Piaget's Cognitive Development Stages

Piaget's Cognitive Development

• Jean Piaget's theory suggests children move through four stages of mental development.
• The theory focuses on how children acquire knowledge and on understanding the nature of intelligence.

Sensorimotor Stage: Birth to 2 Years

• Infants understand the world through movements and sensations.
• Children learn through basic actions like sucking, grasping, looking, and listening.
• Infants learn that things continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, known as object permanence.
• During this stage, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects; their experience occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.
• The sensorimotor stage involves dramatic growth and learning as children interact with their environment making discoveries.
• Cognitive development occurs rapidly with children learning physical actions and language.
• Piaget divided this stage into substages, with early representational thought emerging towards the end.
• Developing object permanence/constancy is an important element.
• Children learn objects are separate, distinct entities, able to attach names and words to objects.

Preoperational Stage: Ages 2 to 7

• Children start thinking symbolically and use words/pictures to represent objects.
• Children tend to be egocentric, making it hard to see things from the perspectives of others.
• Thinking is concrete even as language and thinking improves.
• The emergence of language is a major hallmark of the preoperational stage.
• Children become more skilled at pretend play, yet they have trouble thinking very concretely about the world.
• Kids learn through pretend play, but may struggle with logic and taking the point of view of other people and understanding the idea of constancy

Concrete Operational Stage: Ages 7 to 11

• Children begin to think logically about real or concrete events.
• They know that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to liquid in a tall, skinny glass thanks to the concept of conservation.
• Thinking becomes more logical, organized, and still very concrete.
• Children use inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle.
• Children become more adept at using logic while thinking is still concrete and literal.
• Egocentrism from the previous stage begins to disappear.
• Thinking is rigid during the concrete operational state, with kids struggling with abstract/hypothetical concepts.
• Children become less egocentric and understand that their thoughts are unique to them.

Formal Operational Stage: Ages 12 and Up

• Adolescents/young adults start to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems.
• Abstract thought emerges.
• Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning.
• They begin to use deductive logic or reasoning from a general principle to specific information.
• The final stage of Piaget's theory involves increased logic, using deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas. People can see multiple solutions to problems, and they think more scientifically.
• Thinking about abstract ideas/situations is the key hallmark of the formal operational stage of cognitive development; being able to systematically plan and reason about hypothetical situations are critical abilities emerging during this point.
• Piaget viewed children's intellectual development as a qualitative process.
• Children take an active part in the learning process.

Important Concepts

• Schemas describe the actions (both mental and physical) for understanding/knowing; they are categories of knowledge helping us understand the world.
• Schemas include a category of knowledge and the process of obtaining that knowledge. New information is used to modify, add to, or change existing schemas as experiences happen.
• Assimilation is taking in new information into existing schemas.
• The process is subjective because individual experiences/information may be bent to fit preexisting beliefs.
• Accommodation involves changing or altering existing schemas when faced with new information.
• Equilibration is the balance between assimilation and accommodation.
• Maintaining a balance between applying previous knowledge and changing behavior to account for new knowledge is important as children develop cognitively.

Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory

• Learning is a complex process influenced by a wide variety of factors with observation playing a critical role in determining the behaviors and things that children learn.
• Social learning theory indicates that observation and modeling play a primary role.
• Bandura's theory moves past behavioral theories and beyond cognitive theories.

Core Concepts of Social Learning Theory

• People can learn through observation.
• Internal mental states are an essential part of this process.
• Learning does mean a change in behavior.
• Observational experiments include the bobo doll

Learning Through Observation

• Children learn and imitate behaviors they have seen in other people.
• Bandura observed children in studies that watched an adult acting violently toward a Bobo doll; when the children were allowed to play with the doll they imitated the actions that were observed.
• There are three basic models of observational learning: a live model, a symbolic model, and a verbal instructional model.
• Observational learning does not even require watching another do something with verbal instructions leading to learning through podcasts or reading.
• Observational learning has become controversial, as parents and psychologists debate the impact that pop culture media has on kids who learn bad behaviors from violent video games, movies, television programs, and online videos.

Mental States Are Important to Learning

• External, environmental reinforcement is not the only factor to influence learning and behavior with reinforcement not always coming from outside sources.
• An individual's mental state and motivation play an important role in whether a behavior is learned or not.
• Intrinsic reinforcement leads to internal rewards, such as pride, satisfaction, & a sense of accomplishment.
• Internal thoughts and cognitions help connect learning theories to cognitive developmental theories.

Learning Does Not Necessarily Lead to Change

• Learning is not always seen immediately, but it can be displayed.
• Observational learning demonstrates that people can learn new information without demonstrating new behaviors.

Key Factors for Success

• Not all observed behaviors are effectively learned with certain requirements and steps to follow.
• Attention: paying attention is needed for learning; anything that detracts from one's attention can be a negative effect on the situation.
• Retention: someone is more likely to learn better if they are more dedicated.
• Reproduction: pull up information later and act on it is vital.
• Motivation: in order for observational learning to be successful, you have to be motivated to imitate the behavior that has been modeled with reinforcement and punishment playing important roles.

Lev Vygotsky's Scaffolding

• Instructional scaffolding is a teaching method where students that learn and help more by achieving goals more easier.
• Students learn when together and have broader skills and knowledge than the students themselves.
• Vygotsky scaffolding is part of the education concept "zone of proximal development" or ZPD, a group of skills or knowledge a student can't do on his/her own but, can do it with the help or guidance with a partner.

Tips for Using Vygotsky Scaffolding in the Classroom

• To use ZPD and the successful scaffolding techniques, you Have to know each student's knowledge.
• Group work is effective classroom scaffolding principles, where students learn from each other as they explain their process of thought while working on a project.
• Don't offer too much with its potential to causes the student to be passive, instead of active, learner and reduce the student learns.
• Making one's own decisions when students talk about their processes to know the student current skills and thoughts outloud to make sure they're actively learning.

Jean Lave's Situated Learning

• Learning occurs as a function of the activity, context and culture where it occurs.
• Abstract and out of context knowledge, which contrasts what is usually in the classroom.
• Learners become involved in a “community of practice” which embodies beliefs/behaviors to acquire and it is a component
• Furthermore, situated learning unintentional rather than deliberate while Lave and Wenger call that of “legitimate peripheral participation.”
• Situated learning has focused on problem-solving skills within technology
• authentic context within knowledge the settings and applications knowledge would normally occur otherwise will be presented
• Learning requirements ask for social interaction and collaboration

Inclusivity

• A way of thinking that allows every individual to feel safe and have value.
• Meeting members and changing needs consciously evolves to meet the needs.

Seven Principles for Inclusive Education

• Adapt skills to teach in different teaching methods.
• Recognizing students building identity while supporting their learning environment and affirming learning while with students.
• Avoiding assumptions and creating awareness can be done by challenging students through knowledge to make them feel more comfortable in the classroom.
• Talking to the people to the equality and all by making better justice is not fair with students.
• Books, magazines, movies, web based media and handouts provides the guide line of ideas that reflect on the accurate of different books.
• educators be able to edit any curriculum as educators and be more flexible through their curriculum to prescribed curriculum.

Explore Piaget's theory of cognitive development, which outlines four distinct stages of mental growth in children. The sensorimotor stage, from birth to age 2, involves learning through sensory experiences and motor actions. Discover how infants develop object permanence and rapidly acquire knowledge of their environment.