Descriptive Reflection
Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory is concerned with the measurement of children’s cognitive development which he organized into the following four stages;
Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2yrs)
Preoperational Stage (2yrs-6/7yrs)
Concrete Stage (6/7yrs-11/12yrs)
Formal Operations Stage (11/12-adult)
Piaget comes from a cognitive constructivist school of thought because he believed a child advanced to the next stage once a state of equilibrium had been reached through the self construction of knowledge. He saw children as “independent explorers” who were “active in the problem solving process” (Silverthorn, 1999).
Piaget taught us that children’s reasoning and thought processes differ to adults. After testing Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory across hundreds of cultures it seems he was reasonably accurate in describing the content and sequence of learning. Piaget’s concept of stages has been applied to many other aspects of human development (Sigelman et al, 1995).
Critical Reflection
Piaget made a sweeping claim that broad stages of development exist whereas more recent research suggests that cognitive development is more likely to be domain specific and continuous. Unlike Vygotsky's social constructivist view, Piaget's stage theory suggests an endpoint in development(Sigelman et al, 1995).
Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory is concerned with the measurement of children’s cognitive development which he organized into the following four stages;
Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2yrs)
Preoperational Stage (2yrs-6/7yrs)
Concrete Stage (6/7yrs-11/12yrs)
Formal Operations Stage (11/12-adult)
Piaget comes from a cognitive constructivist school of thought because he believed a child advanced to the next stage once a state of equilibrium had been reached through the self construction of knowledge. He saw children as “independent explorers” who were “active in the problem solving process” (Silverthorn, 1999).
Piaget taught us that children’s reasoning and thought processes differ to adults. After testing Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory across hundreds of cultures it seems he was reasonably accurate in describing the content and sequence of learning. Piaget’s concept of stages has been applied to many other aspects of human development (Sigelman et al, 1995).
Critical Reflection
Piaget made a sweeping claim that broad stages of development exist whereas more recent research suggests that cognitive development is more likely to be domain specific and continuous. Unlike Vygotsky's social constructivist view, Piaget's stage theory suggests an endpoint in development(Sigelman et al, 1995).
Piaget failed to distinguish competence from performance. As Sigelman et al point out “when a subject failed a task Piaget assumed it was because they were unable to grasp the concept he was testing” He did not account for other influencing factors of performance such as motivation, verbal abilities, memory etc. (Sigelman et al, 1995). Piaget often neglected social influences because he was more concerned with identifying cognitive structures that influenced performance.
By critiquing the work of Piaget and Vygotsky we begin to recognise the importance of both cognitive and social develpoment theories and the impact this research has on being able to cater for different learning styles. As teacher’s we can manipulate and mix learning theories to extract the best results from individual students.
References
Sigelman, C. K. & Shaffer, D. R (1995). Life Span Human Development. 2nd Ed. Brooks Cole Publishing. Pacific Grove, California.
Silverthorn, P. (1999). Jean Piaget’s Theory of Development. Retrieved on March 28, 2007 from http://tonymcarthur.edublogs.org/files/2007/03/piaget.htm
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/construct.html
http://tip.psychology.org/piaget.html
http://tap.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/10/3/353
http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/~chenml/411/Gelman1998.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget
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