2. CHAPTER 2 Cognitive development

3. Identify the four factors that, according to Piaget, influence children’s thinking from early childhood to adulthood Explain key developmental milestones in Piaget’s sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations and formal operations stages of cognitive development Discuss issues educators need to consider when working with those in the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations and formal operations stages Chapter objectives

4. Comment on the role of social and cultural influences in Vygotsky’s ideas about children’s cognitive development Critically evaluate the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, and what they offer educators in the 21st century Chapter objectives (2)

6. Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development Sensorimotor period: birth to 2 years Preoperational period: 2 years to 6 or 7 years Concrete operations period: 7 years to 11 or 12 years Formal operations period: from around 12 years

7. Piaget’s stages of cognitive development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRF27F2bn-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRF27F2bn-A

8. Birth to 2 years Object permanence Goal-directed or intentional action Deferred imitation Dominated by motor and sensory activities – hearing, touching, smelling, seeing, tasting Sensorimotor period

9. 2 years to 6 or 7 years Language aquisition Symbolic thought and language Thinking still limited – appearance dominates perceptions and understanding Ego-centrism, centration and animism Pre-operational period

10. 7 years to 11 or 12 years Ability to represent events mentally Ability to operate logically on surroundings Classifying objects mentally Reversing actions Compensating for changes Seeing from another’s viewpoint Concrete operations period

11. 11 or 12 years to adulthood Abstract thought Some achieve hypothetical reasoning in secondary school Propositional thinking Formal-operations period

12. Changes with cognitive development Changes in the way children organise their thoughts or ‘schemes’ Scheme: an abstract concept or cluster of ideas used to organise existing knowledge and make sense of experiences Schemes are modified and refined by disequilibrium and adaptation involving assimilation and accommodation

13. Changes with cognitive development (2) Disequilibrium: Cognitive imbalance resulting from inconsistency between what is known and expected, and something strange and unexpected Adaptation: The process of adjusting to new situations and experiences through the modification of existing schemes (assimilation) or the creation of new schemes (accommodation)

14. Changes with cognitive development (3) Assimilation: Adjusting an existing mental model or scheme to fit a new experience Accommodation: Using fresh information to form a new mental model or scheme

15. Social interaction (social transmission) Social cognitive conflict Equilibration What influences development?

16. Advocates listening to children Analysis of how students think Acknowledges children actively create their own learning Understanding of the value of direct experience in learning Focus on errors to understand how children solve problems Emphasises stage, not age Strengths of Piaget’s ideas

17. Equates ages with stages – these do not always apply Doubts have been raised about his stage concept Focus is on absence rather than presence of skills Emphasis is placed on the importance of others in children’s development Limitations of Piaget’s ideas

18. Does not sufficiently take into account memory, motivation and emotion Insufficient attention given to individual differences among children Variability within and between children noted in others research Limitations of Piaget’s ideas (2)

19. Contemporaries Piaget focused on the individual Vygotsky focused on learning within a sociohistorical and sociocultural context Piaget and Vygotsky

20. Sociocultural origins of cognitive development Vygotsky argued: infants are born with an inherited capacity for specific patterns of action from birth, infants acquire a sequence of skills and competencies, language being the most important cognitive development is an outcome of interaction between a child, its carers and the environment

21. Development arises out of social interaction New ways of thinking develop from interaction New ideas and processes are internalised Internalisation

22. Vygotsky argued very strongly that it is in interaction with others that we learn how to think The teacher’s mediation of the students’ learning co-construction of knowledge Social interaction

23. Culture is expressed through artefacts, physical and mental tools Mental tools pass to children during social interaction Language is the most important mental tool Language helps children think Private speech guides own thinking and actions Language as a mental tool

24. The distance between a child’s current level of competence and the level that is achievable with support or guidance Interaction helps learners bridge this gap Bruner’s notion of scaffolding Zone of proximal development

25. Bruner: –Scaffolding Rogoff: –Cognitive apprenticeships –Guided participation How might these ideas be used in schools? Building on Vygotsky’s ideas

26. Depicts cognitive development as a social process Focuses on the social nature of learning Explains how social experiences structure thinking Widely applicable to learning and teaching, particularly in classrooms with a diverse social and cultural mix Strengths of Vygotsky’s theory

27. Vague and general: how do you ‘measure’ the zone of promimal development? Not always easy to apply in practice Perhaps not as relevant now as early 20th century Russia Fails to acknowledge the role of developmental influences such as physical maturation Tends to overemphasise language development Limitations of Vygotsky’s theory

28. Both theorists highlight the need for teachers to: observe children match learning experiences with the level of cognitive development recognise the contribution to learning factors within the social and physical environment Linking Piaget and Vygotsky

29. Information processing approaches to cognitive development Multistore model Sensation Perception Sensory memory Attention

30. Information processing approaches to cognitive development (2) Working memory Central executive Metacognition Long-term memory Overlapping waves model

31. Strengths and limitations of information processing theory Strength: study and analysis of storing and recalling information Limitations: individual processes, laboratory based, incomplete picture of cognition

32. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory Linking Piaget and Vygotsky Information processing Chapter review