think of cats as dogs but then accommodate to the existence of a separate species called cats
This will involve altering the animal/pet schemas to include cats and forming a new cat schema
Application in education:
Piaget’s idea that children learn by actively exploring their environment and forming their own mental representations of the world has revolutionised classroom teaching
The old-fashioned classroom, in which children sat silently in rows copying from the board, has been replaced by activity-orientated classrooms in which children actively engage in tasks that allow them to construct their own understanding of the curriculum
Learning by discovery:
In early years, children may for example, investigate the properties of sand and water
A level discovery may take the form of flipped lessons where students read up before the lesson so the lesson can be focused on higher-level evaluation skills
Evaluation by supporting evidence:
Piaget believed that children learn by forming their own mental representation of the world
This suggests that even children who have similar learning experiences will form quite individual mental representations
Howe et al. (1992) provide support for this:
Children aged between 9-12 in groups of 4 studied and discussed the movement of objects down a slope
Their understanding was assessed before and after
The children were found to have increased their level of knowledge and understanding
However, the children had not come to the same conclusions or picked up the same facts
This supports Piaget’s idea that children learn by forming their own personal mental representation
Evaluation:
Piaget may have overplayed the importance of equilibration
He saw learning as a motivated process in which children learn in order to equilibrate, as disequilibrium is unpleasant
Actually, children vary greatly in their intellectual curiosity
The children he studied were mainly from the nursery attached to his university and this was a biased sample of clever middle-class children