Jean Piaget

Theory of Cognitive Development

While working in Binet's IQ test lab in Paris, Piaget became interested in how children think. He noticed that young children's answers were qualitatively different than older children which suggested to him that the younger ones were not dumber (a quantitative position since as they got older and had more experiences they would get smarter) but, instead, answered the questions differently than their older peers because they thought differently.

There are there are 2 major aspects to his theory: the process of coming to know and the stages we move through as we gradually acquire this ability.

The four development stages are described

1. Sensorimotor Stage: from birth to age 2 years (children experience the world through movement and senses and learn object permanence)
   


2. Preoperational Stage: from ages 2 to 7 (acquisition of motor skills)


3. Concrete Operational Stage: from ages 7 to 11 (children begin to think logically about concrete events)
   


4. Formal Operational Stage: after age 11 (development of abstract reasoning).

The Developmental Process

Piaget provided no concise (or clear) description of the development process as a whole. Broadly speaking it consisted of a cycle:

• The child performs an action which has an effect on or organizes objects, and the child is able to note the characteristics of the action and its effects.
  


• Through repeated actions, perhaps with variations or in different contexts or on different kinds of object, the child is able to differentiate and integrate its elements and effects. This is the process of reflecting abstraction (described in detail in Piaget 2001).
  


• At the same time, the child is able to identify the properties of objects by the way different kinds of action affect them. This is the process of empirical abstraction.
  


• By repeating this process across a wide range of objects and actions, the child establishes a new level of knowledge and insight. This is the process of forming a new cognitive stage.


• This dual process allows the child to construct new ways of dealing with objects and new knowledge about objects themselves.
  


• However, once the child has constructed these new kinds of knowledge, he or she starts to use them to create still more complex objects and to carry out still more complex actions.


• As a result, the child starts to recognize still more complex patterns and to construct still more complex objects. Thus a new stage begins, which will only be completed when all the child’s activity and experience have been re-organized on this still higher level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget

The Process of Cognitive Development

Piaget was interested in how an organism adapts to its environment (Piaget described as intelligence.) Behavior (adaptation to the environment) is controlled through mental organizations called schemes that the individual uses to represent the world and designate action. This adaptation is driven by a biological drive to obtain balance between schemes and the environment (equilibration).

Piaget hypothesized that infants are born with schemes operating at birth that he called "reflexes." In other animals, these reflexes control behavior throughout life. However, in human beings as the infant uses these reflexes to adapt to the environment, these reflexes are quickly replaced with constructed schemes.

Piaget described two processes used by the individual in its attempt to adapt: assimilation and accommodation. Both of these processes are used throughout life as the person increasingly adapts to the environment in a more complex manner.

Assimilation is the process of using or transforming the environment so that it can be placed in preexisting cognitive structures. Accommodation is the process of changing cognitive structures in order to accept something from the environment. Both processes are used simultaneously and alternately throughout life. An example of assimilation would be when an infant uses a sucking schema that was developed by sucking on a small bottle when attempting to suck on a larger bottle. An example of accommodation would be when the child needs to modify a sucking schema developed by sucking on a pacifier to one that would be successful for sucking on a bottle.

As schemes become increasingly more complex (i.e., responsible for more complex behaviors) they are termed structures. As one's structures become more complex, they are organized in a hierarchical manner (i.e., from general to specific).

http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/piaget.html

Piaget’s theory of Cognitive development, he noticed that children’s answers were quantitatively different from those of older children. There are 2 major aspects to his theory, the process of coming to know and the stages we move through to acquire this knowledge. There are 4 developmental stages, but I have found that in reading about Piaget, Vygotsky is mentioned a fair bit. This to me means that Piaget is useful, but his theory comes together when it is used along side Vygotsky’s theory of social interaction. People assimilate and accommodate to increasingly difficult situations in their life. Piaget’s theory suggests that people move through the stages, but not all people actually reach the final, formal stage in Piaget’s theory. As a teacher I need to focus my lessons on the stage that the students are at, but in the same instance I need to be able to challenge my students so they can reach the next level in Piaget’s theory.

Lev Vygotsky

Cognitive Development, the relationship between language and thinking.

He investigated child development and how this was guided through the role of culture and interpersonal communication. Vygotsky observed how higher mental functions developed through social interaction with significant people in a child's life, particularly parents, and other adults. Through these interactions, a child came to learn the habits of mind of his/her culture. Perhaps Vygotsky's most important contribution concerns the inter-relationship of language development and thought. It establishes the explicit and profound connection between speech (both silent inner speech and oral language), and the development of mental concepts and cognitive awareness (metacognition).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky





Vygotsky's Social Development Theory





Vygotsky approached development differently from Piaget. Piaget believed that cognitive development consists of four main periods of cognitive growth: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations (Saettler, 331). Piaget's theory suggests that development has an endpoint in goal. Vygotsky, in contrast, believed that development is a process that should be analyzed, instead of a product to be obtained. According to Vygotsky, the development process that begins at birth and continues until death is too complex to to be defined by stages.





Vygotsky believed that this life long process of development was dependent on social interaction and that social learning actually leads to cognitive development. This phenomena is called the Zone of Proximal Development . Vygotsky describes it as "the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky, 1978). In other words, a student can perform a task under adult guidance or with peer collaboration that could not be achieved alone. The Zone of Proximal Development bridges that gap between what is known and what can be known. Vygotsky claimed that learning occurred in this zone.





Therefore, Vygotsky focused on the connections between people and the cultural context in which they act and interact in shared experiences. According to Vygotsky, humans use tools that develop from a culture, such as speech and writing, to mediate their social environments. Initially children develop these tools to serve solely as social functions, ways to communicate needs. Vygotsky believed that the internalization of these tools led to higher thinking skills. When Piaget observed young children participating in egocentric speech in their preoperational stage, he believed it was a phase that disappeared once the child reached the stage of concrete operations. In contrast, Vygotsky viewed this egocentric speech as a transition from social speech to internalized thoughts. Thus, Vygotsky believed that thought and language could not exist without each other.





The Application of the Social Development Theory





Traditionally, schools have not promoted environments in which the students play an active role in their own education as well as their peers'. Vygotsky's theory, however, requires the teacher and students to play nontraditional roles as they collaborate with each other. Instead of a teacher dictating her meaning to students for future recitation, a teacher should collaborate with her students in order to create meaning in ways that students can make their own. Learning
becomes a reciprocal experience for the students and teacher.



The physical classroom, based on Vygotsky's theory, would provide clustered desks or tables and work space for peer instruction, collaboration, and small group instruction. Like the environment, the instructional design of material to be learned would be structured to promote and encourage student interaction and collaboration. Thus the classroom becomes a community of learning.



Because Vygotsky asserts that cognitive change occurs within the zone of proximal development, instruction would be designed to reach a developmental level that is just above the student's current developmental level. Vygotsky proclaims, "learning which is oriented toward developmental levels that have already been reached is ineffective from the view point of the child's overall development. It does not aim for a new stage of the developmental process but rather lags behind this process" (Vygotsky, 1978).



Appropriation is necessary for cognitive development within the zone of proximal development. Individuals participating in peer collaboration or guided teacher instruction must share the same focus in order to access the zone of proximal development. "Joint attention and shared problem solving is needed to create a process of cognitive, social, and emotional interchange" (Hausfather,1996). Furthermore, it is essential that the partners be on different developmental levels and the higher level partner be aware of the lower's level. If this does not occur, or if one partner dominates, the interaction is less successful.





http://chd.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/theorists/constructivism/vygotsky.htm

http://caselinks.education.ucsb.edu/casetrainer/CLADContent/CladLanguage/node1/theory/acquiring2ndlang.htm

Vygotsky observed how mental functions developed with social interactions. His most important contribution is through the inter-relationship between language development and thought. It establishes a connection between speech and the development of metacognition.
People learn in all different ways, there are Gardner’s 8 multiple intelligences and the lessons need to be structured in different ways for all of the class to understand and take in. Students learn by communicating with each other, this is social interaction at its best. For example, on Tuesday we had an ICT class and we had to try and get comments on other people’s blogs. This while it seems easy was quite difficult to master; we all ended up mastering it. If it was not for social interaction it would not have been done. This shows that social interaction is not only important for children, but for adults as well. I think the most important part of Vygotsky’s work is that learning becomes reciprocal, both students and teachers learn off one another. As a teacher you must never assume that you know more than the students, they can also teach you things. I think that this is a very important part of life not just a teacher, but as a person, you can learn anything off anyone not matter what age they are and I think people need to be open to these things.

William Glasser

People are driven by 6 basic needs.

• Survival
  

• Power

• Love







• Belonging






• Freedom






• Fun

By understanding the the drives for the 6 basic needs, we become more conscious of the need for our world to be a quality worlds of our choosing.

http://tombellows.com/_wsn/page2.html

The 10 Axioms of Choice Theory

1. The only person whose behavior we can control is our own.
   





2. All we can give another person is information
   





3. All long-lasting psychological problems are relationship problems.
   





4. The problem relationship is always part of our present life.
   





5. What happened in the past has everything to do with what we are today, but we can only satisfy our basic needs right now and plan to continue satisfying them in the future.
   





6. We can only satisfy our needs by satisfying the pictures in our Quality World.
   





7. All we do is behave.
   





8. All behaviors are Total Behaviors and are made up of four components: acting, thinking, feeling and physiology. All Total Behaviors are chosen, but we only have direct control over the acting and thinking components.
   





9. We can only control our feeling and physiology indirectly through how we choose to act and think.
   





10. All Total Behavior is designated by verbs and named by the part that is the most recognizable

http://raider.muc.edu/~schnelpl/Control%20Theory%20-%20Overhead.html

The 7 Caring Habits
1) Supporting;
2) Encouraging;
3) Listening;
4) Accepting;
5) Trusting;
6) Respecting; and
7) Negotiating differences,

The 7 Deadly Habits
1) Criticizing;
2) Blaming;
3) Complaining;
4) Nagging;
5) Threatening;
6) Punishing; and
7) Bribing or rewarding to control

http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Glasser,_William

Glasser is notable for developing a cause and effect theory that explains human behaviour. His ideas focus on personal choice, personal responsibility and personal transformation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Glasser

Reality Therapy

Reality Therapy focuses on the here-and-now and how to create a better future, instead of concentrating at length on the past. It emphasizes making decisions, and taking action and control of one's own life.

Reality Therapy is a considered a Cognitive behavioural approach to therapy; that is, it focuses on becoming aware of, and if necessary, change, his/her thoughts and actions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Therapy

Glasser is very important in trying to understand how and why children behave the way, they behave. Glasser’s research shows that children have needs that need to be filled before they can start acting and behaving the way that you as a teacher want them to behave. Glasser’s work is very important to me because it shows that children do not just act out for the sake of acting out, they feel threatened, un-loved etc… There is always a reason for the way people act and I think his work helps us learn how to deal with students who have a problem and we can make them feel better and they then get something out of the lesson. Eventually they start to enjoy coming to class and learning and this makes my job as that teacher easier and more enjoyable, the class tends to then enjoy coming, learning, and they get results from this class. Glasser’s theory focuses on personal responsibility, personal choice, and personal transformation; it is all about the person and the choices they make. It gives control to the person and makes the students take responsibility for their own behaviour. Much like his other theory Reality Therapy, this focuses on how to create a better future instead of concentrating on the past. It emphasizes making decisions and taking action and control of one’s own life. Once again emphasizing the importance of people taking responsibility for their own actions and behaviour. This is very important when it comes to teaching, you can mould and tell students behaviour, but you can’t control it.

John Hattie

What is the nature of evidence that makes a difference to learning?

http://www.acer.edu.au/workshops/documents/HattieSlides.pdf

Identifying what matters

Influences on learning

• Feedback is critical to effective teaching and students learning. ‘Feedback’ includes telling students what they have done well (positive reinforcement), and what they need to do to improve(corrective work, targets etc), but it also includes clarifying goals. This means that giving students assessment criteria for example would be included in ‘feedback’. This may seem odd, but high quality feedback is always given against explicit criteria, and so these would be included in ‘feedback’ experiments.As well as feedback on the task Hattie believes that students can get feedback on the processes they have used to complete the task, and on their ability to self-regulate their own learning. All these have the capacity to increase achievement. Feedback on the ‘self’ such as ‘well done you are good at this’ is not helpful. The feedback must be informative rather than evaluative.


• Classroom behaviour


• Cooperative learning


• Early intervention


• Competitive learning


• Testing.

Ask questions of relative effectiveness. Using effect-sizes in classrooms to underpin the discussion on effectiveness. the importance of learning intentions and success criteria.

Identifying what matters

There have been many studies over the past few years that have asked this question about wherein lies the variance (I have over 600,000 in my own database, Hattie, 1997).

• A major aim is to decompose the variance of the many influences to identify what
  proportion of achievement variance can be attributed to students, the curricula, policy, the
  principal, school climate, the teacher, the various teaching strategies, and the home. If we
  ignore the interaction effects, which are too often minor, then the major sources of
  variance are six- fold.
  
• Students -- They account for about 50% of the variance of achievement. It is what
  students bring to the table that predicts achievement more than any other
  variable. The correlation between ability and achievement is high, so it is
  not surprising that bright students have steeper trajectories of learning than
  their less bright peers. No matter how much we may like to “select” the best
  students into our schools, instead we must teach ALL students. We can add
  achievement value to students but as noted above; we are doing this
  disproportionately such that the bottom 20% is slipping behind their
  international peers.
  
• Home -- This accounts for about 5-10% of the variance, as most variance is already
  accounted for in the student prior achievement effect.
  
• Schools -- These account for about 5-10% of the variance. Schools barely make a
  difference to achievement. The discussion on the attributes of schools – the
  finances, the school size, the class size, the buildings are important as they
  must be there in some form for a school to exist, but that is about it. Given
  NZ schools are well resourced with more uniformity in the minimum
  standards than in most countries, it should be less surprising that in NZ the
  school effects are lower than in many other countries. Another way to note
  the effects of school is to consider two students of equal prior ability, and it
  almost does not matter which school they attend (although Nash, 2000 has
  shown that brighter students may perform higher in the lower decile schools
  at the School Certificate level).
  
• Principals –There influence is not directly on student learning but is more on the climate
  of the school. Principals who create a school with high student
  responsiveness and high expectations rather than bureaucratic control, who
  create a climate of psychological safety to learn, who have clear and high
  expectations, and who create a focus of teacher discussion on student
  learning can have a greater influence.
  
• Peer effects – These account for about 5-10% of the variance. This reflects how we
  under- utilise peers as co-teachers in classrooms. Certainly peers can have a
  positive effect on learning, but the discussion too quickly moves to the
  negative powers such as the recent increase in discussion on bullying
  (which is too real), and on the manner students create reputations around
  almost anything other than pride in learning.
  
• Teachers – They account for about 30% of the variance. It is what teachers know, do,
  and care about which is very powerful in this learning equation. And it is
  the one source of variance that can be enhanced with the greatest potential
  of success.

This is a study based on schools in New Zealand; it says that achievement of students can be attributed to many different factors. Whether it is students themselves, teachers, home, schools, Principals, and Peer effects. All of these can affect the way a student learns and whether they learn effectively. There are many things that Hattie says but, one of the most important is providing the students with feedback. I believe feedback to be the most important thing for students and this can increase there knowledge and learning and whether they learn effectively or not. Feedback not only provides the student with their results, but it also provides them with a rank against others in their class and year and it can clarify the students’ goals in life and school. You should only give the students positive feedback because negative feedback can destroy confidence and self esteem. Even though this study is conducted in New Zealand Schools, it is still widely useful for teachers, schools, and parents in all nations. Whether it be Australia, America, or South Africa they still have the same problems as those in New Zealand. This study can be extremely useful in determining how effectively students learn in any environment and it could be used for further study especially in determining how different students are in certain countries and it gives teachers even further insight into how to teach effectively for students from other cultures and backgrounds in their class and school. It is very difficult for teachers to see how well students are doing and whether they are learning effectively, or how well they are retaining information. Teachers need to test and assess not only their students work but, also how well they interact with each other in group situations. Interaction is necessary in life but, it is also necessary for higher learning. You learn 90% of what you teach someone else. That statement demonstrates that interaction and feedback are necessary for student development and learning effectively.