Describe in the light of
Piaget’s theory the cognitive and intellectual development of a child at
different levels.
Course: Elementary Education
Course Code 8623
Topics
Piaget's Theory
- Piaget's Theory of Cognitive and Intellectual Development
- Level of Piaget's Theory of Cognitive and Intellectual development
AIOU Solved Assignment |Semester: Autumn/Spring | B.Ed/Bacherlors in Education /Masters in Education / PHD in Education | BEd / MEd / M Phil Education | ASSIGNMENT Course Code 8623| Course: Elementary Education
Answer:
Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests that
children move through four different stages of mental development. His theory
focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on
understanding the nature of intelligence. Piaget’s stages are:
1. Sensory
motor stage: birth to 2 years
2. Preoperational
stage: ages 2 to 7
3. Concrete
operational stage: ages 7 to 11
4. Formal
operational stage: ages 12 and up
Piaget believed that
children take an active role in the learning process, acting much like little
scientists as they perform experiments, make observations, and learn about the
world. As kids interact with the world around them, they continually add new
knowledge, build upon existing knowledge, and adapt previously held ideas to
accommodate new information.
How Piaget Developed the
Theory
Piaget was born in
Switzerland in the late 1800s and was a precocious student, publishing his
first scientific paper when he was just 11 years old. His early exposure to the
intellectual development of children came when he worked as an assistant to
Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon as they worked to standardize their famous IQ
test.
Much of Piaget’s
interest in the cognitive development of children was inspired by his
observations of his own nephew and daughter. These observations reinforced his
budding hypothesis that children’s minds were not merely smaller versions of
adult minds. Up until this point in history, children were largely treated
simply as smaller versions of adults. Piaget was one of the first to identify
that the way that children think is different from the way adults think.
Instead, he proposed,
intelligence is something that grows and develops through a series of stages.
Older children do not just think more quickly than younger children, he
suggested. Instead, there are both qualitative and quantitative differences
between the thinking of young children versus older children. Based on his
observations, he concluded that children were not less intelligent than adults,
they simply think differently. Albert Einstein called Piaget’s discovery “so
simple only a genius could have thought of it.”
Piaget’s stage theory
describes the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development involves
changes in cognitive process and abilities. In Piaget’s view, early cognitive
development involves processes based upon actions and later progresses to
changes in mental operations.
The Stages
Through his observations
of his children, Piaget developed a stage theory of intellectual development
that included four distinct stages:
The Sensorimotor Stage
Ages: Birth to 2 Years
Major Characteristics
and Developmental Changes:
·
The infant knows the world through their movements and sensations.
·
Children learn about the world through basic actions such as
sucking, grasping, looking, and listening.
·
Infants learn that things continue to exist even though they
cannot be seen (object permanence)
·
They are separate beings from the people and objects around them.
They realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around
them.
·
During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and
toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating
objects.
·
A child’s entire experience at the earliest period of this stage
occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.
·
It is during the sensorimotor stage that children go through a
period of dramatic growth and learning.
As kids interact with
their environment, they are continually making new discoveries about how the
world works. The cognitive development that occurs during this period takes
place over a relatively short period of time and involves a great deal of
growth.
Children not only learn
how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking; they also learn a
great deal about language from the people with whom they interact. Piaget also
broke this stage down into a number of different sub stages. It is during the
final part of the sensorimotor stage that early representational thought
emerges.
Piaget believed that developing object permanence or object
constancy, the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they
cannot be seen, was an important element at this point of development. By
learning that objects are separate and distinct entities and that they have an
existence of their own outside of individual perception, children are then able
to begin to attach names and words to objects.
The Preoperational Stage
Ages: 2 to 7 Years
Major Characteristics
and Developmental Changes:
·
Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and
pictures to represent objects.
·
Children at this stage tend to be egocentric and struggle to see
things from the perspective of others.
·
While they are getting better with language and thinking, they
still tend to think about things in very concrete terms.
·
The foundations of language development may have been laid during
the previous stage, but it is the emergence of language that is one of the
major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development.
·
Children become much more skilled at pretend play during this
stage of development, yet continue to think very concretely about the world
around them.
At this stage, kids
learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point
of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea
of constancy.
For example, a
researcher might take a lump of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then
give a child the choice between two pieces of clay to play with. One piece of
clay is rolled into a compact ball while the other is smashed into a flat
pancake shape. Since the flat shape looks larger, the preoperational child will
likely choose that piece even though the two pieces are exactly the same size.
The Concrete Operational Stage
Ages: 7 to 11 Years
Major Characteristics
and Developmental Changes
·
During this stage, children begin to think logically about
concrete events.
·
They begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the
amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass,
for example, their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very
concrete.
·
Children begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific
information to a general principle
While children are still
very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in development, they
become much more adept at using logic. The egocentrism of the previous stage
begins to disappear as kids become better at thinking about how other people
might view a situation. While thinking becomes much more logical during the
concrete operational state, it can also be very rigid. Kids at this point in
development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.
During this stage,
children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people
might think and feel. Kids in the concrete operational stage also begin to
understand that their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone else
necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
The Formal Operational Stage
Ages: 12 and Up
Major Characteristics
and Developmental Changes:
·
At this stage, the adolescent or young adult begins to think
abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems
·
Abstract thought emerges
·
Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical,
social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning
·
Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general
principle to specific information
The final stage of
Piaget’s theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive
reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas. At this point, people become
capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically
about the world around them.
The ability to think
about abstract ideas and situations is the key hallmark of the formal
operational stage of cognitive development.
The ability to
systematically plan for the future and reason about hypothetical situations are
also critical abilities that emerge during this stage. It is important to
note that Piaget did not view children’s intellectual development as a
quantitative process; that is, kids do not just add more information and
knowledge to their existing knowledge as they get older.
Instead, Piaget
suggested that there is a qualitative change in how children think as they
gradually process through these four stages. A child at age 7 doesn’t just have
more information about the world than he did at age 2; there is a fundamental
change in how he thinks about the world.
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