Today we talked about cognitive development. We talked about how the brain receives and begins to process information. We talked about neurons and synapses of the brain and how it fires. We also talked about how the synapses in children are higher than in adults. We talked about Jean Piaget's theories of development. We talked about him being a cognitive constructivist, meaning that he formed theories about the construction of the mind. He believed in allowing children to learn and discover for themselves, rather than helping them. We then looked over Lev Vygotsky's theories of development. He was a social constructivist, meaning he believed knowledge came from social interactions. We talked about the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). We talked about how important it is for each individual child to learn at their own personal ZPD. we talked about putting students in both homogeneous and heterogeneous groups to facilitate their learning. We talked about how parents and teachers can scaffold children to help them learn. Lastly we talked about Linguistic Development, and how important it is to continually talk to your children. By exposing children to reading and verbalizing as much as possible they will be able to construct a higher level of language.
So What?
This information will help me as I work with my students to discover and label what level of Piaget's cognitive development they are at. By identifying what level my students are at I will be able to teach to their level of cognitive development but I will also use Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. I want to scaffold my students to help them learn. From this information I have a better understanding of how the brain receives and processes information. I understand how schemas are organized and changed through assimilation, accommodation, and disequilibrium.
Now What?
I am already familiar with the principals of both Piaget and Vygotsky. In the preschool I work in, we try to use both Piaget's and Vygotsky's principles in our teaching. We use concrete objects, books, songs, and experiments to help our students understand different concepts. we encourage talking in every situation because most of our students are nonverbal. We have a speech therapist that comes in twice a week to work with our students. She plays with them, and also encourages language while they play. We give our students time to explore the classroom and play, because this is the best time for them to talk and interact with one another. We are constantly scaffolding our children to help them accomplish tasks they should otherwise be unable to complete on their own. From these experiences in the preschool, I've learned so much about the way children learn. I hope to be able to change ans adapt these skills and strategies as I do my field work.
Piagetian Tasks
I did the Piagetian tasks with three of our tuition preschoolers, two boys and one girl, mainly because they were the highest functioning and most able to verbalize an answer. I did the play dough experiment first. I did it just like I'd seen on the video, and I was given the same response as your son. That the balls of play dough were the same. Then I flattened one and asked the question again. All three children agreed that the play dough was no longer the same. One boy and the girl agreed that the ball was bigger, while the other boy said that the flat play dough was bigger. This was kind of surprising to me, because I expected all three to point to the same one. I then did the water experiment. I had two glasses and a pitcher, they were see through so they could see the level of the water easily. I first showed them the two glasses with the same amount of water in them and all three of the children agreed that they had the same amount of water. I then poured the water from one glass into the pitcher and asked if they had the same amount of water. The same boy and girl pointed to glass saying it had more water than the pitcher. The other boy pointed to the pitcher saying it had more water than the glass. I was again surprised by this answer, because I expected them all to answer the same. From these experiments I can conclude that these students are in the preoperational stage of cognitive development. The only thing that I can conclude from the boys answering differently is that they have different views of how more is portrayed. It would be neat to find out what has influenced this in each boy.
