Cognitive+constructivism

© Karolina

// "To understand is to discover, or reconstruct by rediscovery, and such conditions must be complied with if in the future individuals are to be formed who are capable of production and creativity and not simply repetition." // Jean Piaget


 * Jean Piaget and his theory **

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a Swiss scientist noted for his extensive research related to child development and how children learn (to read [|Piaget's autobiography see]). Piaget was interested in both, the process of knowing and in the nature of knowledge itself. For Piaget, cognitive growth in general involved a process of adaptation to the environment. Much in the same way that a biological organisms adapt to life in their physical environment, the development of children' s thinking was seen as an adaptation to the psychological environment. Though his theory is rooted in biology, Piaget also recognized the importance of the environment. Piaget' s is an interactionist theory wherein the process of development is viewed as a dynamic one in which children play a major role in bringing out advances to their own thinking. Piaget' s general approach was to say that children actively construct knowledge by selecting and interpreting information in the environment. Piaget argued that all experience is filtered through the child' s current level of understanding and, consequently, that as the mind develops, thinking becomes more in line with the reality (Hala 1997).


 * The four stages of cognitive development **

Piaget’s main focus of constructivism is on **the individual** and how the individual **constructs** knowledge. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development proposes primarily that humans cannot be given information which they immediately understand and use; instead, humans must construct their own knowledge. He stated that children’s schemas are constructed through the processes of **assimilation** and **accommodation**, which will be discussed in the later part of this paper, when going through four different stages of development. The first stage is the **Sensorimotor stage**, which a child goes through from birth up to the age of two; the subsequent stages are: **preoperational stage** (two to seven years old), **concrete operational stage** (seven to eleven years old) and the **formal operational stage** (eleven years old to adulthood) (to read in detail about the stages of cognitive development see [|the stages of cognitive development see]). Source: http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/william.gaeddert/classes/101ovds/m13-1c.htm

In Piaget’s **sensorimotor stage** children begin to discover the environment around them through their own senses and physical activity and then language, as they get older within this stage. In the next stage – the **preoperational stage** – children develop their own language skills but still cannot grasp the thoughts of others. Piaget described it as “symbolic function” where children begin to distinguish pictures or symbols for different objects in their immediate environment and another sub-stage of “intuitive thought” where children ask all sorts of questions about everything in their environment. Within Piaget’s **concrete operational** stage, a pivotal growth point in the brain in logical development, children begin to replace intuitive thought with their own logical reasoning. In Piaget’s **formal operational stage** children, up to adulthood, will start using higher levels of thinking or abstract ideas to solve problems (Piaget 2002). Piaget’s stages are well-known and widely accepted as the basis for depicting the growth of logical thinking in children. The video that follows presents children at different ages performing some simple activities or just answering the researcher' s questions thus illustrating the most prominent differences in the way children think at different stages of their development.

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 * The role of the learner **

As it was mentioned earlier, Piaget was primarily interested in how knowlegde develops. Through the study of children' s development, he acknowledged that maturation, social experience, and experience with the physical world are all important but they cannot alone provide a complete expalantion for the development of new knowledge. Piaget rejected the view that all knowledge can be explained by innate factors because a large part of it concerns specific situations that cannot be assumed to be pre-programmed in individuals (Carpendale n.d.). Therefore, the essential characteristics of constructivism include the assumption that knoledge is constructed by the active child through interactions with the environment. Action should be therefore considered fundamental to cognitive development which, in turn, results from two processes – **assimilation and accommodation. ** Source: []

The following video presents a lesson based on the cognitive constructivist theory. It particularly focuses on discovery learning and provides advice on how to implement it in our classroom.
 * Assimilation** is when children add the new knowledge to their own schemas without the need to restructure them, and **accommodation** occurs when children have to alter their own schemas to “accommodate” the new information or knowledge (Kalina and Powell n.d.). Both of these processes serve as a means to achieve the state of equilibration which occurs when children shift from one stage to another. This state is manifested with a cognitive conflict, a state of mental unbalance or disequilibrium, that is the state of being uncomfortable when one has to adjust his or her thinking (schema) to resolve a conflict, in trying to make sense of the data or information they are receiving.

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 * The role of the teacher **

Cognitive constructivism is highly learner-centered as the focus is on the learner’s ability to gradually build up, or “construct” his/her knowledge. In the course of this process, the teacher fulfills the function of **a facilitator** whose role is to guide and to stimulate the student in his/her cognitive development.

Some conclusions that can be drawn from the abovementioned principles would be that:
 * active discovery learning should be applied in the classroom,
 * instead of telling, the teacher must begin asking the students about their own views and proposed solutions to some problems,
 * instead of answering questions that only align with the curriculum, the facilitator should enable the students to reach some conclusions on their own instead of being provided with them immediately,
 * instruction should be individualized as much as possible and children should have opportunities to communicate with one another, to argue and debate issues,
 * teachers should create learning experience that is open to new directions depending upon the needs of the student as the learning progresses,
 * teachers must challenge the students by making them effective critical thinkers.


 * Conclusion **

To conclude, in cognitive constructivism, ideas are constructed in individuals through a personal process; they are constructed from experience to have a personal meaning for the student. Substantial individual thought needs to be acquired in content or subjects areas for students to actually understand the material instead of just being able to recite it.

References: 1. Carpendale, J., (n.d.). An Explication of Piaget' s Constructivism: Implications for Social Cognitive Development (2). In S. Hala (Ed.), //The Development of Social Cognition.// Retrieved from http://www.google.pl/books?hl=pl&lr=&id=YL8NOhlTq7UC&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=piaget+constructivism&ots=6hz_YRr7oj&sig=gBXnsACdhxqTdVO9emGCPMktau8&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=piaget%20constructivism&f=false 2. Hala, S. (1997). Introduction (1). In S. Hala (Ed.), //The Development of Social Cognition//. Retrieved from http://www.google.pl/books?hl=pl&lr=&id=YL8NOhlTq7UC&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=piaget+constructivism&ots=6hz_YRr7oj&sig=gBXnsACdhxqTdVO9emGCPMktau8&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=piaget%20constructivism&f=false 3. Kalina, C.J., & Powell, K.C. (n.d.). Cognitive and Social Constructivism. //Education//, 130(2). Retrieved from http://edci6304sp2011.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/37550917/COGNITIVE%20AND%20SOCIAL%20Erika.pdf 4. Piaget, J. (2002). //The Construction of Reality in the Child.// Retrieved from http://www.google.pl/books?hl=pl&lr=&id=hK37xrpqdIkC&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=piaget+stages+of+development&ots=yf1KfOJxcW&sig=E7NUemFncfpH-O_BtovbPTcFDjY&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=sensorimotor&f=false