Question

8. List and describe Jean Piaget's stages of cognitive development

9. What does Piaget mean by schemes? Explain what he meant by "equilibration" and "disequilibrium".

10. Describe the three limitations the textbook explains about Piaget's theory.

11. Who was Lev Vygotskian and what was main emphasis of his theory in cognitive development?

12. According the Vygotsky, what role did he see language played in cognitive development? Was it the same level of importance as Piaget's theory?

13. What did Vygotsky mean when he referred to "Zone of Proximal Development"?

14. What are the criticisms or limitations of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory?

15. Describe the meaning and purpose of scaffolding in learning and problem solving.

16.Compare and contrast Piaget's and Vygotsky's theory of development. Hint: Searching the internet on this may help!

Answer 1

According to Jean Piaget, all children move through 4 stages of development as they are growing up. He believed that children take an active role in the learning process and perform experiments and ovservation with regard to the things that are happening around them. The 4 stages are:

a. The sensorimotor stage, which lasts from birth uptil the age of 2. During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. The cognitive development occurs over a short period of time and they learn how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking, they also learn a great deal about language from the people with whom they they interact. Piaget believed that developing object permanence or object constancy, the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, was an important element at this point of development.

b. The preoperational stage lasts from the age of 2 uptil 7. In this stage, children learn to think symbolically using words and pictures and no longer need concrete evidence in order to think and understand. They are also egocentric and are capable of seeing things in only one perspective and thus struggle to understand the different perspectives of others. They also struggle with logic and have not yet mastered the idea of constancy.

c. The concrete operational stage lasts from the ages of 7 upto 11. While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in development, they become much more adept and using logic. The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as kids become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation. They also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people feel.

d. The last stage, called the formal operational stage takes place in children from the ages of 12 and up. The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas. People become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.