Piaget’s Theory Piaget’s (1936) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a mental model of the world. Cognitive Development Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence. To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes resulting from biological maturation and environmental experience. Piaget’s Views He believed that children construct an understanding of the world around them, experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment, and then adjust their ideas accordingly. Piaget claimed that cognitive development is at the center of the human organism and
In this essay, I will be discussing about Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, as well as Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. After which I will evaluate the effectiveness of individual work and peer collaboration as a learning strategy. I will also be offering my opinion on the collaborative learning process and how children should be grouped. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development focuses on the four different stages of normal intellectual development ranging from infancy to adulthood. It highlights the natural developments of a child’s cognitive process and how they gain knowledge.
He emphasize that the way children reason at one stage is different from the way they reason at another stage . The first stage, is called the sensorimotor stage which extends from birth to age about two. In this stage, infants build an understanding of the world by integrating with experiences such as seeing and hearing with physical, motoric actions. Infants obtain knowledge of the world from the physical actions they carry out on it. Piaget 's divide sensorimotor stage into six-sub stages.
In each level, two sub stages included in which aspects of moral development mentioned. First level is pre-conventional which signifies the child’s ability to respond to rules, social order, good, bad and ethics. Fist stage in this level is punishment and obedience orientation. The main argument is about determining right or wrong depending on the punishment. Children try to avoid punishment trying to defend themselves are their values and rights.
Once the child reached a certain age (middle childhood), they would stop talking to themselves thus developing what he called an “inner speech”. This would “represent the internalisation of words and the mental manipulation of them as symbols for objects in the environment.” (Martin et al., 2010). Whilst the child is developing their own vocabulary, there interaction with their surroundings and culture will help them to learn even more thus developing their cognitive skills during middle childhood. Being around and conversing with people assists children in understanding and empathising with others behaviours and emotions. Rogoff’s study (as cited in Martin, Carlson & Buskist, 2010) has shown that children become better problem solvers when
Children begin a period of trial and error experimentation during the fifth sub stage. 6 - Mental representation (8months-24moths): Children begin to identify the world through the mental processes. The preoperational stage: begins from (2 to7years), this stage focus on self, the child starts to talk but an inability to conservation and don't understand that other people have different points of you and imagine things. There is two sub stages during this period: 1- Preoperational phase (2-4years): children form a mental image of what they see around them. 2- Intuitive phase (4-7 years): children are sometimes able to grasp a problem solution by how the fell about it .
“Lawrence Kohlberg admired Piaget’s approach to studying children’s conceptions of morality. If Piaget saw children as little logicians, Kohlberg viewed them as moral philosophers” (Fleming, PhD,
However, Vygotsky believed that it was adults and the child’s peers, which had the obligation in sharing their greater collective knowledge with the younger generations. He did not believe it was feasible for a child to learn and to grow individually and the culture and the environment around the child played a major role in their cognitive development (Flanagan, 2001). He also believed a child was unable to develop the way he or she has without learning from others in the environment in which they were raised. In contrast, Piaget maintained that children were naturally inquisitive about their own particular abilities and about their own environment (Jarvis, Chandler , 2001) and that children advanced their knowledge because of biologically regulated cognitive changes (Flanagan, 2001) . Whereas, Piaget believed that a child was only possible of learning of procedures in each stage at any time (Flanagan, 1999) and overlooked the role of the child’s activity with relation to thought processes.
Speech, language and communication Children between the ages of 5 and 8 learn to socialise, build confidence and self- esteem. Children who are limited with this may struggle to express themselves. Factors that affect
The four stages are: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete and formal operations. According to the article Age Differences in Children, the sensorimotor stage starts at birth to two years, it is where the child builds a set of concepts about reality and how it works through physical interaction with their environment. Basically, the child does not know that physical items stay in its presence even though; the item is out of sight. The next stage is preoperational stage starts at age two to seven. In this stage the child is not able to think hypothetically and needs concrete physical situations.