CHAPTER 8: JEAN PIAGETS COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT THEORY

JEAN PIAGETS THEORY

- focus: discover the origins of natural logic and the transformations from one form of reasoning to another

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF THE THEORY

Conception of the constructivist nature of intelligence
- errors in traditional views on knowledge: a) some entity out there in objects and events b) consist of static objective information about that real world c) the individual and the external environment can be separated into two entities in any definition of knowledge

- Piaget sees intelligence/knowledge as:

a) not static quantities or things b) a process; develops through the individuals adaptations to the environment (ever-changing) c) as the same process (knowledge & intelligence) changing through interactions with the environment

Piagets Research Framework: 1. 2. 3. 4. What is the nature of knowledge What is the relationship between the knower and reality? What is the nature of intelligence? What are appropriate methods of investigation?

Essential factors in cognitive development

Physical Environment: interactions between individual and the world are the source of new knowledge Maturation: Needs to make use of experience; permits realization of maximum benefit from physical experience (opens up possibilities for development) Social Influences: role of language/education/contact with others; without it, individual will be subjectively certain in his or her beliefs without initiating actions required to change inaccurate ideas Equilibration: set of processes that maintain a steady state in intellectual functioning in the midst of change and transformation; regulates individuals interactions with the environment and permits cognitive development to proceed in coherent and organized fashion 1

COMPONENTS OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Psychological Nature of Logical Thinking
Psychological structure of logical thinking - operations: basic units of logical thinking (cognitive structures that govern logical reasoning); not static structures of information; transformations performed on data or object Different from other kinds of actions: Transformation is exactly compensated by a change in another characteristic Essential nature of the object(s) or data remains invariant. Conservation: Recognition of the unchanging feature of the situation and being able to explain why it does not change Transformation or change can be restored to the original by an inverse operation Role of possibility and necessity in understanding events - simply true knowledge: may be developed through induction, noting observable facts, probability and contingent relations among events - necessary knowledge (i.e. conservation of number): depends on deduction, universality (can be acquired by individual), certainty, and causal relations between states and affairs; inherent in causal explanations Role of meaning - truth or falsity of a term or statement based on its extensions or links to other terms of statements o Knowledge always involves inference (relation between actions is a logical implication) o Meaning of an object includes what can be done with the object as well as descriptions of it; meaning is an assimilation to an action scheme (overt or mental) o Logic begins at the moment child is able to anticipate a relation between actions (meaning implications/implications between actions)

Fundamental Processes Involved in Interactions with the Environment

Assimilation: in intellectual life - the incorporation of an external element into a sensorimotor or conceptual scheme of the subject Accommodation: adjustment of internal structures to the particular characteristics of specific situations Cognitive functioning: internal structures adjust to the particular characteristics of new objects and events Equilibration: - processes involved in maintaining a steady state while undergoing continuous change

Levels of Complex Reasoning

Sensorimotor Preoperational Concrete Operational: Concrete Operations (class inclusion operations, ordering relations (seriation, conservation constructs of number, length, matter, weight and volume); reason through empirical data, inferences limited to pairing characteristics two by two Formal Operational: address multifactor situations; conceptualize all combinations of the factors in a particular situation

QUESTIONS
1. P.283: Piaget noted that his research into formal operations had utilized situations likely to be understood by children in an academic setting. However, the applicability of such situations to professional environments is questionable...[they] may well reason hypothetically in their specialty. Their unfamiliarity with structure school subjects, however, would hinder them from reasoning in a formal way with the experimental situations used in the research. In non-academic settings, other cognitive process are used, therefore ways of obtaining new knowledge is different?

2. P.285-286: ...subjects such as history or Latin cannot be reinvented by the students... However, when research reveals some understanding of the ways in which students acquire spontaneous operational thought in historical understanding, methods may change. What are the implications of this in education? Are they saying that the best way to learn is through experimentation (finding out independently, understanding the process) but with subjects like history, it is not possible to do? What do they mean by spontaneous operational thought in historical understanding? 3. P.291: Any experiment that is not carried out by the individual with complete freedom is not an exercise; it is simply drill with no educational worth. The only way to learn is to be faced with disequilibrium and the individual discovering (self-directed learning) for self the way back to equilibrium? Is Piaget advocating a way of learning that is purely self-directed?