Only children above the age of 6 could answer correctly
- Mc Garrigle criticized Piaget from the way he asked the questions – He gave example of 2 black cows and one white cow and told the children they were sleeping.
- “Are there more black cows or more cows sleeping?”
Every1 could answer correctly which deomonstrates Piaget underestimated younger children.
Limitations
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Egocentricity is the 1st limitation – Piaget’s studies were limited in terms of egocentricity which was demonstrated in the 3 mountains experiments.
- Then an ethical issue of parental consent was not gained because of the time this experiment was done.
- Another criticism is he utilized clinical observations, these are unstructured interviews combined with case studies and therefore are not standardised.
- In which case, was each participant asked the same questions? No.
- It can also incorporate expeimentor bias as the researcher can ask questions to prove his theory.
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Conservation is the 2nd limitation – Due to the way that Piaget asked the questions (row of beads) caused the participants to answer in a specific way where as when Mc Garrigle used a different example he found the Piaget underestimated children’s ability to conserve.
- At this stage the child may also refer to reversibility – pouring water back from 2 glasses in to 1 glass and being the same.
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Seriation is 3rd limitation – If a child is able to place things in an order they will only be able to base this on one common aspect. This object must also be concrete.
- E.g. Showing a child one stick at a time - Stick A is longer than Stick B which is longer than Stick C, is Stick A longer than Stick C?
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Class inclusion is 4th limitation – children during this stage start to move towards being able to focus on two or more aspects at a time as long as they are concrete, which leads us on to stage 3.
Stage 3 – Concrete Operational Stage – 7-11 years
The child can understand two operations happening simultaneously as long as they are concrete – this means they have the ability of decentration.
- They are also able to recognise reversibility
- Cancelling out due to the reversibility is known as compensation
- Class inclusion also develops in this stage and they are now able to perform mental operations as long as the things involved are concrete
Only difference between adults and children in this stage is that the operations must be concrete.
The Formal Operational Stage – 11 Years +
- The formal operational child is now able to use logical reasoning and abstract thought
- They can deduce a variety of conclusions from their investigations
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Concrete operational children use trial and error to find the result where as formal operational children systematically test their hypothesis. E.g. Pendulum test
According to Piaget, he believes not everyone reaches this stage.
Evaluation
- Most of his studies were done using the clinical method. This is like a case study as it is done one to one and provides an insight through the use of a semi-structured interview.
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The question is were all the participants treated equally through standardised questioning? – No, therefore this causes experimenter bias.
- He used conversations to report data, not statistical analysis, therefore he could have only chosen those that supported him.
- Other researchers have demonstrated that through a change in questioning Piaget underestimated their abilities.
The above points are negative, below are positive
- It provides important psychological insights into cognitive development.
- Piaget was praised for saying that knowledge is acquired accumulatively through our understanding of the world and interaction with it.
- This resulted in an emphasis on discovery play
Discovery play – This is where children find out about properties of an object through explanations and effort.
Lev Vygotsky
- Vygotsky introduced social interaction, culture and context of the situation
- It is social interaction which is one of the processes that develop our ability to think
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Vygotsky introduced the zone of proximal development
Current ability Full potential
- The zone of proximal development refers to the child’s capability when provided with assistance
E.g. If a child is doing a puzzle and is stuck, someone places the next piece of the puzzle in and then the child is able to carry on.
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Vygotsky’s 2nd concept is language
- Children learn language through “private speech” and the most obvious form is social speech.
- Between the ages of 7-8 children start to internalise this speech and then becomes known as intellectual speech
- This is an inner voice that helps the individual to plan, regulate and think in order to perform complex tasks.
- Young children often use monologues before they internalise speech.
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Vygotsky’s 3rd concept is Scaffolding
- This is a framework given by someone more knowledgeable than the child to provide assistance whilst working towards their Zone of proximal development.
Evaluation
Wood and Middleton
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12 mothers were asked to teach their children of 4 years how to do a wooden jigsaw.
- Whilst teaching their children they were recorded and then the tapes were analysed.
- The researchers categorised the different types of help and identified 5 kinds.
- General Suggestions
- Specific Verbal Instructions
- Indicating Materials
- Preparing for Assembly
- Physical Demonstration
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Wood & Middleton found that the mothers who used a variety of the techniques had the most successful children but only if they adjusted these according to the child’s needs.
- This kind of study provides rich detailed information and because it was videotaped it is easy to replicate.
- However the sample was relatively small and therefore cannot be generalised across the population.
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Moss wanted to conduct research to examine scaffolding where children were asked to build towers with blocks.
- Moss found there were 3 strategies:
- Staying one step ahead of the child
- Discouraging the child from using immature strategies
- Reinforcing the child if you introduced a new good strategy
- Scaffolding doesn’t take place with very young children
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Prat et al examined parents when they helped older children with their maths homework, the child’s success was based on how well the parents helped them.
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Durkin pointed out that studies on scaffolding had false environment, therefore parents known they’re being observed even though the child is in their natural environment.
Greenfield & Lave conducted an experiment on young Mexican girls who were learning to weave from older women.
- They observed the older women and then they worked with the older women, they got better and weaved with them as they improved and started to do it independently.
- Vygotsky emphasises different aspects of cognitive development as Piaget said that cognitive development is based on eliminating limitations.
- Where as, Vygotsky believes that as you interact with your culture and society with the assistance of more knowledgeable and wiser people - you develop language and skills.
- There is also a difference in Piaget and Vygotsky’s focus.
- Vygotsky’s focus is on the underlined cognitive development rather than the outcomes
- Piaget focused on how much the child could achieve at various ages.
Applying Vygotsky’s theory to Education
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The two main ideas that can be used are scaffolding and zone of proximal development.
- Scaffolding is provided in the form of instruction. This would support Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development through joint activity or interaction.
- Teachers need to be aware of the children’s capabilities so that they can extend the extremely bright ones and bring on the middle group and aid the bottom group.
- Vygotsky believes very strongly on peer tutoring – someone your own age where you help them and they help you by informal teaching and pushing them.
- The teacher would pair up a bright child with a lower ability child and this would act as a mutual benefit.
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The was a study that was done in Israel on peer assisted learning by Tzuriel & Shamir
- The study consisted of an experimental group and a control group.
- The experimental group took part in a mediating teaching style course and the control group were given an equivalent course on social interaction with their pupil. ( Teachers – year 3, Pupils – year 1 )
- They were then asked to do a teaching session on Seriation using multimedia computer programmes.
- They found that the children who had been on training course for mediation, demonstrated more than the control group.
- Ethical Issues are parental consent as well as school consent.
- Children need to be told they can withdraw at any time in the experiment
- Hawthorne – the child in year 1 could act in a way that they think they are expected to behave.
- A problem with the study demonstrated that peers have a positive effect on less able and less knowledgeable children than themselves.
Bruner’s theory of cognitive development
Bruner agreed with Vygotsky regarding peer tutoring and he performed on investigation on mothers and babies and how they communicate.
- He came up with the concept of scaffolding.
Bruner introduced 3 modes of thinking and he said that adults use all 3 strategies depending on the problem they’re solving. The 3 modes are:
- The Inactive mode – This is where actions are used to develop knowledge.
E.g. children and counting blocks.
- The Iconic mode – This is when information is presented in the form of
pictures or images
- The Symbolic mode – knowledge is represented in the form of words.
Bruner believed that unlike Piaget, cognitive development occurs in a series of stages but is not directly linked with age.
- He believed that all 3 modes were accessible to older people, and they could utilize all three of them however they might prefer one.
Bruner and Kenney demonstrated that 8 year old kids used all 3 modes of representation.
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In the 1st stage they were given blocks to make different size squares (Inactive mode)
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In the 2nd stage they were told to construct diagrams and pictures of different size squares.
- Lastly the children were told to give different shapes a different letter.
- They were then taught how to solve simple algebraic equations.
Issues
- Full informed consent from parents and child.
- Try not to overload the children with cognitive tasks.
- By ensuring that the situation was similar to their school situation and therefore causing the least amount of stress.
- These tasks use a variety of the modes and are done through observation that provides detailed insight of children’s cognitive understanding.
Bruner’s theory has attracted a lot of interest specifically in it’s application to education.
- This theory is a combination of bits of Vygotsky and bits of Piaget.
- He supported Vygotsky’s emphasis on social experience and cultural interaction. He also emphasised language.
- He believed that language was the most important “cultural tool”
- Language and cognition are believed to be closely linked.
Three things that Bruner introduced in his ideas on teaching –
- Importance of structure in teaching and learning.
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Bruner believed that initially structure is learned unconsciously but in order to learn something, an individual needs to learn the fundamental basics of the subject e.g. Alphabet → form words
- Importance of intuitive thinking.
- This is done unconsciously without logic or analysis.
- Usually where the teacher models the behaviour he/she asks them to guess or estimate.
- Children will be encouraged during this process
- Importance of motivation.
- Curiosity and inquisitiveness motivate individuals therefore discovery also leads to motivation.
He also introduced a concept called cognitive acceleration and this is where children’s cognitive thinking is developed more because you teach them how to think.
This is where children’s development can be sped up by teaching them thinking skills.
CASE – Cognitive acceleration ‘through’ science education.
- They utilized this “case” on year 7 and 8 pupils.
- They found that their learning could be accelerated when provided with scaffolding and teamwork in problem solving.
CASE also improved GCSE levels on an average from “C” and above in Science.
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Adey et al. found that the same method cold be used on year 1 pupils to improve teaching outcomes in London Schools.