Piaget‘s cognitive development.docx

1602Task2 69482 SIHUAN Liu (Anny)The Theory of Cognitive Development in Early Childhood EducationHow do children grow up and get new knowledge from their surroundings? Before the Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget, the majority of scientists believed that the externality (e.g. parents guide, their living environment, etc.), not the children themselves, played the most important role on childrens growth. However, with his devotion to the research of childrens development, Piaget proposed that children are active subjects who develop their intelligence at different stages of their growth (Wood and Elizabeth 2013). This review will first outline the theory of cognitive development, then discuss two applications derived from the theory and finally make an assessment of this theory. Firstly, the focus is placed on the theory itself. According to Piaget (1964, p.1), “development is a process which concerns the totality of the structure of knowledge”, which implies the development is the change in structure (Phillips 1981). At the same time, the way children build their cognitive structure is through functional constructs of adaptation (Ault 1982). There are two acts in adaptation, namely, assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation means to absorb new knowledge into the existing system, while accommodation means to adjust the gained knowledge to the new things. Piaget stated that functional constructs do not change with age, however cognitive structure do change with age (Ault 1982). Four stages are identified in the construction of the structures in Piagets theory of cognitive development: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage.The sensorimotor stage is the first stage of childrens cognitive development, beginning at birth and ending at about 2 years old. At this stage, children sense the world through physical contact (touching, sucking and hearing). The hallmark of this stage is that children know how to pronounce some sounds and learn that environment is different from themselves (Santrock 2008).The pre-operational stage is the second stage from two to seven years old. Children learn much new knowledge, many ideas and concepts through playing, including playing with objects, playing with peers and role playing. Children can understand concrete concepts but yet abstract ones, so the logic has not been formed yet. For example, given the information of A is greater than B, B is greater than C, children still have difficulty to figure out whether A is greater than C (Piaget 1964). Furthermore, children in this stage still do egocentric thinking, which means they are not able to tell the different between their point of view and others point of view (Piaget 1967). The third stage is called concrete operational stage ranging from seven to eleven years old. Children could solve problems in a more logical way, applying inductive thinking, not yet the deductive thinking (Ginsburg and Opper 1979). That is to say, they have gained the ability to summarize general principle from specific events. However, they are not able to understand abstract concept at this stage, such as the idea of future. Other symbols include the understanding of conservation and the elimination of egocentrism.The last period is Formal operational stage which ends at adulthood. This stage is characterized by (a) generating multiple hypotheses: children may think of more than one solutions to one problem, (b) systematic checking of all possible solutions: rather than the trial-and-error method, children would choose the optimum solution, and (c) operating on operations: children organize their operations in a specific order to meet the demand (Ault 1982).After stating the four stages, Piaget discusses the way children learn new knowledge. He argues that the most important thing in childrens learning and development is self-directed problem-solving skill. Children learn knowledge through discovery, experience, playing and social interaction. The internal construction places at the heart of his theory, which implies that “educators should create environment, combine different materials, and create and solve problems through their self-chosen, self-directed activities” (Wood and Elizabeth, 2013, p.24).To conclude, the theory of cognitive development emphasizes it is the children that are most responsible for their development. They experience four different stages during their growth and absorb new knowledge through the act of assimilation and accommodation. Secondly, this assignment will discuss two applications of the theory，the first of which is the widely used Mathematical instructions based on the cognitive development theory.Bobby Ojose gave a presentation at National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) in 2005 in Anaheim, California. He (2008) claimed that Piagets theory gave Mathematics educators many inspirations about how to convey mathematical ideas effectively to the children and exemplified the Mathematical instructions matching the characteristics of each stage in the theory of cognitive development. In the sensorimotor stage, having been able to separate object from subject, children are also gaining the ability to connect numbers to objects (Piaget 1977; Ojose 2008). Their cognitive ability may be improved significantly if they are exposed to massive number related training (Martin 2000; Ojose 2008). Teachers and parents are encouraged to ask children questions like “how many dolls are there” and “who has more” in order to build the concrete mathematical foundation for them. In the pre-operational stage, children have known the concept of concrete objects, however, they still have problems with reversing, seeing objects from different dimensions. Therefore, the activities such as characterizing objects will help them know the multi-dimension world better. Educators could ask the children to classify different geometric shapes and ask them the reasons (Thompson 1990; Ojose 2008). At the concrete operational stage, the idea of seriation and classification has formed, but children cannot understand abstract ideas yet. Hand-on experiences are highly recommended at this stage, because they make children connect the mathematical concepts to the activity. After some time, they can extract abstract ideas from specific events. At the last stage, the formal operational stage, children are able to make hypotheses and do deducing thinking. At this stage, parents and teachers should focus on improving childrens reasoning skills, including clarification, inference, evaluation and implication. For example, evaluation refers to making judgement to the issue through certain criteria, which helps children be critical. Though these Mathematical instructions are widely used from kindergarten to secondary school, Ojose (2008, p.4) pointed out that “all students are not necessarily operating at the same level”, which means teachers need to know every students characteristic to apply these instructions.The second application is children-centered and play-oriented classroom. In the paper “Study of the Application of the ipad-based Digital Learning in English Game Teaching in Primary School”, Liu J. and Zhang Y. (2015) claimed that according to Piaget, the internal construction of cognitive structure is the key to childrens learning process and play contributes to that process. Therefore, combining education with recreation and giving children the autonomy maybe an effective way for them to improve their observation, memory, thinking, imagination and creation. The case study in a primary school in Henan Province, China showed how the teachers designed self-oriented learning games assisted by the ipad to enhance primary students English level. Take the learning of colors as an example. During the games, the whole class is arranged into groups of three with an ipad within each group. These third-graders are told that they need to take turns to click their favourite color on the APP and read aloud with the English recordings. After a few turns, the three students in the same group can match the color with the word together to see which group get the highest score. The purpose of the game is to let students become interested in the context first, then let them make their own choice and finally foster their team work spirit. The teachers involved in the program states that students interest are highly motivated and the skills of listening, reading and speaking in English are improved. The last part of the assignment is an assessment on the theory of cognitive development from positive and negative perspective respectively.Piagets theory has made a significant influence on both education and society. In terms of education, the children-centered opinion makes parents and teachers pay more attention to children themselves during their growth. Interventionist teaching may actually hinder their self-learning process (Wood and Elizabeth 2013). Applying this theory, Children are more likely to find their interest and learn new knowledge independently during their childhood. Furthermore, the theory leads to instructions. Piaget and his colleges were good at experimental pedagogy. Later on, some of these experiments were turned into real applications, such as Child-centered classroom, open education and Mathematical instructions. These applications and instructions provide a better environment or offer highly-qualified methods for children to learn and grow with. Piagets theory also shows a framework for teachers, especially early childhood teachers who relied on pure intuition to direct children before. Equipped with the cognitive theory, teachers now hold the fundamental principles about how to guide their students and have a better understanding about what to do at different stages (Almy 1979). In terms of society, the theory of cognitive development was the first one that tried to explain the childrens growth instead of simply describe it and it laid a foundation for many other related theories. For example, Kohlbergs stages of moral development was a heritage of the Piagets theory, which stated that children experienced six stages in their moral development. Nearly all scientists who studied cognitive development would refer to Piagets work. They did their research on the giants shoulder. Statistics shows that Piagets 1964 paper was cited 1684 times, while his 1976 paper was cited 3570 times. It was Piaget that led many psychologists to begin focusing on the field of cognitive development. In short, Piaget is definitely one of the most influential figures in this field.There are some limitations to the theory of cognitive development. Firstly as Piaget admitted himself, the theory is a stage theory, whereas the development of children is a continuous process. In reality, the stage border is not easy to define and the cognitive development does not always proceed in stages. Sometimes the sequence of development might be changed by external environment, such as cultural experiences. In addition, many scholars claimed that Piaget underestimated the ability of the children in sensorimotor stage and pre-operational stage. Piaget thought children at these stages only understand very simple concepts, however current evidence shows that children under age seven have already grasped the idea of conservation, the perspectives of other people. One possible reason why Piaget did not predict childrens capacity correctly in the first two stages is that his experiment subjects tended to be individuals instead of the mass samples. As a result, some of the conclusions reached then may have experimental errors.Secondly, the theory largely ignored the importance of learning. For one thing, Piaget argued that interventionist teaching may hinder the process of childrens learning ability. Teachers or parents should not push too hard to make their children study. For another reason, Piaget stresses that play, rather than learning, helps children express ideas, use extra energy and create imagination. Both of his points do not consider schooling and parenting as an essential part in childrens education, which is obviously not accurate, or at least not complete.In general, Piagets theory of cognitive development synthesizes a wide range of issues including the childrens understanding of knowledge, their physical and mental development. Massive experiment is a highlight of his theory and some of the experiments has been developed to practical applications. Thanks to Piaget, we enjoy the abundance of literature in th