21st Century Learning & Development
PIAGET'S DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development is founded on the belief that one’s childhood
experiences play a vital role in determining how they will develop cognitively. He
proposed that children construct their own knowledge based on their interactions with
the environment (Wood, Smith, & Grossniklaus, 2001). The changes in perceiving,
remembering, thinking and learning characterize cognitive development and these
changes occur when new information is encountered. One must organize this
information to fit it into a schema (Laffier, 2015). This organization requires adaptation
to stimuli through assimilation of new information into an already existing schema or
accommodation to alter a schema in order to fit with new information
(Bhattacharya & Han, 2001).
The ability to actively participate in learning and construction of one’s own knowledge evolves and determines their stage of development. The stages of development proposed by Piaget are the sensorimotor stage from 0 to 2 years old, the preoperational stage from 2 to around 7, the concrete operational stage from 7 to 11 and the formal operational stage from adolescence into adulthood (Wood, Smith, & Grossniklaus, 2001). To move from one stage to the next, a child must have met the certain level of intellectual abilities of that stage. For example, the use of language and symbolic thinking usually occurs in the preoperational stage and a child must meet these requirements before moving onto concrete operational (Laffier, 2015).
One criticism of Piaget’s theory is that he underestimates children’s abilities. Critics suggest that children can use higher order thinking and intellectual skills than suggested within the stages but just on simpler tasks (Wood, Smith, & Grossniklaus, 2001). Additionally, it is cautioned that not all children will reach each milestone at the same time and may not show it in the same way. Therefore one may not be able to fit each child’s development into a specific stage (Laffier, 2015).
Teaching
Strategies
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Take the learner's developmental level into consideration when planning. This means depending on what stage the students in your class should be in (generally), they will and will not be able to do and understand certain things. For example, students in the concrete operational stage begin to use concepts of time, space, volume and number. However, their ability to do so remains limited to simple individualized examples. Therefore these students will require repetition with specific examples in order to understand a concept or connection between concepts (Laffier, 2015).
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Incorporate activities into lessons in which students must classify or group information. With practice students should be able to do this with more complex information. This practice helps support one’s learning to categorize new ideas in their schemas.
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Create the groups yourself for brainstorming activities to ensure some of the lower intellectually developed students are placed with those with a more mature understanding. This shouldn’t be done for every activity but used appropriately it can benefit students with different cognitive levels. Less mature students will be able to learn from those with an advanced understanding and those students will benefit by being given the opportunity to teach others.
Tech Tools
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MyMathLab is an online program that can guide students through personalized instruction and assessment. It can be used in the classroom to help students of varying cognitive abilities understand the same concept using individualized instruction. This is difficult to do without some sort of program and MyMathLab reacts to students responses to questions by updating the progression of instruction to meet their needs. It also gives teachers real-time feedback on what the students are doing and how they are performing. Additionally, teachers can pair up students on my math lab and observe their collaboration and effort on completing a task. This tool can help meet the needs of students with varying cognitive abilities while providing opportunity to pair students that can support one another in the learning process.
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Smart Board technology: This technology allows teachers to represent concepts
visually using a number of shapes, pictures and simulations. It also creates
opportunity for students to interact with the objects on screen. Students in the
concrete operational stage represent ideas using symbolic representation. Not
all students’ symbolic representations will be the same and students can benefit
from understanding others’ ideas. Using a Smartboard, students can become
teachers themselves by solving a problem or representing an idea using virtual
manipulatives and interacting with information on the screen.
