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Jean Piaget Essay, Research Paper

During the 1920s, a biologist named Jean Piaget proposed a theory of cognitive

development of children. He caused a new revolution in thinking about how thinking

develops. In 1984, Piaget observed that children understand concepts and reason

differently at different stages. Piaget stated children’s cognitive strategies which are used

to solve problems, reflect an interaction BETWEEN THE CHILD’S CURRENT

DEVELOPMENTAL STAGE AND experience in the world.

Research on cognitive development has provided science educators with constructive

information regarding student capacities for meeting science curricular goals. Students

which demonstrate concrete operational thinking on Piagetian tasks seem to function only

at that level and not at the formal operational level in science. Students which give

evidence of formal operational thinking on Piagetian tasks often function at the concrete

operational level in science, thus leading researchers to conclude that the majority of

adolescents function at the concrete operational level on their understanding of science

subject matter. In a study by the National Foundation of subjects in Piaget’s Balance Task

were rated as being operational with respect to proportional thought development. In

addition, seventy-one percent of subjects did not achieve complete understanding of the

material studied in a laboratory unit related to chemical solubility. The unit delt with

primary ratios and proportions, and when overall physical science achievement was

considered, about forty-three percent of the formal operational studies were not able to

give simple examples of the problem that were correctly solved on the paper and pencil

exam (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958, p. 104).

Piaget was primarily concerned with the developmental factors that characterize the

changes in the child’s explanations of the world around him or her. Piaget’s early research

showed

three parallel lines of development. First, from an initial adualism or confusion of result of

the

subject’s own activity with objective changes to reality to a differentiation between subject

and object. Second, from a phenomenological interpretation of the world to one which is

based on objective causality. Third, from a unconscious focusing on one’s own point of

view to a decentration which allocates the subject a place in the world alongside other

persons and objects. In functional terms, these concepts are termed assimilation and

accommodation in reference to interaction with the physical world, and socialization in

reference to interaction with other people (Inhelder & Sinclair, 1974, p.22).

Piaget’s states many secondary level science courses taught in the past at the have been

too abstract for most students since they are taught in lecture or reception learning

format. Thus, students who only have concrete operational structures available for their

reasoning will not be successful with these types of curricula. Programs using concrete

and self-pacing instruction are better suited to the majority of students and the only

stumbling block may be teachers who cannot understand the programs or regard them as

too simplistic. Since the teacher is a very important variable regarding the outcome of the

science, the concern level of the teacher will determine to what extent science instruction

is translated in a cognitively relevant manner in the classroom.

Educators who prefer to have children learn to make a scientific interpretation rather than

a mythological interpretation of natural phenomena, and one way to introduce scientific

interpretations is to analyze any change as evidence of interaction. One way in which this

teaching device can function is if there is an instructional period of several class sessions

in which the students are engaged in “play” with new of familiar materials; followed by is

a suggestion of a way to think about observations; lastly there is a further extermination in

which the students can explore the consequences of using their discoveries . Through the

process of guided discovery, the student

goes from observation at the beginning to interpretations at the end (Athey & Rubadeau,

1970, p. 245).

In Piaget’s study of the operations that underlie the system of scientific concepts related to

number, measurement, physical quantities, and logical classes and relations, structural

models were needed to explain the processes involved in the formation of these concepts

(Inhelder & Sinclair, 1974, p. 23). The grouping of classes and relations describe the

characteristics of the end product of process of growth as a particular system of mental

operations. The logical and infralogical systems of concrete thought prolong the action

structures of the sensorimotor period, but because they are subsytems of extensive

higher-order structure, they pave the way for the mathematical group structures of the

period of formal thought.

Piaget proposes ( Piaget & Inhelder, 1971, p. 387) that knowing the object means acting

upon it in order to transform it and discover its properties through its transformations, with

the aim being to get at the object. Cognition is not based only on the object, but also on

the exchange or interactions between subject and object resulting from the action and

reaction of the two. Actions are coordinated in accordance with operational structures

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