THE CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE ACCORDING TO PIAGET
1. Knowledge is never a copy of the reality: it is an assimilation or interpretation.
The
empiricists movement say that the knowledge is a copy or reality and that
children learn by copying objects. But children don’t just ‘copy’ objects; they
put their own interpretation of objects when they have to draw it. For example:
Piaget does an experiment with a child of around 3 years old. It consists on
asking the kid to copy a triangle on a paper. In fact when the child copies
triangle she draw it as a square with attached points. This is her own
interpretation of the triangle that she sees.
2. The operational structures have a substantial function in the
construction of knowledge.
Piaget
doesn’t believe that children are born with skills, like Chomsky based on the
appriorist/ innatist approach. He thinks that our learning abilities and skills
are not in our nature, but we learn them from direct experiences during our
whole life. For
example, mathematics: it took centuries for humans to develop mathematics, so
we can say that the mathematic skills are not just in our nature when we are
born. Again, you can see this in another Piaget’s experiment: in this one
children are asked about if a rope keeps having the same length when you change
the shape that is doing. While doing it we saw that young children doesn’t
understand that the length doesn’t change when you put the rope it in a
different shape. This result, supports the theory that children aren’t born
with this knowledge (neither knowledge in general), but it comes with
experience. So, operational structure, our experience, had a substantial
function in construction of our knowledge.
3. The knowledge construction follows a sequential line.
According
to Piaget operational structures are sequential. There are four stages in
children’s development:
1.
Sensorimotor
intelligence
(0 - 2 years old). In this stage the child doesn’t have language development;
they only repeat the sound of some words without pronouncing any word.
During
this stage the kid is going to make an evolution on what he looks at; that
means that at the beginning of the stage the kid is going to look at something
that is near him and attracts his attention (has light, it makes a sound…)
because if its not near him or doesn’t attract his attention he is not going to
look at it or even go near the object.
At
the end of the stage the kid is going to look at something he likes even it’s
far away from him, he would do things (stand up in a chair) in order to arrive
to the object.
2.
Pre-operational
stage (2 –
6 years old). In this stage it appears the first representation with language,
the kids will be able to make questions and talk with others. At the beginning
of the stage the kids are very egocentric and during the stage they will change
a little bit their minds and they will be less egocentric.
The
kid can manipulate objects with some difficulties.
3.
Concrete
operational stage
(6 – 12 years old). The kid can manipulate objects correctly without any difficulty;
even can make sequences with different objects. In this stage the kid will be
able to make logic operations. They can not make any hypothesis before trying
something.
4.
Formal
operational stage
(12 – 14 years old). The kid reason about hypothesis and objects. In this stage
the kid can think about the future; in his process of reasoning the kid is able
to combine abstract ideas with symbolic thought.
This
stages are sequential because a child has to go through the first to get to the
next and so on and every child goes through all of these stages with no
exception. The proof for this is that when children are tested on the same age
and similar environment, they mostly give the same responses to experiments,
which contributes to the idea that they are in the same stage of development.
For example, Piaget did an experiment in which he
tested children’s sense of volume at different ages. In this experiment we can see that
children of 4 years old have no sense of volume and difference in volume. They
think in an uni-dimensional way (when it’s the same high, they think it’s the
same volume). A child of 5 years old starts understanding that there is a
difference in volume, and that apart from the how high is the object they start
comparing if one is thicker and one is thinner. They start knowing that high is
not the same as volume but still hesitating a lot (changing stages). At 6 years
old child has a beginning of measurement but still has quantitative
problems. At the age of 10 years old they
can measure but still make mistakes. At the age of 12, they can cut the volume
into slices and measure and multiply correctly.
4. The knowledge epistemology constitutes a relevant contribution to
Psychology, such as the fact of being able to observe how knowledge is
constructed allows us to better understand its nature.
There
are a lot of important lessons to learn from this for the psychology;
Psychology means to trace its formation, so, for example, it’s very interesting
to learn about these striking facts surrounding creativity, the number of
spontaneous constructions by children and the regularity and sequence of the
operational stages. And as an epistemological lesson, seeing how knowledge is
constructed, we understand its nature better.
We
can understand a child nature better knowing how knowledge is constructed. We
can see this, for example, in the experiment of Piaget where he investigates
the construction of seriation. In this experiment children are asked to put
some sticks in order from smaller to the bigger. When children are younger (3 -
5 years old), they just make two groups (little and big). Children of around 5
or 6 years old can make more differences in the size, but
they
don’t have any plan or can’t explain how they do it because they do it by trial
and error. When children are older (9 years old), they have a plan and
structure and they can explain how they achieve the result. They can also make
logical consequences about the seriation (how many bigger and smaller).
According to Piaget, structure is what the child knows about the action that is
doing and what he does not know but we supposed and thinks about it. The child
doesn’t have its own idea about the theory but in observation we can see that
it knows what to do.
5. Limitations of the theory of Piaget
A
part of knowing a theory we believe it is important to know its limitations.
So
now we are going to explain some of the limitations that we have found about
Piaget’s theory:
- Underestimates
the abilities of children. Piaget doesn’t give any possibility to a child
to be more able than the other kids.
- Fixed
steps. Piaget’s theory has four fixed steps that every child it’s supposed
to pass through them, but not all the kids are the same and probably some kids
pass through different steps than the ones that Piaget said.
- Does
not take into account the role of culture and social context. Piaget’s
theory only focus its attention in the child, but a child doesn’t live alone;
we live in a society and we are in continuous contact with people that can
influence in our development and knowledge.
To
end up with the work we will like to put the link of two videos about Piaget’s
theory in order to make the ideas explained through this work clearer:
The debate begins when a group called "Piagetes" replied us:
We are "Piagetes" (Marta Barbado,
Alba Lueiro, Elena González and Mireia Ortega) and we consider that you have
written a good explanation and it is well structured, givinggood reasons and
remarking interesting ideas such as children aren’t born with this knowledge
(neither knowledge in general), but it comes with experience. But we believe it
is too extensive and it may have been better if you had linked the answers of
the questions, as a text commentary, instead of answering each question one by
one. Also, you could remark one important idea for you and focused your text on
it with some justifications, such as the videos you had put. We also think that
these visual material makes clearer the ideas you have explained. Besides that,
you have explained well Piaget’s work, using a clear vocabulary that
facilitates its comprehension. To conclude, we would like to ask you one
question.
Piaget thinks that our learning abilities and
skills are not in our nature, but we learn them from direct experiences during
our whole life. Do you completely agree this idea from Piaget? or maybe you
think that we also obtain skills and abilities are acquired since we born, as
Chomsky?
Our answer was:
First of all we would like you to thank you for
your comment.
We thought that structuring the text in 5 parts
was easier to understand than putting it as a text commentary. Probably because
we have worked on the text we see it really clear, but if you see the text for
the first time, it is difficult to understand.
We also have realised that probably is a little
bit extensive and it is difficult to maintain the attention on the text.
We also would like to thank you for the
contribution of a new author.
We have searched the theory of Chomsky and we
have found that he says that the child at birth has innate characteristics and
from there develops language through stimuli.
We agree that children have some innate mental
internal schema, because there is a part of the learning of the language that
is influenced by the environment around the child, one’s experience,
interaction with others… But there is another part of the learning of the language
that is thanks to the innate mental internal schema that children have when
they born.
So in conclusion, we agree with some things
from both authors.
The flemish and company.
A few time later the Smiths wrote us saying:
Hello, we are The Smiths (Carla Cano, Xavier
Casabayó, Sergi Compte, Raquel García) and we think that it's very clear that
you have worked hard on it. As the other group have said before, we also think
that it's a bit long but it's very well structured, so this helps to do a
proper lecture and have a good understanding of the reading.
After the reading we have been thinking about
the limitations that you mentioned of the Piaget's theory and we agree with all
of them except with the following sentence you did: "Piaget doesn’t give
any possibility to a child to be more able than the other kids". We would
like to know how you arrived to this statement
Thanks.
And our answer was:
We would like to thank you The Smiths for
reading our work recognising our hard work on it. Also we really appreciate
that you say that our work is clear and well structured.
We are pleased to explain you how we arrive to
this statement.
The idea of underestimation of the abilities of
children is directly related with the idea of the fixed steps. As we said in
our work, Piaget’s theory has four fixed steps that every child it’s supposed
to pass through them. We also said that all kids are not the same so some kids
might pass through different steps.
Having said that, we think that Piaget’s theory
takes into account tasks that depend on the language skills of the child and
usually leaves out the educational and socio-emotional development factors.
That means that a child is influenced by external factors and this can vary his
educational process and his abilities. Piaget with his theory limits the
abilities of all kids because he establishes four fixed steps with fixed
characteristics in each one, without taking into account that a child can
acquire the abilities earlier or later.
Moreover, we search for a psychologist called
Lev Vygotsky that had an hypothesis called Zone of Proximal Development.
Vygotsky encourages kids to learn alone and at the same time to search for
help. This encouragement is good for kids because every child is considered as
an individual in contact with his social environment that can develop some
abilities later or earlier; and not as an individual with fixed steps and fixed
characteristics.
With all this information we arrived to a
conclusion; every child is different and is mainly due to the interaction that
he establishes with his social environment.
So, depending on the child and the social
context in which the child is in contact, will develop for example more or less
cognitive abilities and also he will develop them earlier or later. That is why
we think that Piaget with his fixed steps doesn’t allow kids to progress in
their learning process and in the development of their abilities because
everything is fixed in the steps, so the kids can’t develop their abilities
quicker than the years Piaget establishes. In the other hand we have got
Vygotsky that allows kids development in a free way taking into account his
possibilities and his social context.
We hope we have explained ourselves in a good
way,
The flemish and company.
My personal opinion about this activity is that it was a very good way to make us think and argumentate our opinions all the time, it was not just about reading a text, watching some videos and writting an essay but it was also albout defending it, finding out answer for other group's questions and at the same time enriching your ideas with their aportations. I enjoyed this kind of work.
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