Jean Piaget cognitive development theories

Piaget developed various theories to how children learn, his cognitive development theory consists of four stages( as shown in the table below). It shows the process to how mental processes develop from child to adulthood.

Stage	Characterised by
Sensori-motor  (Birth-2 yrs)	Differentiates self from objects  Recognises self as agent of action and begins to act intentionally: e.g. pulls a string to set mobile in motion or shakes a rattle to make a noise  Achieves object permanence: realises that things continue to exist even when no longer present to the sense (pace Bishop Berkeley)
Pre-operational  (2-7 years)	Learns to use language and to represent objects by images and words  Thinking is still egocentric: has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others  Classifies objects by a single feature: e.g. groups together all the red blocks regardless of shape or all the square blocks regardless of colour
Concrete operational  (7-11 years)	Can think logically about objects and events  Achieves conservation of number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight (age 9)  Classifies objects according to several features and can order them in series along a single dimension such as size.
Formal operational  (11 years and up)	Can think logically about abstract propositions and test hypotheses systemtically  Becomes concerned with the hypothetical, the future, and ideological problems

In the first stage;

The sensori-motor stage which is from a baby to a toddler the child learns by trial and error. They are taking in the world by using each of their senses by looking, hearing, touching, grasping and mouthing, they use these as their tools to learn new things.

In the pre-operational stage children are more hands on, therefore tasks such as playing with sand, play dough, water, clay etc. things that they can interact with are the most useful for helping this stage of development. There are also four main stages to the pre-operational stage of development, these are: Centration , ego centrism, irreversibility and animism.

The concrete operational stage shows logical thinking as well as being able to view things from other peoples perspectives.

The formal operational stage is the final stage of the development, in this process the childs thinking is advanced but their knowlege will continue to grow and change as they learn and are exposed to new things.





Bibliography:
http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html
http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/piaget.htm

Sample data anaylsis

This is a transcript of a video taken on the 24^th of September. There are two participants speaking: myself and my cousin K who in the video is 3years and 9months old. We had just finished playing a snake game with an orange feather boa when I asked him what his favourite colours are.

I have labelled myself (m) and K (k).

M: what’s your favourite colour kai?

K: Orange

M: why?

K: Because your da dis (inaudible) scarf (mumbles) fevvers

M: what do you think of the colour pink?

K: I do love the (mumbles) colour pink

M: do you?

K: yeah!

M: why?

K: Because it’s really beautiful and the bright pink

M: what about the colour blue?

K: yeah

M: why do you like blue?

K: Because it’z my favourite blue corrouler, it makes all the different colours love the mix up

M: and yellow?

K: yeah

M: why?

K: Because it’z the mixed up colourz nd the blue ann all the everything is blue

M: what about black?

K: yeah it’z really dark

M: it’s a dark colour

K: yeah

M: does it make you feel happy or sad?

K: happy

M: black makes you happy?

K: yeah because,yeah cause, but in the dark rollercoasters it makes me go huh kai in dark uh, woah there’s some scary stuff in there I nowhere to get out of here den go and went up the bottom I say phew that was close.

M: and what do you think of the colour purple?

K: yeah that’s my favourite colour

M: Oh I thought orange was your favourite colour?

K: It is, orange is my favourite colour as well

M: so you’ve got lots of favourite colours? (1) Yeah?

K: yeah

M: good




The theory that I have been looking at is Stephen Krashen he related his theory to Chomsky's LAD. He said that 'humans acquire language in only one way - by understanding messages or by receiving "comprehensible input"'.











K is at the age of language development where he can understand what I am asking him and answer back correctly. He also goes of on a tangent and starts telling me an anecdote which does relate to what I am asking him but it was amusing to listen to how his story had developed from me asking him about the colour black.

K answers "yeah" a total of 8 times, this could possibly be because he is unsure about what I am actually asking him or because he is trying to think about a correct response.  I ask K a total of 16 questions, 4 of those asking him "why?" I was doing this to try to see how he responds to what I was asking him and for him to think about why he likes the colour.


I have been looking at Michael Halliday's  (1978) suggested 7 stages of development which show the function of child's language. K would come under the final stage as the transcript proves that he is in the 'Imaginative stage' as he is accompanying his play which is helping his to explore his imagination which we can see in the part of the transcript where K is telling a story about a rollercoaster.  


Bibliography:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/Krashen.htm

P.E.E of "All the things" transcript

"To what extent is this an example of a child led discourse?"

It could be said that this is not child led discourse as grandma and Evie have near enough the same amount of utterances (E:52:51:G) , the grandma takes up the most airtime, and leads most of the conversation. However this is more than likely because Evie's vocabulary isn’t as broad as her grandmas and she is two years and 7 months when this was recorded this means that she would have been in the telegraphic stage of her development. Although her short sentences "some more" and "yeah" don't necessarily show this.

G: "Two cats (2) how many things have we got in the picture?

E: inaudible

G: How many? Count them"

This is not only building the conversation but it is also helping Evie learn to count.

In the transcript it is clear to see that grandma elaborates on Evie’s sentence, or repeats what she has just said and adds tag questions, this is to make Evie contribute to the conversation. This is seen in part of the transcript:

E: Picture [pitf it] wolf

G: what's it we'll take a picture of wolf?

Evie says the word "Picture" in four different ways, I think by Evie repeating herself what she is doing is she is aware that she has pronounced it wrong and is trying to correct herself, this is also with the help of grandma as she keeps on repeating the word too.

Evie's grandma could help develop Evie’s language further by correcting her mispronunciation but instead she adapts her speech for the benefit of Evie which isn’t necessarily the right thing to do because it won’t help Evie in the future.