EDUC10: Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles

Module 6
PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Introduction
Jean Piaget's Cognitive Theory of Development is truly a classic in the field of
educational psychology. This theory fueled other researches and theories of development
and learning. Its focus is on how individuals construct knowledge.

Intended Learning Outcomes

COURSE MODULE

• Describe Piaget’s stages in your own words.

• Conduct a simple Piagetian task interview with children.
• Match learning activities to the learners’ cognitive stage.

Basic Cognitive Concepts

Read the situations below.

1. It's Christmas and Uncle Bob is giving "aguinaldo” to the children. Three year-old Karen
did not want to receive the one hundred peso bill and instead preferred to receive
four 20 peso bills. Her ten year-old cousins were telling her it's better to get the one
hundred bill, but they failed to convince her.
2. Siblings, Tria, 10; Enzo, 8; and Riel, 4 were sorting out their stuffed animals. They had 7
bears, 3 dogs, 2 cows and 1 dolphin. Mommy, a psychology teacher, enters and says,
“Good thing you're sorting those. Do you have more stuffed animals or more bears?"
Tria and Enzo says, "stuffed animals.” Riel says, “Bears"
3. While eating on her high chair, seven-month old Liza accidentally dropped her spoon
on the floor. She saw mommy pick it up. Liza again drops her new spoon, and she
does this several times more on purpose. Mommy didn't like it at all but Liza appeared
to enjoy dropping the spoons the whole time.

ANALYSIS
1. On situation 1: Why do you think did Karen prefer the 20-peso bills?
2. On situation 2: Why do you think Riel answered “Bears?” What does this say about
how she thought to answer the question?
4. On situation 3: Why do you think baby Liza appeared to enjoy dropping the spoons?

The children in the situations presented above were of different ages and so also
should apparent differences in the way they thought. They were in different stages of
cognitive development. Perhaps no one has influenced the field of cognitive development
more than Jean Piaget. As you read through this Module you will come to understand
cognitive development of children and adolescents and also identify ways of applying this
understanding in the teaching learners.

For sixty years, Jean Piaget conducted research on cognitive development. His
research method involved observing a small number of individuals as they responded to
cognitive tasks that he designed. These tasks were later known as Piagetian tasks.

Piaget called his general theoretical framework "genetic epistemology” because he

was interested in how knowledge developed in human organisms. Piaget was initially into
biology and he also had a background in philosophy. Knowledge from both these disciplines
influenced his theories and research of child development. Out of his researches, Piaget
came up with the stages of cognitive development.
 Piaget examined the implications of his theory not only to aspects of cognition but also
to intelligence and moral development. His theory has been applied widely to teaching and
curriculum design specially in the preschool and elementary curricula.

Schema. Piaget used the term "schema" to refer to the cognitive structures by which
individuals intellectually adapt to and organize their environment. It is an individual's way to
understand or create meaning about a thing or experience. It is like the mind has a filing
cabinet and each drawer has folders that contain files of things he has had an experience
with. For instance, if a child sees a dog for the first time, he creates his own schema of what
a dog is. It has four legs and a tail. It barks. It's furry. The child then "puts this description of a
dog 'on file' in his mind.” When he sees another similar dog, he pulls” out the file (his schema
of a dog) in his mind, looks at the animal, and says, “four legs, tail, barks, furry.... That's a
dog!”
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Assimilation. This is the process of fitting a new experience into an existing or previously
created cognitive structure or schema. If the child sees another dog, this time a little smaller
one, he would make sense of what he is seeing by adding this new information (a different-
looking dog) into his schema of a dog.

Accommodation. This is the process of creating a new schema. If the same child now
sees another animal that looks a little bit like a dog, but somehow different. He might try to fit
it into his schema of a dog, and say, "Look mommy, what a funny looking dog. Its bark is
funny too!” Then the mommy explains, “That's not a funny looking dog. That's a goat!" With
mommy's further descriptions, the child will now create a new schema, that of a goat. He
now adds a new file in his filing cabinet.

Equilibration. Piaget believed that people have the natural need to understand how
the world works and to find order, structure, and predictability in their life. Equilibration is
achieving proper balance between assimilation and accommodation. When our
experiences do not match our schemata (plural of schema) or cognitive structures, we
experience cognitive disequilibrium. This means there is a discrepancy between what is
perceived and what is understood . We then exert effort through assimilation and
accommodation to establish equilibrium once more.

Cognitive development involves a continuous effort to adapt to the environment in

terms of assimilation and accommodation. In this sense, Piaget's theory is similar in nature to
other constructivist perspectives of learning like Bruner and Vygotsky.

Stages of Cognitive Development

Stage 1. Sensori-motor Stage. The first stage corresponds from birth to infancy. This is
the stage when a child who is initially reflexive in grasping, sucking and reaching becomes
more organized in his movement and activity. The term sensori-motor focuses on the
prominence of the senses and muscle movement through which the infant comes to learn
about himself and the world. In working with children in the sensori-motor stage, teachers
should aim to provide a rich and stimulating environment with appropriate objects to play
with.
Object permanence. This is the ability of the child to know that an object still exists
even when out of sight. This ability is attained in the sensory motor stage. (Please refer
to Unit 2, Module 13 for more notes.)

Stage 2. Pre-Operational Stage. The preoperational stage covers from about two to
seven years old, roughly corresponding to the preschool years. Intelligence at this stage is
intuitive in nature. At this stage, the child can now make mental representations and is able
to pretend, the child is now ever closer to the use of symbols. This stage is highlighted by the
following:
Symbolic Function. This is the ability to represent objects and events. A symbol is a
thing that represents something else. A drawing, a written word, or a spoken word
comes to be understood as representing a real object like a real MRT train. Symbolic
 function gradually develops in the period between 2 to 7 years. Riel, a two-year old
may pretend that she is drinking from a glass which is really empty. Though she
already pretends the presence of water, the glass remains to be a glass. At around
four years of age, however, Nico, may, after pretending to drink from an empty glass,
turn the glass into a rocket ship or a telephone. By the age of 6 or 7 the child can
pretend play with objects that exist only in his mind. Enzo, who is six, can do a whole
ninja turtle routine without any costume nor "props." Tria, who is seven can pretend to
host an elaborate princess ball only in her mind.

Egocentrism. This is the tendency of the child to only see his point of view and to
assume that everyone also has his same point of view. The child cannot take the
perspective of others. You see this in five year-old boy who buys a toy truck for his
mother's birthday. Or a three year old girl who cannot understand why her cousins
COURSE MODULE

call her daddy "uncle" and not daddy.

Centration. This refers to the tendency of the child to only focus on one aspect of a
thing or event and exclude other aspects. For example, when a child is presented
with two identical glasses with the same amount of water, the child will say they have
the same amount of water. However, once water from one of the glasses is
transferred to an obviously taller but narrower glass, the child might say that there is
more water in the taller glass. The child only focused or "centered” only one aspect of
the new glass, that it is a taller glass. The child was not able to perceive that the new
glass is also narrower. The child only centered on the height of the glass and excluded
the width in determining the amount of water in the glass.

Irreversibility. Pre-operational children still have the inability to reverse their thinking.
They can understand that 2 + 3 is 5, but cannot understand that 5-3 is 2.

Animism. This is the tendency of children to attribute human like traits or

characteristics to inanimate objects. When at night, the child is asked, where the sun
is, she will reply, "Mr. Sun is asleep."

Transductive reasoning. This refers to the pre-operational child's type of reasoning that
is neither inductive nor deductive. Reasoning appears to be from particular to
particular i.e., if A causes B, then B causes A. For example, since her mommy comes
home every day around six o'clock in the evening, when asked why it is already night,
the child will say, "because my mom is already home."

Stage 3. Concrete-Operational Stage. This stage is characterized by the ability of the

child to think logically but only in terms of concrete objects. This covers approximately the
ages between 8-11 years or the elementary school years. The concrete operational stage is
marked by the following:

Decentering. This refers to the ability of the child to perceive the different features of
objects and situations. No longer is the child focused or limited to one aspect or
dimension. This allows the child to be more logical when dealing with concrete
objects and situations.

Reversibility. During the stage of concrete operations, the child can now follow that
certain operations can be done in reverse. For example, they can already
comprehend the commutative property of addition, and that subtraction is the
reverse of addition. They can also understand that a ball of clay shaped into a
dinosaur can again be rolled back into a ball of clay.

Conservation. This is 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.
Because of the development of the child's ability of decentering and also reversibility,
the concrete operational child can now judge rightly that the amount of water in a
taller but narrower container is still the same as when the water was in the shorter but
wider glass. The children progress to attain conservation abilities gradually being a
 pre-conserver, a transitional thinker and then a conserver.

Seriation. This refers to the ability to order or arrange things in a series based on one
dimension such as weight, volume or size.

Stage 4. Formal Operational Stage. In the final stage of formal operations covering ages
between 12 and 15 years, thinking becomes more logical. They can now solve abstract
problems and can hypothesize. This stage is characterized by the following:

Hypothetical Reasoning. This is the ability to come up with different hypothesis about
a problem and to gather and weigh data in order to make a final decision or
judgment. This can be done in the absence of concrete objects. The individuals can
now deal with “What if" questions.
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Analogical reasoning. This is the ability to perceive the relationship in one instance
and then use that relationship to narrow down possible answers in another similar
situation or problem. The individual in the formal operations stage can make an
analogy. If United Kingdom is to Europe, then Philippines is to _______. The individual
will reason that since the UK is found in the continent of Europe then the Philippines is
found in what continent? Then Asia is his answer. Through reflective thought and even
in the absence of concrete objects, the individual can now understand relationships
and do analogical reasoning.

Deductive Reasoning. This is the ability to think logically by applying a general rule to
a particular instance or situation. For example, all countries near the north pole have
cold temperatures. Greenland is near the North pole. Therefore, Greenland has cold
temperature.

From Piaget's findings and comprehensive theory, we can derive the following principles:

1. Children will provide different explanations of reality at different stages of cognitive

development.
2. Cognitive development is facilitated by providing activities or situations that engage
learners and require adaptation (i.e., assimilation and accommodation).
3. Learning materials and activities should involve the appropriate level of motor or
mental operations for a child of given age; avoid asking students to perform tasks that
are beyond their current cognitive capabilities.
4. Use teaching methods that actively involve students and present challenges.
TEXTBOOK
• Corpuz, Brenda B., et al…(2018). The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning
Principles. Lorimar Publishing Inc., Cubao, Quezon City.