Human Growth and Development

By: Ben, Zach, and Justin

Jean Piaget

Born in Switzerland, August 9, 1896 Piaget was a well-known Swiss scholar , psychologist and philosopher, and one of the most influential supporters of constructivism for his pedagogical studies. Piaget was concerned primarily with cognitive development and the formation of knowledge. His research led him to conclude that the growth of knowledge is the result of individual constructions made by the learner.  In 1955, he created the International Center for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva and directed it until 1980.    Piaget’s career spanned over 50 years and his work has gained varying levels of acceptance in American education circles.  Jean Piaget is considered "the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing.”    Piaget’s Concepts: Adaptation, Assimilation, Accommodation, Classification, Class Inclusion, Conservation, Decantation, Egocentrism, Operation, Schema, and Child Stages.

Active Learning

Piaget believed that children learn through Active Learning. Active learning is the process of discovering something about your environment yourself. A child may touch a pot of boiling water and actively learn that boiling water is hot and shouldn't be touched. Active learning builds upon past experiences so that a child can better understand the world around them.

Example

When I was little I learned that if something had steam coming off of it, it would more than likely burn the roof of my mouth. I actively learned this and I make sure I wait for my food to cool down or blow on it to cool it down faster.

EgocentrismAccording to Piaget, egocentrism is the tendency of children to view the environment only from their own point of view. Piaget theorized that the degree of egocentrism is directly related to the child's level of cognitive development.  The infant stage (birth to age 2) children are just learning to recognize and interact with the environment and are thus completely egocentric The toddler and preschool stages (ages 2 to 6) children are able to represent the world to themselves in symbols and images but are unable to distinguish their point of view from that of others. 

The middle childhood stage (ages 6 to 12) children develop greater cognitive abilities and therefore have declining levels of egocentrism and are able to visualize a situation from another's point of view.  The adolescent stage (ages 12 to 19) egocentrism further declines as individuals develop the ability for fully abstract thought and are thus able to analyze a situation from many perspectives.

Example

Egocentric thinking is when you believe something and think everyone else should too, or you think because you think or feel something, everyone else does to. When a child hides in plain view under a blanket but sincerely believes they are missing, they think because they can't see you, that you can't see them.

Cognitive Structures Cognitive structures are patterns of physical or mental action that underlie specific acts of intelligence and correspond to stages of child development. According to Piaget there are four primary cognitive structures:  Sensorimotor stage from birth to age 2: intelligence takes the form of motor actions.Children experience the world through movement and the 5 senses. During the sensorimotor stage children are extremely egocentric, meaning they cannot perceive the world from others' viewpoints. The sensorimotor stage is divided into six substages: 

1. simple reflexes– first habits and primary circular reactions; – secondary circular reactions– coordination of secondary circular reactions– tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity– internalization of schemes.

 Preoperational stage from ages 2 to 7:  Intelligence is intutive in nature. Egocentrism begins strongly and then weakens. Children cannot conserve or use logical thinking. Concrete operational stage from ages 7 to 12: The cognitive structure during the concrete operational stage is logical but depends upon concrete referents. Children can now conceive and think logically but only with practical aids. They are no longer egocentric.  Formal operational stage from age 12 onwards: Thinking involves abstractions. Children develop abstract thought and can easily conserve and think logically in their mind. 

Example

With children in the sensorimotor stage, teachers should try to provide a rich and stimulating environment with ample objects to play with. On the other hand, with children in the concrete operational stage, learning activities should involve problems of classification, ordering, location, conservation using concrete objects.

Symbolic Thought

Symbolic thought is the representation of reality through the use of abstract concepts such as words, gestures, and numbers. Symbolic thought is present in most children by the age of eighteen months, when signs and symbols are used reliably to refer to concrete objects, events, and behaviors.  The hallmark of symbolic thought is language, which uses words or symbols to express concepts, abstract references to transcend concrete reality, and allows intangibles to be manipulated.  According to Jean Piaget, imitation plays an important role in the development of symbolic thought because the child is able to imagine behaviors observed in the past and to recreate them as imitated behaviors. Thus, a repertoire of signifiers is built that becomes connected to significates through assimilation of events and actions to those signifiers. The development of language arises from symbolic functions, which in turn facilitates development of symbolic thought.

Example

in preschool, kindergarten, 1st grade... they would show us flash cards with the a picture of something next to the word of that picture. so they would have a drawing of a cat, with the word cat next to it, a picture of a dog next to the word dog, showing us that the picture represents the word, and the word represents the picture.

Lev VygotskyVygotsky was born in 1896 in Orsha in theRussian Empire, and graduating from the Moscow State University. then going to work for the Institute for Psychology and other educational research.

Most of his work involved watching the development of children and Special Education trying to teach people that every child has a different learning curve

all of his work stayed mainly in the Russian area of things later crossing the pacific and effecting schools in the states.

Guided Participation

Vygotsky believed that children can solve problems with guidance from an adult. Children vocalize their thoughts and have conversations with themselves as a way to solve problems. This is called "private speech". If an adult participates with a child's "private speech" the child will listen to the adult's advice and apply it to solving the problem. 

"Through these experiences, basic mental capacities are transformed into uniquely human, higher cognitive processes. These include, among others, controlled attention, deliberate memorization and recall, categorization, planning, problem-solving, abstract reasoning, and self-regulation of thought and behavior."

(Vygotsky, Lev)

ExampleThis is an example of a mother and her 4 year old child solving a puzzle using guided participation:

Sammy: ‘I can’t get this one in.’ [Tries to insert a piece in the wrong place]

Mother: ‘Which piece might go here?’ [Points to thebottom of the puzzle]

Sammy: ‘His shoes.’ [Looks for a piece resembling the clown’s shoes, but tries the wrong one]

Mother: ‘Well, what piece looks like this shape?’[Pointing again to the bottom of the puzzle]

Sammy: ‘The brown one.’ [Tries it, and it fits; thenattempts another piece and looks at his mother]

Mother: ‘That’s it. Try turning that one just a little.’

Sammy: ‘There!’ [Puts in several more pieces whilecommenting to himself, ‘Now a green piece tomatch,’ ‘Turn it’ (the puzzle piece), as his motherwatches]

Apprenticeship in Thinking

Vygotsky believed that children learn from people around them. Vygotsky did research on infants and their mother's with multiple cultural groups and documented the differences in development. Who the child becomes is shaped by their interactions with not only other people, but also their culture and language. 

Vygotsky called this everyday learning from people around us "apprenticeship in thinking". "The theory that proposes a continuous process of interaction between persons and sociocultural factors is used as a framework in “everyday learning” or “apprenticeship” situations involving “scaffolding” (i.e., temporary support and guidance in problem solving) by an adult."

(Child Development and Culture)

Example

I used to watch my older brother all of the time I was a child.

When he played video games I'd watch him and would learn how the game worked.

When it was my turn to play I'd have a good sense on the rules of the game and a general idea on how to accomplish the goal.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding is a concept closely related to the idea of ZPD. Scaffolding is changing the level of support. Over the course of a teaching session, a more-skilled person adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child’s current performance. Dialogue is an important tool of this process in the zone of proximal development. In a dialogue unsystematic, disorganized, and spontaneous concepts of a child are met with the more systematic, logical and rational concepts of the skilled helper.

Example

in school, teachers usually call attention to a students parents, or to the student saying that the they are not learning at the same pace as the others. the teacher then discusses why they are not learning at the classes pace, and try and fix the problem by making a time management schedule, or just discussing what problems need addressing.

Proximal Development

Vygotsky argued that advanced individuals use language in social interactions to develop and redevelop thought by scaffolding less advanced individuals through their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD is ‘‘the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of poten- tial development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers’’; it enables learners to develop higher cognitive phenomena during social interactions.

Example

Kids, Teens and Adults all go through some sort of educational program that teaches difficult concepts, that if they had to learn on their own, would go to far above their heads to understand.in these programs these concepts are deconstructed to fit most types of learning levels and make it easier for everyone to understand.

BibliographyVygotsky, Lev. (2005). In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/wileycs/vygotsky_lev

Child Development and Culture. (2004). In Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/estappliedpsyc/child_development_and_culture

Constructivist theories. (2005). In Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/cupchilddev/constructivist_theories

Vanderburg, R. (2006). Reviewing Research on Teaching Writing Based on Vygotsky's Theories: What We Can Learn. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 22(4), 375-393. doi:10.1080/10573560500455778. McDonald, L., & Stuart-Hamilton, I. (2003). EGOCENTRISM IN OLDER ADULTS: PIAGET'S THREE MOUNTAINS TASK REVISITED. Educational Gerontology, 29(5), 417. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date

Brooks, Jacqueline Grennon; Brooks, Martin G.. In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms, with a new introduction by the authors. Alexandria, VA, USA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 1999. p 38.http://site.ebrary.com/lib/rsad/Doc?id=10078162&ppg=38 Copyright © 1999. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. All rights reserved. Meyer, John. Values Education : Theory, Practice, Problems, Prospects. Waterloo, ON, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1975. p 60.http://site.ebrary.com/lib/rsad/Doc?id=10147165&ppg=60 Copyright © 1975. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. All rights reserved.