Lori Decker EDU 6655

 Background  Key Ideas  Stages 1-4  Inconsistencies in Stage 4  Metacognition  Universality of Theory  Educational Effects

 Piaget was a stage theorist, meaning children construct new ways to interpret environment  He was a self-defined genetic epistemologist  Also a naturalist in the sense of observing naturally occurring things  He used the Quasi-experimental tradition of cognitive development in Geneva 1920s  And an inductive approach – took specimens of thinking and then classified it into stages

 Assimilation – a fight between the child and the environment so the organism changes, often through imitation  Accommodation – information pulls child’s mind in opposite directions so he must change his thinking to adapt  Participation – an active process of two things acting upon one another (object and child)

Sensorimotor - Ages 0-2  Repeating physical actions to form new schemes or action patterns  There are 6 stages  Object permanence forming at the end of this stage as well as seeing self as separate objects

Preoperational – Ages 2-7  Symbols  Greater language use  More make-believe play  Parallel play  Egocentric  One to one correspondence but can’t conserve

Concrete Operations – Ages 7-11  Conservation is learned  Classification is acquired  Cooperative play is practiced  Starting to overcome egocentrism

Formal Operations  Reasoning is evident  Child can control variables  Correlation and proportion are developing  Child can form categories within categories and has thinking about own thinking (operations on operations), or metacognition

 In a 1972 article “Intellectual evolution from adolescence to adulthood” Piaget disputes his own claim about formal operations  He claims that all adults go through formal operations but adds they are affected by quality/frequency of opportunity of experience  Conclusion: formal operations may not show across all domains and maybe only to those areas exposed

 Marker of formal operations  Metacognition – thinking about own thoughts and be able to communicate them -self as subject -other points of view exist  Self-Regulation develops with metacognition -deliberate direction of thoughts and control of one’s emotions

 Piaget asserted his theory was cross-cultural through these beliefs: ◦ Adaptive process – organism learns to adapt in different settings ◦ Construction process-organism and environment are always interacting ◦ Variations in cognitive development – include formal education and other ways the culture affects a child

 A study in Papua New Guinea showed the theory not the method of testing is cross- cultural  If you test with a relevant tool (string bag for New Guineans versus sticks – Piaget’s students)  Conclusion: formal operations is a higher cognitive level ◦ Higher is not always better, like Western norm

 To further formal operations, it is important to consider the appropriate design of education  Teachers should encourage abstract thought, metacognition, self-regulation  Interaction with peers is crucial for autonomy  Teacher as collaborator, not master

Boddington, E. (2009).Cognitive process of development in children. Retrieved from data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/ b/80/44/ac/c5.pdf. Crain, W. (2005). Piaget’s Cognitive-Development Theory. In Prentice Hall, Theories of development (pp ). New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Fox, E. & Riconscente, M. (2008). Metacognition and self-regulation in James, Piaget, and Vygotsky. Educational Psychology Review, 20, ,doi: /s Kuhn, Deanna. (2008). Formal operations from a twenty-first century perspective. Human Development,51, doi: / Maynard, A. (2008). What we thought we knew and how we came to know it: four decades of cross-cultural research from a Piagetian point of view. Human Development, 51, doi: / Valsiner, J. (2005). Participating in Piaget. Society, 57-61, Retrieved from