KEY CONCEPTS

Cognitive development Age-related

changes, e.g. how children think and
behave differently as they get older.
The child is a competent, tiny person
set to begin a journey of discovery,
thinking and learning called cognitive
development. This development is
built on thought processes (schemas).
Some are present from birth (e.g.
sucking) and they follow a pattern of
assimilation and accommodation (i.e.
they take on board new information
and accommodate it with what is
already known). Schemas are mental
blueprints that link things and
behaviours. They form the building
blocks of thinking and children begin
to pick these up and recognize them
from birth. Piaget found that the
development of a childs ability to
think went through the same stages
in a fixed or invariant order.
Invariant stages The same stages, in
a fixed order, that the development
of a childs ability to think goes
through.
He also found that this pattern was
universal to all children, everywhere.
Universal stages The pattern or
order of the development of thinking
that is the same for all children
everywhere.

CORE THEORY Piagets Theory
Piaget noticed that children of the same age often got answers wrong in the same way. That is, they were thinking alike, but this changed with
age. Piaget observed his own children and their friends solving problems and asked them to explain the reasoning behind their decisions. From
this evidence he went on to put together a general stage theory of cognitive development. A stage theory means that; development follows an
invariant order, the behaviour in question gets better by the stage, and the pattern is universal. Piaget said that children are scientists who are
actively involved in making sense of what they see, hear, feel and discover. Piaget came up with four stages of cognitive development.
Sensori-motor stage (birth - 2 years old) Babies spend their time examining their surroundings and placing objects into schemas in their minds
(e.g. by sucking, banging, dropping, etc). A feature of the sensori-motor stage is object permanence i.e. when a newborn baby cannot see a
thing or person, they do not exist for them anymore. Near the end of the first year babies will look for hidden objects because they have object
permanence.
Pre-operational stage (2 to 7 years old) Real thinking is beginning to happen and children use symbols, such as words or mental images to
solve problems. There are still some things the child cannot do, for example, egocentrism a child entering this stage sees things through their
own point of view only and cannot see it from another viewpoint. At the end of the pre-operational stage, egocentrism declines. This is called de-
centring.
Concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years old) In this stage the child overcomes egocentrism. They also develop new cognitive skills, for
example, seriation the ability to put things into rank order, and conservation when children know the properties of certain objects remain
the same even if they appear to change. For example, if two identical short, fat beakers are filled with the same level of water, then one of the
beakers is poured into a tall, thin beaker, a child under 7 will say the tall beaker held more water, those over 7 did not. It is called the concrete
operational stage because children can conserve and order things provided that the objects are present or concrete (e.g. can be seen or held).

Formal operational stage (11 +) Adolescents develop the lifelong ability to think hypothetically, which involves solving problems logically and
perhaps scientifically, and thinking in an abstract way. General principles are developed which can be applied to other situations.
Criticisms:
The cognitive stages are not as fixed as Piaget proposed. Some children flick into different stages depending on circumstances, sometimes
thinking egocentrically and at other times having strong ideas of right and wrong.
There is no guarantee that people develop through all of the stages. Some researchers argue that only about 50% of adults in fact make it to
the formal operational stage at all.
Thinking does not develop in the same way for children everywhere. Aboriginal children, for example, develop concrete operational thinking,
which is useful for physical survival, earlier than European children.


COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT


ALTERNATIVE THEORY
Vygotsky argued that children are born
with considerable thinking abilities, but their
cognitive development takes place within
their culture. The origin of cognitive
development does not lie in maturation but
in social and cultural influences. For
Vygotsky, the child picks up cultural tools
for thinking and these are developed
around them in their home. He believed our
culture teaches us how to think as well as
what to think.
Vygotsky regarded the child as an
apprentice someone who works with a
skilled person to learn their trade. The child
is helped forward in its thinking by the
people around them, who have already
become thinkers. We become ourselves
through others). Other people around us
can help us to realize that potential. The
term he used for this idea is zone of
proximal development (ZPD). It stands for
the gap between where we are currently in
our development and where we can move
on to with the help of others, particularly
adults, around us. For example, a child
may have been given a construction kit as
a present, but can only make it up with help
from a parent or older sibling. The term
describing this learning through others is
scaffolding (a support framework to allow
for the developing child to get on safely
with its learning and thinking just as
scaffolding around a house allows builders
to get on safely with the job).



CORE STUDY Piaget and Conservation of Number (1952)
According to Piaget, pre-operational children are influenced by the way
things look and are unable to conserve i.e. recognize that certain physical
characteristics of object remain the same even when there outward
appearance changes.
Procedure A cross-sectional study was used i.e. children of different
ages were compared. Children were show, one at a time, two identical
parallel rows of counters, with the counters opposite and facing each other
one to one. The child then watched the researcher change the layout of the
counters by stretching one row but not removing or adding any counters to
either row. The children were then asked which of the two rows had more
counters.
Results Children in the pre-operational stage tended to say that the
rearranged row had more counters because it was longer. Presumably,
they were not able to conserve. However, children in the concrete
operational stage did largely get it right. They said that both lines had the
same number of counters despite the difference in length. They knew
appearances can be deceiving, i.e. they could conserve.
Limitations:
Piaget was criticized for the way he questioned the children in the
experiments. The child was asked to say whether the two rows of
counters were the same. They were first asked this before the researcher
played around with the counters, and again after the re-arranging. In
normal circumstances children are only asked the same question twice if
they have got it wrong the first time. In other research, when the children
were only asked once whether the two rows of counters were the same, a
far higher number of children got the right answer.
Piaget was criticized for the nature of the task. The task was quite
contrived and did not have much meaning to young children. When a game
was played using a naughty teddy who messed up the row, 60% of
children in the pre-operational stage could work it out and pass the
conservation of number test. The test had been made child-friendly, and it
produced results which contradicted Piaget.
Piaget used a relatively small sample of children for his experiment.
They may not have been representative of all children. This was especially
a problem given the fact that Piaget claimed that his stages of development
were universal.


APPLICATIONS
Educating Children - Both Piaget and Vygotsky produced two quite different
explanations and theories about how we become thinkers. What they have in
common is that both of them have been applied to education and schooling.
Piagets influence on education
The concept of readiness - Piagets theory argues that children can only learn
what their current cognitive stage allows them to, so classroom materials and ways
of learning in class should match the stage and cognitive level of the pupil. For
example, young children should learn through concrete activities and materials;
older students should learn by dealing with abstract concepts and hypothetical
issues. Young children do things to learn while older children have discussions and
debates, and all this matches their cognitive development stages.
Discovery learning - Piagets theory suggests that learning should be child-
centred and, above all, active. Children learn best by doing. In such a system of
schooling the role of the teacher is not to pour knowledge down the throats of
pupils but instead to raise questions and issues and devise activities for the
children to get involved in, and in the process to discover things for themselves first
hand. The teacher is a facilitator, helping the child find things and learn
independently.
Peer support - In Piagets theory this means allowing children in class
opportunities for unstructured discussion and collaborative learning. It helps the
child de-centre and develop the ability to take the other persons point-of-view.
Vygotskys influence on education
Role of the teacher - Vygotsky disagreed with Piaget and his strict idea of
readiness and letting it all happen in due time. He argued that the teacher should
actively intervene, to help the child as a learner develop their understanding and
knowledge. For Vygotsky, this intervention plays a vital part in childrens learning
experience. The teacher is at the time the main person in their pupils zones of
proximal development.
The spiral curriculum - Vygotsky argued that children are best served in school
by what he called the spiral curriculum. This means difficult ideas being presented
at first quite simply, and then being revisited at a more advanced level later on.
Applying the notion of scaffolding to the classroom - Vygotsky had argued that
other people can advance a childs thinking by providing a support framework or
scaffold on which the child can climb and achieve.