Unit 5: Cognitive development theories
Readings
Instructor notes
Learning activities
Web resources
Readings
Driscoll, Chapters 6 and 7Optional: Gredler, Chapters 9 and 10
Optional readings on Vygotsky:
Although Vygotsky's ideas can be difficult to understand, his work has been very influential in the U.S., especially in the past decade or so. The following three readings, all available online through Academic FullText Elite, may (or may not) help you grapple with his ideas. The first one listed is the easiest to comprehend. The first couple of pages (up to the heading "The Primacy of Thinking in Education") provide a fairly good restatement of some of Vygotsky's most important principles as applied to classroom instruction. Read the rest only if it interests you. The other two articles are more challenging conceptually, but you might find them to be of interest.
Lipman, M. (1991). Squaring Soviet theory with American practice. Educational Leadership, May91, Vol. 48 Issue 8, p72, 5p.
Jaramillo, James A. (1996). Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and contributions to the development of constructivist curricula. Education, Fall96, Vol. 117 Issue 1, p133, 8p.
Wood, David; Wood, Heather. (1996). Vygotsky, tutoring and learning. Oxford Review of Education, Mar96, Vol. 22 Issue 1, p5, 12p.
Instructor notes
Piaget: Key ideas
Introduction to Piaget
Jean Piaget was employed at the Binet Institute in the 1920s, where his job was to develop French versions of questions on English intelligence tests. He became intrigued with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers on the questions that required logical thinking. Over the next fifty years, this curiosity led to the development of his theory of "genetic epistemology".
Piaget's theory differs from others we have studied in several ways:
- It is concerned with children, rather than all learners.
- It focuses on development, rather than learning per se, so it does not address learning of information or specific behaviors.
- It proposes discrete stages of development, marked by qualitative differences, rather than a gradual increase in number and complexity of behaviors, concepts, ideas, etc.
The goal of the theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the infant, and then the child, develops into an individual who can reason and think using hypotheses. To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of maturation and experience. Children construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment.
There are three basic components to Piaget's theory:
- Types of knowledge (physical, logical-mathematical, and social-arbitrary)
- Stages of development (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational)
- Processes that enable the transition from one stage to another (assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration)
Piaget's proposed stages of development
An important thing to understand about these different levels is that they are qualitatively different. In other words, at each successive stage, it's not just a matter of doing something better, but of doing a different thing altogether.
The function of cognitive growth is to produce increasingly powerful cognitive structures that permit the individual to act on the environment with greater flexibility.
The sensorimotor period ranges from birth to about age 2. Infants learn mostly through trial and error learning. Children initially rely on reflexes, eventually modifying them to adapt to their world. Behaviors become goal directed, progressing from concrete to abstract goals. Objects and events can be mentally represented by the older child during this stage (sometimes called object permanence). For example, if you place a toy under a blanket, the child who has achieved object permanence knows it is there and can actively seek it. Before this stage, the child behaves as if the toy had simply disappeared. The attainment of object permanence generally signals the transition to the next stage.
The preoperational period ranges from about ages 2 to 7. Children in this stage can mentally represent events and objects (the semiotic function), and engage in symbolic play. Their thoughts and communications are typically egocentric (i.e., about themselves). They are able to focus on only one aspect or dimension of problems. For example, suppose you arrange two rows of blocks in such a way that a row of 5 blocks is longer than a row of 7 blocks. Preoperational children can generally count the blocks in each row and tell you the number contained in each. However, if you ask which row has more, they will likely say that it is the one that makes the longer line, because they cannot simultaneously focus on both the length and the number. The ability to solve this and other "conservation" problems signals the transition to the next stage.
Children in the concrete operational period are typically ages 7 to 11. They gain the abilities of conservation (number, area, volume, orientation) and reversibility. Their thinking is more organized and rational. They can solve problems in a logical fashion, but are typically not able to think abstractly or hypothetically.
The formal operational period begins at about age 11. As adolescents enter this stage, they gain the ability to think in an abstract manner, the ability to combine and classify items in a more sophisticated way, and the capacity for higher-order reasoning.
Processes of development
The continual process of resolving the discrepancies they encounter moves the child's intelligence into a more mature understanding. Piaget used the concepts of assimilation and accommodation to explain this continual process.
When children and adolescents encounter something reasonably similar to what they already know, it is assimilated into their existing knowledge. So, for example, when small children put everything they grasp into their mouth, or call all small animals "dogs," they are assimilating.
On the other hand, when children encounter something that is different from what they know, they may change their way of thinking to take into account this new knowledge. This is accommodation. (Assimilation and accommodation should remind you of principles we discussed earlier in Ausubel and schema theory.) A child sees a four-legged animal and labels it a "dog". Mother responds "No, Johnny, that's a cow. Change must take place in the child's schema for four-legged animals, they are not all dogs.
According to Piaget, reorganization to higher levels of thinking is not accomplished easily. The child must "rethink" his or her view of the world. An important step in the process is the experience of cognitive conflict. In other words, the child becomes aware that he or she holds two contradictory views about a situation and they both cannot be true. This step is referred to as disequilibrium. According to Piaget, learning cannot occur without disequilibrium.
Equilibration is a regulatory process that maintains a balance between assimilation and accommodation to facilitate cognitive growth. Think of it this way: We can't merely assimilate all the time; if we did, we would never learn any new concepts or principles. Everything new we encountered would just get put in the same few "slots" we already had. Neither can we accommodate all the time; if we did, everything we encountered would seem new; there would be no recurring regularities in our world. We'd be exhausted by the mental effort!
According to Piaget, teaching can support these developmental processes by
- Providing support for the "spontaneous research" of the child appropriate to the stage of development.
- Using active methods that require rediscovering or reconstructing "truths" so that disequilibrium is created.
- Using collaborative, as well as individual activities, again increasing the odds of disequilibrium.
- Devising situations that present useful problems, and creating disequilibrium in the child (remember our early conversation about schemes).
To check your understanding of the basic Piagetian stages, see if you can identify which type of behavior would be common in which Piagetian stage.
- A child drops an object on the floor, delights when the parent returns it, and drops the object again. [click for answer]
- A child conducts an experiment by carefully holding constant one variable and modifying others. Suddenly they realize that two variables must be confounded. [Click for answer]
- A child answers his mother's question while talking on the phone by nodding his head yes. [Click for answer]
- A child has gotten lost in her new school building. She quickly realizes she simply needs to retrace her steps and begin again. [Click for answer]
Bruner: Key ideas
Assumptions
The outcome of cognitive development is thinking. The intelligent mind creates from experience "generic coding systems that permit one to go beyond the data to new and possibly fruitful predictions." Thus, children as they grow must acquire a way of representing the "recurrent regularities" in their environment. So, to Bruner, important outcomes of learning include not just the concepts, categories, and problem-solving procedures invented previously by the culture, but also the ability to "invent" these things for oneself.
Cognitive growth involves an interaction between basic human capabilities and "culturally invented technologies that serve as amplifiers of these capabilities." These culturally invented technologies include not just obvious things such as computers and television, but also more abstract notions such as the way a culture categorizes phenomena, and language itself. Bruner would likely agree with Vygotsky (see below) that language serves to mediate between environmental stimuli and the individual's response.
The aim of education should be to create autonomous learners (i.e., learning to learn).
Three modes of representation
Bruner hypothesized that the usual course of intellectual development moves through three stages: enactive, iconic, and symbolic, in that order. However, unlike Piaget's stages, Bruner did not contend that these stages were necessarily age-dependent, or invariant.
In the enactive stage, knowledge is stored primarily in the form of motor responses. And this is not just limited to children. Many adults can perform a variety of motor tasks (typing, sewing a shirt, operating a lawn mower) that they would find difficult to describe in iconic (picture) or symbolic (word) form. As an example, my 7-year-old son is bugging me to teach him how to whistle - try describing that action in words!!
In the iconic stage, knowledge is stored primarily in the form of visual images. This may explain why, when we are learning a new subject, it is often helpful to have diagrams or illustrations to accompany verbal information.
In the symbolic stage, knowledge is stored primarily as words, mathematical symbols, or in other symbol systems. According to Bruner's taxonomy, these differ from icons in that symbols are "arbitrary." (For example, the word "beauty" is an arbitrary designation for the idea of beauty in that the word itself is no more inherently beautiful than any other word.)
Assertions/implications for instruction
"Any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development." No, Bruner probably would not contend that a one-year old could be taught astrophysics. But he might contend that kindergartners could be taught some principles of physics (e.g., force, mass, momentum, friction) in enactive form. Later, these same principles could be repeated in iconic, then symbolic form.
The subject matter must be made "ready" for the child. Piaget and, to an extent, Ausubel, contended that the child must be ready, or made ready, for the subject matter. But Bruner contends just the opposite. According to his theory, the fundamental principles of any subject can be taught at any age, provided the material is converted to a form (and stage) appropriate to the child.
The instructional challenge is to provide problems that both fit the manner of the child's thinking and tempt him/her into more powerful modes of thinking. This is similar to Vygotsky's notion (explored more deeply next) that learning should lead development.
The notion of enactive, iconic, and symbolic stages may also be applicable to adults learning unfamiliar material.
Modes of representation (enactic, iconic, then symbolic) imply the ideal sequence for instruction, but when learners have well-developed symbolic systems, it may not be necessary to go through the entire sequence. Also, the mode of instruction should match the criteria that will be used for measuring learning outcomes.
The notion of a "spiral curriculum" embodies Bruner's ideas by "spiraling" through similar topics at every age, but consistent with the child's level of thought.
Discovery is not just an instructional technique, but an important learning outcome in itself. Schools should help learners develop their own ability to find the "recurrent regularities" in their environment. The teacher's job is to guide the discovery process. In other words, in teaching a particular concept, the teacher should present the set of instances that will best help learners develop an appropriate model of the concept. The teacher should also model the inquiry process. Bruner would likely not contend that all learning should be through discovery. For example, it seems pointless to have children "discover" the names of the U.S. Presidents, or important dates in history.
Educators should keep in mind that members of different cultures will exhibit different kinds of reasoning and inference.
Vygotsky: Key ideas
Major themes/assumptions/assertions
Vygotsky maintained a broader view of development than other theorists: how did humans come to develop higher psychological processes in the first place? Within that framework, how do children come to possess the cognitive functions they exhibit later in life?
Individual development cannot be understood without reference to the social and cultural context within which it is embedded. Higher mental processes in the individual have their origin in social processes.
Mental processes can be understood only if we understand the tools and signs that mediate them. In higher forms of human behavior, the individual actively modifies the stimulus situation as a part of the process of responding to it.
No single principle (such as Piaget's equilibration) can account for development.
Appropriate methods for studying intellectual development are:
- emphasis on experimentation/observation in natural, authentic settings
- cross-species comparisons
- sociohistorical factors that mediate development
The social origins of higher mental processes
Social context is so important to Vygotsky that it is not simply one more variable to be accounted for; rather, social activity (i.e., the interaction between individual and context), not the individual him/herself, is the appropriate unit of analysis in psychology. Development does not proceed toward socialization; development is the conversion of social relations into mental functions. "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later on the individual level; first, between people, then inside the child... All the higher functions originate as actual relations between individuals." For example, children may argue with each other about who gets to play with what toy, or how a task should be completed. Eventually, this argument among people gets converted to a kind of internal, mental "argument"; that is, it contributes to the ability to see an issue from different sides, and to weigh various courses of action before making a decision. The child converts social relations into psychological functions through mediation. Mediation occurs through a linking tool or sign. A tool is defined as something that can be used in the service of something else. A sign is something that stands for something else (indexical, iconic, symbolic).Language is the most important kind of sign use in acquisition of higher psychological processes, because it frees children from the constraints of their immediate environment (decontextualization). For example, a small child can respond only to its immediate needs or feelings: hunger, thirst, pain, fear, etc. But as adults, we can use language to regulate our behavior beyond our immediate needs or environment. For example, in the morning you may wake up and want a glass of orange juice, only to discover that you are out of orange juice. Later in the day, you are no longer thirsty for orange juice, but you can mediate your behavior through the use of a sign: that is, you can write "orange juice" on a grocery list and buy some on the way home. The use of this written sign allows me to regulate your own behavior (that of buying orange juice) even when you are no longer experiencing the immediate environmental stimulus of thirst. The diversity of symbols across cultures leads to differences in the kinds of mental functions that are developed. Thus, universal stages of psychological development across cultures cannot be identified. For example, people of different cultures have been shown to classify objects in different ways. One culture might group plants according to their use; another according to their appearance, another according to their location, etc.
Implications for instruction
Instruction should lead (i.e., precede) development. Instruction should be targeted at the "leading" edge of the zone of proximal development. The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is defined as the difference between problem-solving the child is capable of performing independently, and problem-solving he/she is capable of performing with guidance or collaboration. This defines the area in which maturation/development is currently taking place and suggests the appropriate target for instruction. For example, suppose a particular 9-year old can solve most arithmetic problems independently; can solve some simple algebraic problems with guidance from a teacher; and cannot solve calculus problems no matter how much help she is given. We would say that algebra problems are within her ZPD, and that this is the level at which instruction will be most profitable. After all, it will be of little use to continue to present problems that she can already solve, or to present problems that will only frustrate her.
In an instructional setting, social "partners" should be at different levels of development, and they should jointly construct the problem solution. This helps to insure that the teacher or more advanced student can assist the less advanced one, and that they will be operating within his/her ZPD. Don't fall into the trap, however, of always thinking of one individual as the "tutor" or "teacher" and the other as the "learner" within a small group such as this. If the instructor arranges the topic, project, and discussions well, each student can play the "tutor" role during the completion of a project, even during the same class period.
Instruction should provide learners with authentic situations in which they must resolve dilemmas. From Vygotsky's picture of the child's capabilities since it fails to account for the ZPD.
Current applications of Vygotsky's work
A contemporary application of Vygotsky's theories is "reciprocal teaching", used to improve students' ability to learn from text. In this method, teacher and students collaborate in learning and practicing four key skills: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher's role in the process is reduced over time. Also, Vygotsky is relevant to instructional concepts such as "scaffolding" and "apprenticeship", in which a teacher or more advanced peer helps to structure or arrange a task so that a novice can work on it successfully. Vygotsky's theories also feed into current interest in collaborative learning, suggesting that group members should have different levels of ability so more advanced peers can help less advanced members operate within their ZPD.
Learning activities
5.1 Piaget, Bruner & Vygotsky Discussion (in Oncourse)
To be completed by Friday July 26
Unit 5 also presents a complex problem for discussion. To facilitate a more meaningful and personal synthesis, you will complete the initial discussion activity in smaller groups. Thus, there will be no formal facilitator or wrapper this week. But, your group will be responsible for posting a synthesis to the main discussion forum by Friday, July 26.
Both synchronous (chat) and asynchronous (discussion forum) tools have been set up for you in Oncourse. Use whichever (or both) will help facilitate the completion of your synthesis. If you choose to communicate via email and/or outside of Oncourse, forward the instructors copies of your group communications, as always.
Scenario:
Mason is a seventh grader who is having difficulty in math class. He stares blankly at the test paper asking him to compute fractions such as 5/7 and 9/12 as percentages. He can't remember at all how to determine whether 4/5 is larger or smaller than 5/8 so he makes a guess. He hopes that, with some luck, he might manage in class. On the weekend, Mason is watching his favorite sport, basketball. He remarks to his sister, "Oh, this guy make 8 out of 11 shots last week; he's close to an 80% shooter so he should be okay for these free throws." After the player makes both shots, Mason looks down at the statistics sheet he's been keeping on the local teams' shooting percentages, and updates the statistics.
Your discussion group's task is to analyze Mason's behavior from the perspectives of the theories. Then, come up with recommendations from the three theorists' points of view.
5.2 Thought activity: Question the Experts: Bruner, Piaget and Vygotsky
To be completed by Sunday July 28
Reflect on the following on your own or with your team.
Chapter 6 and 7 introduce the views of three important experts in educational psychology: Piaget, Bruner and Vygotsky. Your task for this unit is to role play a conversation between the three experts as they try to analyze a learning situation. Each person on your team will play the role of one of the experts. If you have more than three people in your group, more than one of you can play the same expert, or you can bring in other learning theory experts you have read thusfar (such as Skinner) into the discussion. You will be addressing a particular learning issue from your expert's point of view, while other team members will challenge your explanation and question you further on particular details from their expert's point of view.
Research your particular expert and also pinpoint specific ways in which your expert's views differ from the other two experts. The web resources and the suggested articles at the beginning of the chapter may be helpful as you formulate your ideas.
If you are doing this individually, you should still create the conversation much like three people were participating. You will likely not reach a consensus on the underlying learning issues if you are true to their original views.
Both synchronous (chat) and asynchronous (discussion forum) tools have been set up for you in Oncourse. Use whichever (or both) will help facilitate the completion of your synthesis. If you choose to communicate via email and/or outside of Oncourse, forward the instructors copies of your group communications, as always.
Your group may choose one of these learning issues to discuss:
Issue #1: How would you face the task of teaching math to a culturally diverse group of
second-graders (7 years old) at an urban elementary school? (Don't be concerned with the specific content to be taught, just the nature of the learning tasks, and how they might be determined and organized according to each expert.)
Issue #2: Adult employees at a particular company are having difficulty transferring learning from training sessions to the workplace. What strategies should be used according to each expert? Which is the best approach?
Issue #3: Which comes first, learning or development? That is, must a child be at a particular point in development for learning to occur effectively? Or does learning prompt movement from one stage of development to the next? What evidence supports your view as one of these experts?
Issue #4: Are social interactions necessary for learning? Why or why not? Can an internal dialogue substitute for external others? Why or why not according to these experts?You can turn in a typed transcript of your conversation or you can ask us to grade the "live" conversation in a synchronous chat, whichever format you think is better.
How this thought activity will be assessed:
1.Please limit your transcript to 3-4 pages. This will be difficult. Try to be concise and focus on the most important issues that the three experts would agree on or disagree on - some inclusion of both kinds of issues is probably important to illustrate your understanding.
2.Support each expert's claims with evidence from the readings. Provide examples or illustrations which make your point when necessary.
3.Your expert can't say "I don't agree with that", they have to talk about why a statement doesn't match with their beliefs (or does match). The evidence or thought process they use to back up their rebuttals must also be included.
4. Both processes and outcomes will be considered in the assessment.5.3 Reflections
To be completed by Sunday July 28
The purpose of the reflection is for you to think about what you have learned through this experience.
If you completed this activity individually, please submit the answer to these questions to your instructor along with your unit product:
1. Why did you choose to work individually on this activity?
2. How did this individual experience compare with your earlier group experiences?
3. How did your understanding of the learning theory change through this activity?If you completed this activity as a group, please answer the following questions individually and submit to the instructor. Please be honest. No group experience is without challenges and frustrations. Reflecting on the challenges of the group experience is just as important as celebrating the positive achievements. Being honest will help us as instructors give better guidance to teams collaborating online in the future.
1. Evaluate the contribution of EACH of your project team members, including yourself, on a scale from 1 to 5. Refer to the descriptions below as you make your ratings.
0 = team member made no visible contributions to the project OR made significant and sustained negative contributions to the project
1 = team member made minimal contributions to the overall project
2 = team member made uneven contributions to the project - some positive, some negative
3 = team member made reasonable contributions to the project
4 = team member made significant and sustained positive contributions to the project
5 = team member made significant and sustained positive contributions to the project AND supported every member of the group by actively bringing out the best in others.2. Briefly describe your group's approach to completing this thought activity.
3. Briefly describe your individual contribution and each team member's contributions to the activity.
4. How did your understanding of the learning theory change through this activity?
Web resources
There are several links to sites on Bruner, Piaget and Vygotsky on the Web Resources page. With a little searching, you can probably find more.
Comments: joalexan@indiana.edu
