Jean Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory

1. “Intelligence is
what you use
when you
don’t know
what to do.”

2. Who is Jean Piaget?
A Biographical Summary

5. Schema
the cognitive structure by
which individuals intellectually
adapt to and organize their
environment

6. Assimilation
the process of fitting new
experience into an existing
created schema

7. Accommodation
the process of creating a
new schema

8. Equilibration
achieving proper balance
between assimilation and
accommodation.

12. Object Permanence
– ability attained in this
stage where he knows that
an object still exists even
when out of sight

14. Symbolic Function
– the ability to represent
objects and events

15. Egocentrism
– the tendency of a
child to only see his
point of view and
assume that everyone
else also has his same
point of view

16. Centration
– the tendency of the
child to only focus on
one thing or event and
exclude other aspects

17. Lack of Conservation
– the inability to realize
that some things remain
unchanged despite
looking different

18. Irreversibility
– Pre-operational
children still have the
inability to reverse their
thinking.

19. Animism
– the tendency of the
child to attribute
human like traits to
inanimate objects.

20. Realism
– believing that
psychological
events, such as
dreams, are real

21. Transductive
reasoning
– reasoning that is
neither inductive nor
deductive, reasoning
that appears to be from
particular to particular.

22. Teaching a
Preoperational
Child

23. Principle Application
Use concrete and
visual aids to illustrate
lessons and help
children understand
what is being
presented.
• Use physical
illustrations
• Use drawings and
illustrations.

24. Principle Application
Make instructions
relatively short, using
actions as well as
words, to lessen
likelihood that the
learners will get
confused.
• After giving
instructions, ask a
learner to
demonstrate them
as a model for the
rest of the class.
• Explain a game by
acting out the part
of a participant

25. Principle Application
Do not expect the
students to find it easy
to see the world from
someone else’s
perspective since they
are likely to be very
egocentric at this
point.
• Avoid lessons about
worlds too far from
the child’s own
experience.
• Discuss sharing from
the child’s own
experience.

26. Principle Application
Give children a great
deal of physical
practice with the facts
and skills that will
serve as building
blocks for later
development.
• Use cut out letters to
build words
• Avoid overuse of
workbooks and other
paper-and-pencil
tasks.

27. Principle Application
Encourage the
manipulation of physical
objects that can change in
shape while retaining a
constant mass, giving the
learners a chance to move
toward understanding of
conservation and two-
way logic needed in the
next stage.
• Provide
opportunities to play
with clay, water, or
sand.
• Engage learners in
conversations about
the changes the
students are
experiencing when
manipulating objects.

28. Principle Application
Provide many
opportunities to
experience the world in
order to build a
foundation for concept
learning and language
• Take field trips.
• Use and teach words
to describe what they
are seeing, doing,
touching, tasting, etc.
• Discuss what they
are seeing on TV.

30. Decentering
– the ability of the child to perceive
the different features of objects and
situations

31. Reversibility
– the ability
of the child to
follow that
certain
operations can
be done in
reverse.
8 + 5 =
13, therefore
, 5+8 = 13

32. Conservation
– the ability to know
that certain properties
of objects like
number, mass, volume
or area do not change
even if there is a
change in appearance.

33. Seriation
– the ability to arrange
things in a series based
on one dimension such
as
weight, volume, size, et
c.

34. Teaching the
Concrete
Operational
Child

35. Principle Application
Continue to use
concrete props and
visual aids, especially
when dealing with
sophisticated
material.
• Provide timelines for
history lessons.
• Provide three-
dimensional models
in science.
• Demonstrate simple
scientific
experiments in
which the students
can participate

36. Principle Application
Continue to give
students a chance to
manipulate objects
and test out their
ideas.
• Show craftwork to
illustrate daily
occupations of
people of an earlier
period.

37. Principle Application
Make sure that
lectures and
readings are
brief and well
organized.
• Use materials that
present a progression of
ideas from step to step.
• Have students read short
stories or books with
short, logical chapters,
moving to longer reading
assignments only when
the students are ready.

38. Principle Application
Ask students to deal
with no more than 3
or 4 variables at a
time
• Require readings
with a limited
number of
characters.
• Demonstrate
experiments with a
limited number of
steps.

39. Principle Application
Use familiar
examples to help
explain more
complex ideas so
students will have a
beginning point for
assimilating new
information.
• Compare students’
own lives with those
of the characters in a
story.
• Use story problems
in mathematics.

40. Principle Application
Give
opportunities to
classify and
group objects
and ideas on
increasingly
complex levels.
• Give students separate
sentences on slips of
paper to be grouped into
paragraphs.
• Use outlines, hierarchies,
and analogies to show
the relationship of
unknown material to
already acquired
knowledge.

41. Principle Application
Present problems
which require
logical, analytical
thinking to solve.
• Provide materials such as
Mind Twisters, Brain
teasers, and riddles.
• Focus discussions on
open-ended questions
which stimulate thinking.

43. Hypothetical Reasoning
– ability to come up
with different
hypothesis about a
problem and weigh
data to make
judgement.

44. Analogical reasoning
– ability to perceive the relationship in
one instance and use that relationship
to narrow down possible answers in
similar problems.

45. Analogical reasoning

46. Deductive reasoning
– ability to think logically by applying a
general rule to a particular situation.

47. Principle Application
Continue to use
many of the
teaching materials
appropriate for
students at the
concrete
operational stage.
• Use visual aids such as
charts and illustrations,
as well a simple but
somewhat more
sophisticated graphs and
diagrams.
• Use well-organized
materials that offer step-
by-step explanations.

48. Teaching
Students
Beginning to
Use Formal
Operations

49. Principle Application
Give students an
opportunity to
explore many
hypothetical
questions
• Provide students
opportunities to
discuss social issues.
• Provide consideration
of hypothetical “other
worlds”.

50. Principle Application
Encourage
students to
explain how they
solve problems.
• Make sure that at least
some of the tests you give
ask for more than rote
memory or one final
answer; essay questions,
for example, might ask
students to justify two
different positions on an
issue.

51. Principle Application
Whenever possible,
teach broad concepts,
not just facts, using
materials and ideas
relevant to the
students
• Use lyrics from
popular music to teach
poetic devices, to
reflect social problems,
and so on.

52. The reporter is now ready for
questions and any violent
reactions…