Cognitive Dvelopment
Discuss applications of theories of cognitive development to education
Piaget’s approach to education is based around the concept of readiness. Children can’t develop specific cognitive abilities until they reach an appropriate level of maturation. Therefore, for a child to learn, the activities need to be at the correct level of mental operation. Children at one development stage are not ready to learn concepts of a higher stage. At each stage of cognitive development, there are differences in how a child thinks about the world, and there are educational recommendations for each stage. In the concrete operational stage for example, learning activities may include solving problems or attention tasks and be given concrete materials to manipulate. Piaget believed that discovery learning environments were an important part of development. Activities should encourage assimilation and accommodation, so the children can discover knowledge for themselves, instead of it being delivered to them. Rather than submitting knowledge, a teacher should provide the setting and materials to allow children discovery and true understanding.
An advantage of Piaget’s theory and approach to education is that it has had a major influence on education. However, Piaget wasn’t the first psychologist to emphasise the importance of child-centred education, and it has been claimed that Piaget’s theory may not have caused these educational changes, but just been a way to justify them. There is evidence to support the idea of readiness. If the theory were correct, practising a task wouldn’t improve performance if the child wasn’t maturational ready as practice had no effect on performance when students aged 10-13 were trained on formal operational tasks. It did however; improve the performance of 17-year olds, because they were ready. Piaget suggested the cognitive growth comes from the desire to resolve the disequilibrium caused by cognitive conflict and that a teacher’s task is to
Piaget’s approach to education is based around the concept of readiness. Children can’t develop specific cognitive abilities until they reach an appropriate level of maturation. Therefore, for a child to learn, the activities need to be at the correct level of mental operation. Children at one development stage are not ready to learn concepts of a higher stage. At each stage of cognitive development, there are differences in how a child thinks about the world, and there are educational recommendations for each stage. In the concrete operational stage for example, learning activities may include solving problems or attention tasks and be given concrete materials to manipulate. Piaget believed that discovery learning environments were an important part of development. Activities should encourage assimilation and accommodation, so the children can discover knowledge for themselves, instead of it being delivered to them. Rather than submitting knowledge, a teacher should provide the setting and materials to allow children discovery and true understanding.
An advantage of Piaget’s theory and approach to education is that it has had a major influence on education. However, Piaget wasn’t the first psychologist to emphasise the importance of child-centred education, and it has been claimed that Piaget’s theory may not have caused these educational changes, but just been a way to justify them. There is evidence to support the idea of readiness. If the theory were correct, practising a task wouldn’t improve performance if the child wasn’t maturational ready as practice had no effect on performance when students aged 10-13 were trained on formal operational tasks. It did however; improve the performance of 17-year olds, because they were ready. Piaget suggested the cognitive growth comes from the desire to resolve the disequilibrium caused by cognitive conflict and that a teacher’s task is to