Notes - Constructs and Critical Perspectives on Development
Category : Teaching
Constructs and Critical Perspectives on Development
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget showed that intelligence is the result of a natural sequence of stages and it develops as a result of the changing interaction of a child and its environment. He devised a model describing how humans go about making sense of their world by gathering and organizing information.
According to Piaget development is a spontaneous process tied to embryogenesis whereas learning is provoked by external situations. Embryogenesis concerns the development of the body, as well as. The development of the nervous system and the development of mental functions. Learning presents the opposite case. In general, learning is provoked by situations-provoked by a psychological experimenter, or by a teacher, with respect to a didactic point, or by an external situation. It is provoked in general, as opposed to spontaneous.
Cognitive development is much more than the addition of new facts and ideas to an existing store of information. According to Piaget, our thinking processes change radically, though slowly from birth to maturity because we constantly strive to make sense of the world. Piaget identifies four factors namely biological maturation, activity, social experiences, and equilibration that interact to influence thinking.
If we apply a particular scheme to an event or situation and the scheme works, then equilibrium exists. If the scheme does not produce a satisfying result, then disequilibrium exists and we become uncomfortable. This motivates us to keep searching for a solution through assimilation and accommodation, and thus our thinking changes and moves ahead. The concepts assimilation, and accommodation are explained below.
Invariant Functions of Thinking
According to Piaget, all species inherit two invariant functions.
Organization: We are born with a propensity to organize our thinking processes into psychological structures. These structures are our systems for understanding the world. These are called schemes. Simple structures are continually combined and coordinated to become more sophisticated and thus more effective. For example, very young infants can either look at an object or grasp it when it comes in their hands. They cannot coordinate looking and grasping at the same time. As they develop, however, infants organize these two separate behavioral structures into a coordinated higher-level structure of looking at, reaching for, and grasping the object.
In Piaget's theory, schemes are the basic building blocks of thinking. Schemes may be very small or specific, for example, the sucking-through-a-straw scheme or the recognizing-a- flower scheme. Or they may be larger or more general- the drinking scheme or the categorizing-plants scheme. As a person's thinking processes become more organized and new schemes develop, behavior also becomes more sophisticated and better suited to the environment.
Adaptation: People also inherit the tendency to adapt to their environment through two basic complementary processes.
(a) Assimilation
(b) Accommodation
Assimilation: takes place when people use their existing schemes to make sense of events in their world. Assimilation involves trying to understand something new by fitting it into what we already know. At times, we may have to distort the new information to make it fit.
Accommodation: occurs when a person must change existing schemes to respond to a new situation. If data cannot be made to fit any existing schemes, then more appropriate structures must be developed. We adjust our thinking to fit the new information/ instead of adjusting the information to fit our thinking.
Piaget's Four Stages of Cognitive Development
Infancy: The Sensory Motor Stage (0-2 years)
This period is called the sensory motor stage because the child's thinking involves seeing, hearing, moving, touching, tasting and so on. Piaget called each specific "way of knowing" a scheme. During this period, the infant develops object permanence, the understanding that objects exist in the environment whether the baby perceives them or not. As most parents discover, before infants develop object permanence, it is relatively easy to take something away from them. The trick is to distract them and remove the object while they are not looking-"out of sight out of mind'. The older infant who searches for a ball that has rolled out of sight is indicating an understanding that objects still exist even when they are not in view.
This period also marks the beginning of goal-directed actions. For example, the container toy for babies is usually plastic with a lid and contains several colorful items that can be taken out and replaced. A six-month old baby is likely to become frustrated trying to get to the toys inside. An older child who has mastered the basics of the sensory motor stage will probably be able to deal with the toy in an orderly fashion by building a "container toy" scheme:
1. Take the lid off
2. Turn the container upside down
3. Shake if the items jam
4. See the items fall.
Separate lower level schemes have been organized into a higher-level scheme to achieve a goal.
The child is soon able to reverse this action by refilling the container. Learning to reverse actions is a basic accomplishment of the sensory-motor stage. But learning to imagine the reverse of a sequence of actions takes much longer.
Early Childhood to the Early Elementary Years: The Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)
The ability to form and use symbols- words, gestures, signs, images, and so on- is a major accomplishment of the preoperational period and moves children closer to mastering the mental operations of the next stage. This ability to work with symbols, such as using the word "fish" or a picture of a fish to represent a real fish that is not actually present, is called the semiotic function.
The child's earliest use of symbols is in pretending or miming. Children who are not yet able to talk will often use action symbols- pretending to drink from an empty cup or touching a comb to their hair, showing that they know what each object is for. This behavior also shows that their schemes are becoming more general and less tied to specific actions. The eating scheme, for example, may be used in playing house. During the preoperational stage, we also see the rapid development of that very important symbol, language. Between the ages of 2 and 4, most children enlarge their vocabulary from about 200 to 2000 words.
As the child moves through the preoperational stage, the developing ability to think about objects in symbolic form remains somewhat thinking in one direction only, or using one-way logic. It is very difficult for the child to "think backward" or imagine how to reverse the steps in a task. Reversible thinking is involved in many tasks that are difficult for the preoperational child, such as the conservation of matter.
Conservation is the principle that the amount of something remains the same even if the arrangement or appearance is changes, as long as nothing is added and nothing is taken away. You know that if you tear a piece of paper into several pieces, you will still have the same amount of paper. To prove this, you know that you can reverse the process by taping the pieces back together.
A classic example of difficulty with conversation is found in the preoperational child?s response to the following Piagetian task. A 5-year-old, is shown two identical glasses, both short and wide in shape. Both have exactly the same amount of colored water in them...
Interviewer: Does one glass have more water, or are they the same?
Child: Same
The experimenter then pours the water from one of the glasses into a taller, narrower glass.
Interviewer: Now, does one glass have more water, or are they the same?
Child; The tall one has more
Interviewer: How do you know?
Child: It goes up more here (points to higher level on taller glass)
The child shows a basic understanding of identity (it's the same water) but not an understanding that the amounts are identical. Piaget's explanation for the child's answer is that he is focusing, or centering, attention on the dimension of height. He has difficulty considering more than one aspect of the situation at a time, or decentering. The preoperational child cannot understand that increased diameter compensates for decreased height, because this would require taking into account two dimensions at once.
Later Elementary to the Middle School Years: The Concrete-Operational Stage (7-11 years)
Piaget called the concrete operations, the stage of "hands-on" thinking. The basic characteristics of this stage are the recognition of the logical stability of the physical world, the realization that elements can be changed or transformed and still conserve many of their original characteristics, and the understanding that these changes can be reversed.
According to Piaget, a student's ability to solve conservation problems depends on an understanding of three basic aspects of reasoning:
Identity: The child understands identity that is he knows that if nothing is added or taken away, the material remains the same.
Compensation: With an understanding of compensation, the child knows that an apparent change in one direction can be compensated for by a change in another direction. That is, if a liquid rise higher in the glass, the glass must be narrower.
Reversibility: And with an understanding of reversibility, the child can mentally cancel out the change that has been made.
Another important operation mastered at this stage is classification. Classification depends on a student's abilities to focus on a single characteristic of objects in a set and group the objects according to that characteristic. Given 12 objects of assorted colors and shapes, the concrete operational student can invariably pick out the ones that are square.
Classification is also related to reversibility. The ability to reverse a process mentally now allows the concrete operational student to see that there is more than one way to classify a group of objects. The student understands, for example/ that buttons can be classified by color, reclassified by size or by the number of holes.
With the abilities to handle operations such as conservation and classification, the student at the concrete operational stage has finally developed a complete and very logical system of thinking.
Junior and Senior High: Formal Operations: (11-adult)
Formal thinking is reversible, internal and organized in a system of interdependent elements. The focus of thinking shifts, however, from what is to what might be. Ask a young child how life would be different if people did not sleep, and the child might say, "People do sleep! "In contrast, the adolescent who has mastered formal operations can consider contrary-to-fact questions. In answering, the adolescent demonstrates the hall-mark of formal operations-hypothetico-deductive reasoning meaning deductive logic becomes important during the formal operational stage. The formal thinker can consider a hypothetical situation (people do not sleep) and reason deductively (from the general assumption to specific implications, such as longer workdays, more money spent on energy and lighting, or new entertainment industries). Formal-operational thinkers can form hypotheses, set up mental experiments to test them, and isolate or control variables in order to complete a valid test of the hypotheses. The ability to solve a problem in a logical and methodical way develops and children are often able to quickly plan an organized approach to solving a problem.
Another characteristic of this stage is adolescent egocentrism. Unlike egocentric young children, adolescents do not deny that other people may have different perceptions and beliefs; the adolescents just become very focused on their own ideas. They analyze their own beliefs and attitudes. There is a feeling that everyone is watching. Thus, adolescents believe that others are analyzing them: "Everyone noticed that I wore this shirt twice this week." "The whole class thought my answer was dumb!" The feeling of being "on stage' seems to peak in early adolescence by age 14 or 15.
Implications of Piaget's Theory for Teachers
According to Piaget, students must be neither bored by work that is too simple nor left behind by teaching they cannot understand. Disequilibrium must be kept "just right" to encourage growth.
Setting up situations that lead to errors can help create an appropriate level of disequilibrium. When students experience some conflict between what they think should happen (a piece of wood should sink because it is big) and what actually happens (it floats), they may rethink the situation, and new knowledge may develop.
Construction of Knowledge
Piaget's fundamental insight was that individuals construct their own understanding and that learning is a constructive process. At every level of cognitive development, you will also want to see that students are actively engaged in the learning process.
Active experience should include not only physical manipulation of objects but also mental manipulation of ideas that arise out of class projects or experiments. For example, after a social studies lesson on different jobs, a primary-grade teacher might show the students a picture of a woman and ask, "What could this person be?" After answers such as "teacher", "doctor', "secretary", "lawyer', "saleswoman", and so on, the teacher could suggest, "How about a daughter?" Answers such as "sister", "mother", "aunt" and "granddaughter" may follow. This should help the children switch dimensions in their classification and center on another aspect of the situation.
VYGOTSKY'S SOCIO-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
It is a well-known fact today that the child's culture shapes cognitive development by determining what and how the child will learn about the world. For example, young children in some countries learn complicated ways of weaving cloth through informal teachings of adults in their communities and in some places, without going to school, children who sell sweets or candy on the streets learn sophisticated mathematics in order to buy from wholesalers, sell, barter, and make profit. Cultures that treasure cooperation and sharing teach these abilities early, whereas cultures that encourage competition nurture competitive skills in their children.
A major spokesperson for this socio-cultural theory was Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist. His ideas about language, culture and cognitive development have become major influences in psychology and education and have provided alternatives to many of Piaget's theories.
Vygotsky's theory offers an insight into the fact that development is inseparable from human social and cultural activities. Vygotsky was of the view that human activities take place in cultural settings and cannot be seen apart from these settings. One of his key ideas was that our specific mental structures and processes can be traced to our interactions with others. These social interactions create our cognitive structures and thinking processes. In fact, "Vygotsky conceptualized development as the transformation of socially shared activities into internalized processes".
The Social Sources of Individual Thinking
Vygotsky assumed that every function in a child's cultural development appears twice, first on the social level and later on the personal level;
In other words, higher mental processes appear first between people as they are co-constructed during shared activities. Then the processes are internalized by the child and become part of the child's cognitive development. For Vygotsky, social interaction was more than influence. It was the origin of higher mental processes such as problem solving.
Consider this example:
A six-year old has lost a toy and asks her father for help. The father asks her where she last saw the toy: the child says "I can't remember". He asks a series of questions-did you have it in your room? Outside? Next door? To each question, the child answers "no". When he says "in the car?" she says" I think so" and goes to retrieve the toy. (Tharp and Gallimore, 1988)
It was remembered by the father or the daughter" No, neither the father nor the daughter, but the two together. The remembering and problem-solving was co-constructed between people that is/ both of them in the process of their interaction. But the child may have internalized strategies to use next time something is lost. At some point, the child will be able to function independently to solve his kind of problem.
Both Piaget and Vygotsky emphasized the importance of social interactions in cognitive development, but Piaget saw a different role for interaction.
CULTURAL TOOLS AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Vygotsky believed that cultural tools and symbolic tools play very important roles in cognitive development.
Cultural tools:
Symbolic tools:
For example, as long as the culture provides only Roman numerals for representing quantity, certain ways of thinking mathematically-from long division to calculus - are difficult or impossible. But if a number system has a zero, fractions positive and negative values, and an infinite number of numbers, then much more is possible. The number system is a cultural tool that supports thinking, learning, and cognitive development. This symbol system is passed from adult to child through formal and informal interactions and teachings.
The Role of Language
Language is critical for cognitive development. It provides a means for expressing ideas and asking questions, the categories and concepts for thinking, and the links between the past and the future, when we consider a problem, we generally think in words and partial sentences.
The specifically human capacity for language enables children to provide for auxiliary tools in the solution of difficult tasks, to overcome impulsive action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to master their own behavior. (Vygotsky, 1978)
LANGUAGE ANP CULTURAL DIVERSITY
If we study language across cultures, we see that different cultures need and develop different language tools. Vygotsky placed more emphasis than Piaget on the role of learning and language in cognitive development. In fact, he believed that language in the form of private speech (talking to yourself) guides cognitive development.
Vygotsky on Private Speech
(a) First, the child's behavior is regulated by others, usually parents, using language and other signs such as gestures. For example, the parent says, "No!" when the child reaches towards a candle flame.
(b) Next the child learns to regulate the behavior of others using the same language tools. The child says, "No!" to another child who is trying to take away a toy, often even imitating the parent's voice tone. Along with learning to use external speech to regulate others, the child begins to use private speech to regulate its own behavior, saying "no" quietly to itself as it is tempted to touch the flame. Finally, the child learns to regulate her own behavior by using silent inner speech. This series of steps is another example of how higher mental functions appear first between people as they communicate and regulate each others' behavior, and then emerge again within the individual as cognitive processes.
Cognitive Self-instruction
Because private speech helps students to regulate their thinking, it makes sense to allow, and even encourage, students to use private speech in school. Insisting on total silence when young students are working on difficult problems may make the work even harder for them. You may notice when muttering increases- this could be a sign that students need help. One approach called cognitive self-instruction, teaches students to use self-talk to guide learning. For example, students learn to give themselves reminders to go slowly and carefully.
Vygotsky believed that learning was an active process that does not have to wait for readiness. In fact, properly organized learning results in mental development and sets in motion a variety of developmental processes that would be impossible apart from learning. He saw learning as a tool in development up to higher levels and social interaction is a key in learning.
The Role of Adults and Peers
Vygotsky believed that cognitive development occurs through children?s conversations and interactions with more capable members of the culture- adults or more able peers. These people serve as guides and teachers, providing the information and support necessary for children to grow intellectually. Thus the child is not alone in the world "discovering" the cognitive operations of conservation or classification. This discovery is assisted or mediated by family members, teachers and peers. Jerome Bruner called this adult assistance scaffolding. The term aptly suggests that children use this help for support while they build a firm understanding that will eventually allow them to solve the problems on their own.
Implication of Vygotsky's Theory of Teachers
Vygotsky was most concerned with instructed learning through direct teaching or through structuring experiences that support another's learning, but his theory supports the other forms of cultural learning as well. He advocated Assisted Learning which suggests that teachers need to do more than just arrange the environment so that students can discover on their own. Children cannot and should not be expected to reinvent or rediscover knowledge already available in their cultures. Rather, they should be guided and assisted in their learning. So Vygotsky saw teachers, parents, and other adults as central to the child's learning and development.
Assisted learning or guided participation in the classroom requires scaffolding-giving information, prompts, reminders, and encouragement at the right time and in the right amounts, and then gradually allowing the students to do more and more on their own. Teachers' can assist learning by
THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
According to Vygotsky, at any given point in development there are certain problems that a child is on the verge of being able to solve. The child just needs some structure, clues, reminders/ help and remembering details or steps, encouragement to keep trying and so on. Some problems, of course, are beyond the child?s capabilities, even if every step is explained clearly. The zone of proximal development is the area where the child cannot solve a problem alone, but can be successful under adult guidance or in collaboration with a more advanced peer. This is the area where instruction can succeed, because real learning is possible.
The Psycho-social Theory of Erikson
Erikson was of the view that human personality develops in a series of stages, each with its particular goals, concerns, accomplishments, and dangers. The stages are interdependent: Accomplishments at later stages depend on how conflicts are resolved in the earlier years. Each stage in Erikson's theory is concerned with becoming competent in an area of life. If the stage is handled well, the person will feel a sense of adequacy and if the stage is handled poorly, the person will develop a sense of inadequacy. At each stage, Erikson suggests that the individual faces a developmental crisis-.a conflict between a positive alternative and a potentially unhealthy alternative. The way in which the individual resolves each crisis will have a lasting effect on that person's self-image and view of society.
The following are the 8 stages in Erikson's theory which he also called the eight ages of man.
|
|
Stages |
Approximate Age |
Important Event |
Description |
|
1. |
Basic trustversus basic mistrust |
Birth to 12-18 months |
Feeding |
The infant must form a first loving, trusting relationship with the caregiver or develop a sense of mistrust. Trust depends on quality of parenting or the caregiver. If trust is built successfully, the child feels secure or else Insecure. |
|
2. |
Autonomy versus shame / doubt |
18 months to 3 years |
Toilet training |
The child’s energies are directed towards the development of physical skills, including walking, grasping, controlling the sphincter. The child learns control but may develop shame and doubt if not handled well. Controlling one’s body functions gives a sense of independence. Also important is control over food choices, toy preferences and choosing clothing. |
|
3. |
Initiative versus guilt |
3 to 6 years |
Independence |
The child continues to become more assertive and to take more initiative but may be too forceful, which can lead to guilt feelings. If successful in social interaction, children feel capable and able to lead. Those who fail develop doubt, guilt and lack of initiative. |
|
4. |
Industry versus inferiority |
6 to 12 years |
School |
The child must deal with demands to learn new skills or risk a sense of inferiority, failure and incompetence. Those who are encouraged by parents and teachers develop a feeling of competence and belief in oneself. |
|
5. |
Identity versus inferiority |
Adolescence |
Peer relationships |
The teenager must achieve identity in occupation, gender roles, politics, and religion. With proper encouragement and reinforcement, children become more secure and have the ability to maintain their individuality |
|
6. |
Intimacy versus isolation |
Young adulthood |
Love relationships |
At this stage, people are normally exploring personal relationships. The young adult must develop intimate relationships or suffer feelings of isolation. Those with a poor sense of self tend to have less committed relationships and are likely to suffer isolation and loneliness. |
|
7. |
Generativity versus stagnation |
Middle adulthood |
Parenting/ Mentoring |
The focus is on career and family. Each adult must find some way to satisfy and support the next generation. Those who are successful at this stage will feel they are contributing to the society by being active and productive members. |
|
8. |
Ego integrity versus despair |
Late adulthood |
Reflection on and acceptance of one’s life |
The culmination is a sense of acceptance of oneself and a sense of fulfillment. The phase focuses on reflecting back on life. Unsuccessful people feel they have many regrets in life and that they have wasted this life. Those who are proud of their accomplishments will feel a sense of integrity and satisfaction with few regrets |
Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development
Lawrence Kohlberg proposed that moral development is a continual process that occurs throughout the lifespan of an individual. Kohlberg proposed a detailed sequence or stages of moral reasoning or judgments about right and wrong. He divided moral developments into three levels:
1. Pre-conventional- where judgment is based solely on a person's own needs and perceptions.
2. Conventional- where the expectations of society and law are taken into account; and
3. Post-conventional-where judgments are based on abstract, more personal principles that are not necessarily denned by society's laws.
Kohlberg has evaluated moral reasoning of both children and adults by presenting them with moral dilemmas, or hypothetical situations in which people must make difficult decisions and give their reasons.
"The Heinz Dilemma"
Heinz Steals the Drug
"In Europe, a woman was near death from cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid only $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug.
The sick lady's husband, Heinz, went to whosoever he knew to borrow money, but he could only collect $ 1/000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist told him that he discovered the drug and he is going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug-for his wife. Should Heinz have done that?"
Kohlberg was not interested so much in the answer to the question of whether Heinz was wrong or right, but in the reasoning for each participant's decision. The responses were then classified into various stages of reasoning in his theory of moral development.
Level 1 Preconventional Morality
At level-1, the child's answer to the drug dilemma above might be "Its wrong to steal because you might get caught". This answer reflects the child's basic egocentrism. The reasoning might be:
"What would happen to me if I stole something" I might get caught and punished".
Level 2 Conventional Morality
At level 2 (the conventional level), the subject is able to look beyond the immediate personal consequences and consider the views, and especially the approval, of others. Laws, religious or civil, are very important and are regarded as absolute and unalterable. One answer stressing adherence to rules is, "It is wrong to steal because it is against the law". Another answer, placing high value on loyalty to family and loved ones but still respecting the law, is, "Its right to steal because the man means well- he's trying to help his wife. But he will still have to pay the druggist when he can or accept the penalty for breaking the law".
Level 3 Post conventional Morality
At level 3 (the post-conventional level), an answer might be "It is not wrong to steal because human life must be preserved. The worth of a human life is greater than the worth of property." This response considers the underlying values that might be involved in the decision. A person reasoning on this level understands that what is considered right by the majority may not be considered right by an individual in a particular situation. Rational, personal choice is stressed.
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