Stage The Child's View Of The World example essay topic

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who studied children's cognitive development. He theorise d that thinking processes changed as we grow. He identified four major stags in development where the world is viewed and information from the environment is processed differently in each of these stages. Within each stage, time is taken to test and practice new skills before they are further development into a higher level skill. (Vialle) Piaget described this change as a process of adaptation or changing our behaviour to better suit a situation. (Scrape) Within this process Piaget also identified two identified two sub processes, assimilation and accommodation The Assimilation sub process involves adjusting what we already know to fit a new situation.

Having the knowledge on how to draw a grid and using grow on this knowledge to learn a new technique. The accommodation sub process involved changing existing schemas to be able to take on board new information. (Mclinernay) One learner had away to enlarge sketches but is open to a new way of enlarging. Therefore integrating new knowledge into existing schemas. When the process of adaptation has been successful Piaget saw this as a state of equilibrium but when new information is received and the mind is unable to adapt then a state of dis equilibration exists, where a student must continue to find ways to accommodate this change.

Piaget saw this as motivation to find a way to assimilation and accommodation... The four stages Piaget identified in his studies are sensori-motor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. The sensori-motor stage begins at birth and over the next two years the child will seek to understand the world by using their senses they live very much in the moment. Piaget identified this as the baby's only reaction to world is the use of their reflex movement as response, and when objects are moved out sight they become unconcerned about where they have gone. (Mcdevitt) But as the babies other skills develop e.g. their motor skills their thinking skills also develop and they begin to direct their actions. By the end of the sensori-motor stage the child has constructed many action schemas these can be seen as fulfilling needs by performing an action. e.g. the child who is hungry may use some action to satisfy need.

The movement from sensori-motor into preoperational is that the action is performed mentally not just physically. What defines this change is the child's ability to make these action schemes symbolic. The ability to hold onto information about something that may not be occurring in the moment shows the beginning process of thinking. In this stage the child's view of the world begins to change no longer thinking in terms of the "here and now" (McDevitt) the child is able keep information for later recall and plan for future events. In preoperational stage the ability to think occurs in only direction, the inability to work backwards through a event ("reversible thinking" (Woolfolk) hinders further thinking processes. The preoperational child is unable to use the skill of conservation and de centering (Mcdevitt) and believes that if the shape of something changes then the quantity of the amount must change even if the amount remains static.

During this stage major language development occurs which greatly assists with the formation of schemas, as the child now as access to a grater number of symbols to assign meaning to data they child in this stage is stall incapable of seeing the world from another point of view. Piaget saw this as children being egocentric. This means the schemas that they are formulating are based on their own view of the world. AS well as being unable to take on another's view point Pai get saw this egocentric behaviour in the way children interacted with each other, he observed that although there was agreed deal of talk there was not a great deal of interaction and identified this as collective monologue.

This egocentricity extents to the inability to differentiate between the real and unreal events, and the in this stage will often put together unrelated facts. Around the ages of six to seven a child's ability to process thought into more logical operations. Piaget penned this stage as "concrete operational. A break through occurs as the child begins to see the world from a broader viewpoint. This viewpoint includes taking on a board other peoples perspectives and being able to differentiate between physical and physiological events. Children in this stage are now able to recognize that the amount of a quantity stays the same after it has been reshaped or reorganized (mcdevitt) Reversibility of actions is now possible allowing the child to retrace events.

With this recognition a child's ability to now solve problem of conservation, the basic building blocks of reasoning are acquired. Piaget identified these as the "identity compensation and reversibility" (Woolfolk). The child is now able to deduct that although the shape or arrangement of a quantity has occurred they are able to reason that the quantity remains unchanged. During adolescents students continue to use these reasoning skills but begin to see that there are many answers to a problem. Piaget identified this thinking process as hypothetical-deductive reasoning (Woolfolk) and this ability identifies the last stage in Piaget stages of Cognitive development the formal operational stage. Hypothetical-deductive reasoning is the ability to see different outcome to a problem, this would include non-existing variables to a situation this ability becomes very important to a student trying to solve complex mathematical and scientific questions.

As these often involve hypothetical situations, assumptions and givens (Woolfolk) There has been much debate about when and who uses formal operational stage in Piaget theory of cognitive development. It has been shown that not everyone reaches the formal stage and even on reaching this stage the higher level thinking process may be used to solve problems within one subject area. But the same person will not use them to answer questions in other subject areas. (Woolfolk) Piaget saw learning as on going activity (Nixon) were children construct their own Knowledge This is particular event with use of equilibrium that sees see children internally driven to solve problems and construct new understanding. In contrast to Piaget who saw the child as internally driven.

Lev Vygotsky theorized that the people around the child were instrumental to his / her development. Development was relent on the social and cultural world the existed in. (Vialle) Culture is used to define the way a group of people assign meaning and importance to a way of life. Within different cultures emphasis is placed on different things when a child is born into a particular culture it learns through interactions with the way things are done.

This imparting of knowledge is done with what Vergosky defines as cultural tools, these tools include equipment used within a culture for example computes calendars and symbolic tools and symbolic tools such as language and numbers. With the aid of these tools in everyday activities that learning takes place. Vergosky identified three types of learning. Imitative learning Instructed Learning and collaborative Learning. Imitative learning happens as children imitate actions of others. Instructive learning occurs when instruction are internalized and collaborative learning comes about as peers interact with other.

Cultural tools play a part in the scaffolding of the learning process these tools used to give students in the learning process (Mcinerney How much and when a student learns is based on Vygotsky Zone of proximal development theory. Vygotsky proposed that once a child has mastered a task they no longer learning it is the next stage of challengers that foster continued cognitive growth. (Woolfolk).