1. DED 101 Educational psychology, guidance and counseling
THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF ZANIZBAR
21st June, 2011

2. OUTLINE Meaning of Cognitive Development
Importance of cognitive Development
Concepts related to cognitive development
Assimilation
Adaptation
Accommodation
Schemes
Characteristics of cognitive development
Stages of cognitive development (j. Piaget)

3. DEFINITIONS
(Oxford Concise Dictionary:2009) defines cognition as the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
(Baron; 1999) defines cognition as the term used to describe thinking and many other aspects of our higher mental processes , including thinking, reasoning, decision making, problem solving and creativity.
(Hayes;2002) defines Cognitive development as a process through which people develop more sophisticated methods of understanding or perceiving information, opinions, theories, or facts.
(Albert; 1999) defines cognitive development as the transitions people make from a simple understanding of their world to a more complex understanding.

4. IMPORTANCE OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Provides insight into student perspectives (By understanding how students perceive and process information, we can gain insight into how students see the problems they are presented)
Helps instructors appreciate how students understand or perceive information
Allows instructors to appropriately tailor information or questions
By understanding how students perceive and process information, we can gain insight into how students see the problems they are presented. This insight can allow instructors to tailor information so that it meets students’ present cognitive abilities or perhaps forces them to reach beyond their current level, which when done correctly promotes cognitive development.

5. Piaget’s Theory Piaget was interested in:
how we develop our understanding of the things around us
How kids come to know day-to-day things adults take for granted
Piaget theory of cognitive development is a stage theory – a type of theory suggesting that all human beings move through an orderly and predictable series of change.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is referred to constructivism . According to Piaget, children "construct" their understanding of the world through their active involvement and interactions

6. Characteristics of Piaget’s Stages
Reflect an underlying mental structures (psychological units of the mind that enable us to think and know)
Describe a person in a state of equilibrium (balance between assimilation and accommodation )
Must follow the order developed by Piaget
Cannot skip stages
Composed partly of preparation and party of achievement
Found in all cultures - Universal

7. Important Concepts Within Piaget’s Model
Adaptation: Adjustment to one’s environment
Schemas: Mental pattern that guide behavior
Assimilation: Integrating new experiences into an existing scheme.
Accommodation: Changing or modifying a scheme in order to incorporate a new experience.

8. Schemes
Are patterns of behavior that children and adults use in dealing with objects in the world i.e. schemas refers to the knowledge about something; a child’s idea of a task, concept, item, etc.
Organized ways of making sense of experience.
Schemas can be:
Simple : Example. when the baby knows how to grasp an object within reach
Complex Example p when a secondary school student learns how to solve mathematical problems.
Change with age
Action-based
(motor patterns) at first
Later move to a
mental (thinking) level

9. ADAPTATION
Is a process in which individuals build mental representations of the world through direct interaction with it. In other words, children come to construct increasingly advanced and accurate representations of the world through their experience in it.
Adaption involves two basic components:
Assimilation
Accommodation

10. ASSIMILATION
This is the tendency to fit new information to existing mental frameworks i.e. to understand the world in terms of existing concepts and schemas (adding new info to current understanding)
Example; if a child goes to a zoo sees a whale and says” Look at the fish”
Example taking food into our outh and mak it fit to our structures, mouth, throat, digestive sysytem

11. ACCOMODATION
This is the tendency to change existing concepts or mental frameworks in response to new information or new recognizable dimensions of the external world (incorporating new info into current info = Learning i.e. Adjusting old schemes, creating new ones to better fit environment
Example; if the same child later comes to realize that not all animals that swim in the water are fish, this illustrates accommodation
Food produce biochemicals

12. Four Major Stages of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
Preoperational (2-7 years)
Concrete Operations (7-11 years)
Formal Operations (12+ years)

13. Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)
Infant’s world consists of the immediate environment
Interact and learn by sensory input (hearing, feeling, seeing)
Gradually learn to control their own bodies and objects in the external world.
The ultimate task at this stage is to achieve the sense that objects go on existing even when we cannot see them (Object Constancy/Permanence).
Example when a baby follows her mum with eyes

14. Rules for Toddlers If I like it, it’s mine.
If it’s in my hand, it’s mine.
If I can take it from you, it’s mine.
If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine.
If it’s mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
Source : (Ellyn and Bacon:2001)

15. Rules for Toddlers, continued
If I’m doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
If it looks like mine, it’s mine.
If I saw it first, it’s mine.
If you are playing with something, and you put it down, it automatically becomes mine.
If it’s broken,
it’s yours!
Source : (Ellyn and Bacon:2001)

16. Sensorimotor Sub stages
Reflexive Schemes
Birth –1 month
Newborn reflexes
Primary Circular Reactions
1 – 4 months
Simple motor habits centered around own body
Secondary Circular Reactions
4 – 8 months
Repeat interesting effects in soundings
Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions
8 – 12 months
Intentional, goal-directed behavior; object permanence
Tertiary Circular Reactions
12 – 18 months
Explore properties of objects through novel actions
Mental Representations
12 months – 2 years
Internal depictions of objects or events; deferred imitation
Source : (Ellyn and Bacon:2001)

17. Object Permanence
Understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight
According to Piaget, develops in Sub stage 4
Source : (Ellyn and Bacon:2001)

18. Mental Representations
According to Piaget, develops in Sub stage 6
Internal, mental depictions/representations of information
Images: objects, people, places
Concepts: categories
Can manipulate with mind
Allow:
Deferred/postponed imitation
Make-believe play
Source : (Ellyn and Bacon:2001)

19. Mental Representations: Dual Representation
Viewing a symbolic object as both an object and a symbol
Mastered around age 3
Adult teaching can help
Provide lots of maps, photos, drawings, make-believe playthings, etc.
Point out similarities to real world

20. Evaluation of the Sensorimotor Stage
How Piaget was right
Timing of:
Object search,
A-not-B,
Make-believe play
How Piaget might have been wrong
Timing of object permanence, deferred imitation, categorization, problem-solving by analogy
All occur sooner than Piaget thought
Some suggest infants are born with core knowledge in several domains of thought
Source : (Ellyn and Bacon:2001)

21. Preoperational Stage (2-6/7 years)
Developing ability to manipulate images and symbols, i.e. language develops
Play becomes key in learning. Begin to see use of symbolism in pretend play (e.g. Use a broomstick as a “horsey”)
Child’s view of the world is egocentric and animistic thinking
Logical organization of thoughts remains undeveloped e.g. a child Cannot perform mental operations

22. Egocentrism Failure to distinguish others’ views from one’s own
Figure Piaget’s three-mountains problem
Source : (Ellyn and Bacon:2001)

23. Belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities
Animistic Thinking
Belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities
Source : (Ellyn and Bacon:2001)

24. Evaluation of the Preoperational Stage
How Piaget was right
Preschoolers do develop beginnings of logical thinking
How Piaget might have been wrong
Logical thinking develops more gradually than Piaget thought
Source : (Ellyn and Bacon:2001)

25. Concrete Operations (6/7-12 Years)
Perform logical operations, but only in relation to concrete objects, not abstract ideas.
Basic math skills developed (counting, addition, subtraction) as well as an understanding of conservation.
Can sort items into categories, reverse the direction of their thinking, and think about two concepts simultaneously.
Able to understand a situation from another person’s perspective i.e. Egocentric thought diminishes.
Conservation: realization that essence of something remains constant although surface feastures may chang

26. Teaching the Concrete Operational Child (Middle Childhood)
Continue to use concrete props and visual aids, especially when dealing with sophisticated material.
Provide time-lines for history lessons.
Provide three-dimensional models in science.
Continue to give students a chance to manipulate objects and test out their ideas.
Demonstrate simple scientific experiments in which the students can participate.
Show craftwork to illustrate daily occupations of people of an earlier period.
Make sure that lectures and readings are brief and well organized.
Use materials that present a progression of ideas from step to step.
Have students read short stories or books with short, logical chapters, moving to longer reading assignments only when the students are ready.
Ask students to deal with no more than three or four variables at a time.
Require readings with a limited number of characters.
Demonstrate experiments with a limited number of steps.
Use familiar examples to help explain more complex ideas so students will have a beginning point for assimilating new information.
Compare students' own lives with those of the characters in a story.
Use story problems in mathematics.
Give opportunities to classify and group objects and ideas on increasingly complex levels.
Give students separate sentences on slips of paper to be grouped into paragraphs.
Use outlines, hierarchies, and analogies to show the relationship of unknown new material to already acquired knowledge.
Present problems which require logical, analytical thinking to solve.
Provide materials such as Mind Twisters, Brain Teasers, and riddles.
Focus discussions on open-ended questions which stimulate thinking (e.g., are the mind and the brain the same thing?)
(Source; Henry 2000)

27. Formal Operations (12+ years)
Begin to think logically and abstractly, including speculations about what might happen in the future.
Theoretical, philosophical, and scientific reasoning becomes possible
Abstract concepts and moral values become as important as concrete objects.
With these newly developed thinking abilities, adolescents begin to reinterpret and revise their knowledge base.

28. Consequences of Abstract Thought
Self-Consciousness & Self-Focusing
Imaginary audience
Sensitivity to criticism
Personal fable
Idealism and Criticism
Problems with Decision Making
Inexperience
Overwhelming options

29. Summary of Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Approximate
Age
Stage
Major Developments
Birth to 2 years
Sensorimotor
Use sensory and motor capabilities to explore and understand environment
Object Permanence
Separation Anxiety
2 to 7 years
Preoperational
Representational Thought
Begin to use symbols
7 to 12 years
Concrete Operational
Begin to think logically
Principle of Conservation
12 years and beyond
Formal Operational
Metacognition/ systematic
Develop abstract thought

30. Strengths of Piaget’s Theory
One of the first formal, comprehensive theories on child development
Children as active, constructive thinkers
Methodology – interested in why kids got wrong answers
Observation methods
Cognitive growth: partial accomplishments vs. complete appearance at once

31. Weaknesses of Piaget’s Theory
Estimates of time related to children’s competencies
Development does not always occur in a stage-like fashion
Children can be trained to be at the next stage

32. Mnemonic for Piaget’s Four Stages
Examples:
Sometimes Piaget Can Frustrate! Or
Sophomore Psychologists Can’t Fail!

33. What does this mean for teaching?
Meaningful learning cannot occur if a child is not able to accommodate or assimilate due to mental maturity.
If the majority of your students are concrete learners, you must provide certain methods for learning to occur.

34. Implications of Piaget’s Theory for Teachers
Understanding students’ thinking
‘Match’ teaching to cognitive stage
Presentation strategies
Illustrations and examples
Assignments

35. END OF LECTURE FIVE
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