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Applying Piaget to classroom teaching: Stage development and social learning

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Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 48

Applying Piaget to classroom teaching: Stage development and social

learning theory

Patrick MacQueeney, Ellie Lewis, Gray Fulton, Charlotte Surber, Kylie Newland,
Emma Hochstetler, Shantanu Tilak

ABSTRACT

In this three-part paper co-authored by undergraduate students and their instructor

participating in an Educational Psychology seminar, we outline Piaget’s theory of child
development and its applications to teaching and learning using scholarly perspectives
and illustrated storyboards that express the nature of our mental representations of
Piaget’s theory, learnt through social interactions and collaborative classroom dialogue.
The three parts of our narrative emphasize the interplay between cognitive, behavioral
and affective factors in child development, and how these may be guided towards
adaptive learning. The first part of the paper explores the concepts of assimilation and
accommodation, and explains how an interplay between them produces equilibration, to
expand existing conceptual knowledge to incorporate novelties without a loss of
continuity through the example of a child seeing an albino squirrel for the first time. The
second part focuses on the four stages of Piaget’s theory of child development and
uses illustrations to explore how classroom teachers at varied levels can foster
transitions through teaching activities. The third part outlines Piaget’s social learning
theory, and uses the example of the Socratic seminar, and an illustrated children’s story
about inclusivity and identity as learnt through collaboration to illustrate how productive
conflict may foster higher order thinking.

Keywords: Piaget, psychology, education, cybernetics, development, teaching

INTRODUCTION

Jean Piaget was a Swiss biologist who is known for developing theories focusing on the
processes of the construction of representations of knowledge through interactions with
the social environment. Piaget was a child prodigy. At age 11, he wrote and published
his first short note on the sighting of an alpine sparrow, hoping that a university librarian
would stop treating him like a child and access the repositories and books he needed.
Earning his doctorate in evolutionary biology, Piaget laid the groundwork to help
understand the processes of evolution and adaptation that helped living organisms
develop. Working with Theodore Simon and Alfred Binet to study child psychology after
World War I, Piaget began to see patterns in the answers that French children (even
more specifically, Parisian children) gave on true-false intelligence tests (Papert, 1999).
He suggested that the way children respond to the world is a result of their development
and socialization, that leads to changes in mental models. Children, and individuals in
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 49

general, construct schemes of phenomena that they observe in their environment, to

help organize the information relevant to them.

Piaget began to understand the machinations of children’s development and the ways in
which they construct schemes from incoming information through conversational
methods. Piaget’s techniques relied heavily upon the role of the interaction between the
experimenter and the research participant, or the teacher and student (Pask, 1976;
Tilak & Glassman, 2022). In Piaget’s experiments, children focused their conversational
cues and responses on observable situations. Watching young children play with
concrete objects, Piaget tried to find why they think phenomena in the world work in a
certain way. Seymour Papert (1999), a student of Piaget’s, quotes a conversation
between Piaget and a five-year old, Julia to illustrate the nature of Piaget’s experiments:

“Piaget: What makes the wind?

Julia: The trees.

Piaget: How do you know?

Julia: I saw them waving their arms.

Piaget: How does that make the wind?

Julia: Like this (waving her hand in front of Piaget’s face). Only they are bigger. And
there are lots of trees.

Piaget: What makes the wind on the ocean?

Julia: it blows there from the land. No, it’s the waves.”

The explanations provided by the child fall within the lexicon of schemes and
representations the child has constructed of their world. Attributing a true or false
criterion to these statements shows a lack of understanding of the developmental level
of the child. Often, Piaget used physical objects to constrain participant activity to
concrete responses; in order to understand activities and operations that could be
mapped on to the varied developmental levels that a child passes through in the
lifespan. He believed that children needed to concretize their operations on the world,
develop abstract ideas about form and function. The presence of an intermediate tool (a
physical object) made it easier for participants in Piaget’s experiments to map abstract
thinking onto actual action in the social world.

Per Piaget’s theory, individuals construct representations of the world through social
interactions and operations on the environment. We assimilate new information from the
environment as phenomena unfold around us. Accommodation of information into one’s
network of schemes is dictated by the level of congruence between existing schemes
and new information. Social interactions in collaborative settings also lead to such an
interplay between accommodation and assimilation, through social learning. Over the
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 50

lifespan, cognitive development occurs through an interplay of biological and social

factors in schematic stages per Piaget; however, there can be a horizontal decalage
between stages owing to the varied experiences that children and adolescents undergo
through the lifespan that dictate the occurrence of developmental transitions across the
four stages (Kuhn & Angelev, 1976). While Piaget focuses on social learning and
mental constructions through stage-wise development, Vygotsky, who studied human
development around the same time, suggests that integrated processes of social,
emotional, and cognitive lead to the development of thinking over the lifespan through
the individual development of the organism, the biological development of the organism,
and its cultural-historical experiences. In practice, both theories can be applied in an
isomorphic manner; with Piaget’s theory providing scope to examine the differences
across varied age groups in a more or less demarcated manner.

In this conceptual paper co-authored by undergraduate students and their instructor

participating in a seminar on educational psychology, we describe the basic tenets of
Piaget’s theory, and understand how it may be applied to teaching and learning in the
classroom using scholarly perspectives and visual storyboards. The narratives we use
were co-constructed by students to depict their representations of the applications of
Piaget’s theory and provide guidelines to future practitioners to apply the postulates of
stage development, assimilation and accommodation, and social learning to classroom
teaching.

The first part of this paper covers the basic concepts of assimilation and
accommodation. We understand how Piaget’s approach involves the construction of
mental representations through a constant interplay between these processes, resulting
in an alternation between equilibration and disequilibration through an illustrated
example describing a child coming across an albino squirrel for the first time ever. The
second part of this paper outlines the utility of Piaget’s stage theory in designing
classroom instruction for students at varied grade levels, and outlines possible
applications through short, illustrated storyboards outlining how these activities can be
operationalized. The third part of this paper examines how Piaget’s theory may also be
used to understand learning through social interactions, highlighting how socio-cognitive
conflict can be fostered in the classroom in a Socratic seminar setting, to incorporate
the diverse representations of the world students may develop into learning.

ASSIMILATION, ACCOMODATION, AND EQUILIBRATION

Piaget suggests that an interplay between assimilation and accommodation leads to the
modification of schemes in the mind that organize information internalized from the
social environment (Piaget, 1970). Assimilation involves the integration of incoming
information into mental schemes. For example, a child who sees an albino squirrel for
the first time incorporates the scheme for the albino coloration of the animal into their
existing scheme. However, since this scheme conflicts with the usual brown/hazel
coloration of the squirrel the child possesses, it must be renegotiated and explained.
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 51

Figure 1

Assimilation and accommodation through the example of the albino squirrel

(illustrated by Shantanu Tilak).

Talking to an adult and hearing about albinism in animals might support this
accommodation process with valid information. Both assimilation and accommodation
act like two pieces of a puzzle, in constant interplay with one another. Each of these
phenomena can take primacy at different points in time through the course of our social
experiences. Assimilation is largely parametrized by the characteristics of objects, and
accommodation is subsumed further to understand how new information can be
organized within assimilated information. When assimilation outweighs accommodation,
or when the characteristics of a new phenomenon or object are not taken into
consideration, then it makes the individual look at the world in a more egocentric
manner. If the child observing the squirrel does not take the color of the squirrel into
account as a source of difference and assimilates the knowledge as is, then it limits the
expansion of schemes to incorporate an elementary understanding of albinism.
However, when accommodation takes precedence in the equilibration process, then
one always compares the existing schemes to new information in terms of
characteristics (Block, 1982). This knowledge may be developed through imitation of
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 52

what others do as well to navigate new ideas. If the child looking at the squirrel, for
example, has an adult around, they may be prompted to accelerate the accommodation
process for the child immediately, leading the child to adopt the standpoint of a
caregiver

When we consider these two facets of mental models as isolated phenomena,

assimilation and accommodation seem to work in opposite ways. Assimilation depends
on the idea of form and function intrinsic to an object, while accommodation involves
bending existing repertoires to explain the rationale behind a new typology of
information. Without assimilation, there would be no continuity in how we organize
knowledge into schemes. Without accommodation, one would not be able to navigate
new information in the context of existing information, deductively. This means that
without one or the other, a child cannot develop. The interplay between assimilation and
accommodation occurs in a manner that reflects the neurological wiring of an organism
to reach stability.

Each new piece of information we encounter (a squirrel with a shorter tail, for example)
requires us to look at previous information and perform self-regulatory functions that
reorganize information so we can make sense of the world. This is known as Piaget’s
(1977) theory of equilibration and has two postulates. The idea that equilibrium and its
achievement by the organism is a dynamic process coincides with the ideas of systems
science and cybernetics (Tilak et al., 2022). Heinz von Foerster, an electrical engineer,
epistemologist and cybernetician who collaborated closely with Piaget, suggested that
adaptation/evolutionary processes lead to changes in behavior/thinking in a recursive
fashion (Cope & Kalantzis, 2022); much like an eigen function that reformulates itself
with time.

The first of these postulates states that any scheme of assimilation tends to feed itself
readily with criterion and parameters similar to existing ones. Novel information needs to
be accommodated for. The second postulate deals with accommodation suggesting
that this process leads to the complete alteration of existing assimilated knowledge.
However, such accommodation or change does not lead to a loss of continuity in the
assimilated information. Equilibration necessitates accommodation, and the
conservation of assimilated schemes after they are iteratively altered to add new
information. Applying this to the example presented in this section of coming across an
albino squirrel, a child alters their scheme of a squirrel to incorporate the possibility of
lighter fur coloration, while still conserving the existing scheme. Piaget suggests that the
interplay between assimilation and accommodation occurs throughout the lifespan as
individuals develop increasingly complex understandings of ways to navigate their
social world.
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 53

STAGE DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATIONS TO PRACTICE

Piaget’s theory suggests that children develop through the construction of mental
representations, and through social interactions in a schematic, stage-wise manner. As
children develop, they accrue higher cognitive ability to perceive and categorize
knowledge into new schemes. This progression of schemes and processes of
equilibration form the crux of Piaget’s stage theory (Piaget & Inhelder, 2013). Stage
development involves the maturation of the brain, a development of the curiosity of the
child to organize new information they gain through experiences in a networked world.
In this section, we outline the four stages postulated by Piaget’s approach, and provide
a description of how teachers at varied grade levels may apply such an approach to
instructional practices accompanied by illustrated storyboards. While the role of stage
development or the nature of organic experience in the social environment can never be
prioritized de facto (Pask, 1976), Piaget and Vygotsky’s work point toward a constant
interplay between the biological and the cultural makeup of each organism in the social
world.

Here, we specifically adopt the Piagetian frame of reference and try to understand
varied classroom practices that may be utilized to operationalize this specific frame of
reference. Piaget’s approach, by understanding stage development and the iterative
development of the mind’s capacity to deal with increasingly complex problems in
efficient ways, provides a blueprint to trace the development of intelligence, cognition,
and behavior with time (Piaget, 1956). Below, we describe the four stages into which
stage development is organized per Piaget’s theory and outline how teachers at varied
grade levels (from kindergarten to college) may apply their ideas to teaching and
learning through illustrated storyboards that narrate concrete activities that practitioners
may utilize.

Sensorimotor Stage

The first stage in Piaget’s theory is called the sensorimotor stage, which spans between
zero and two years. During this stage, children largely learn to coordinate their
perceptual and motor functions to operate on objects in the social world and create new
schemata to understand how objects beyond their perceptual field do not “disappear”.
This is known as object permanence. At the sensorimotor stage, children slowly develop
the ability to use representations of physical objects that can be used as mental
symbols. A good example would be the example highlighted by Piaget of his daughter
(a year and three months old) pretending to go to sleep by lying down, using a
tablecloth as a symbolic representation of a pillow (Piaget & Cook, 1952).

Early childhood educators and parents can look at the sensorimotor stage and examine
how one can teach the child in a way that will help to progress the child to the next
cognitive stage; helping them understand form and function, and how to create mental
representations of objects. While this is not technically “classroom” learning and may be
conducted in a play-to-learn setting, it is still critical to the cognitive development of a
child. A parent with a child in this stage can begin to enforce basic cognitive functions
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 54

such as object permanence through means such as “peek-a-boo”. Parents can also
begin to connect symbols to certain tasks and objects so the child can begin to
rationalize how certain symbols relate to physical entities. Using concrete objects in the
classroom is also another way to heighten children’s sensorimotor skills. An example is
threading a sturdy corded rope through a Wiffle Ball (Parks, 2014), and allowing young
children in a childcare classroom or in the home to perform tracking, grabbing and
swatting exercises to understand the form and function of the object.
Figure 2
Swiffer ball activity (illustrated by Shantanu Tilak).

Another way to heighten sensorimotor skills in early childhood is to expose children to

surfaces and materials having different textures. Teachers can use folders swatched
with textured fabrics, or sensory tables and invite children to conduct tactile activity with
these tools. Descriptive explanations of these textures and tactile experiences offered
by teachers can help children develop symbolic representations of physical objects
through words.
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 55

Figure 3
Texture activity (illustrated by Shantanu Tilak).

Such techniques may help children understand the qualities of physical objects, how
they can be manipulated to exercise their form and function, and what inherent purpose
this form, and function symbolically serve.

Preoperational Stage

As symbolic behaviors and representations start to become apparent in the child’s

mental models, the child may be considered developed enough to enter the
Preoperational Stage or the representational stage. In this stage which spans from ages
two to six or seven, the child further heightens competence with symbolic interpretations
of the world. However, the child often uses a motivation or cause-effect model to explain
how the world worlds. The conversation between Piaget and a five-year-old recounted
in the introduction to this paper highlights how the attributions made by children to
cause and effect are often based on their own representation of how the world works.
Julia’s perception that the trees create the wind by waving their branches is just one
example. Piaget showcases the example of a child at this level who suggests that the
Sun moves because “God pushes it” and that the stars, much like himself, must go to
bed when the sun sets (Piaget & Inhelder, 2013). Children thus make intuitive
observations and often find it hard to separate cause-and-effect processes in the social
world from their own experiences and goals.
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 56

Some examples of behavior and thinking in the preoperational stage are when children
engage in pretend play or when they talk about events that have happened in the past
or with people who are not currently present with them. During this stage, children begin
to understand identities more as well. Categorization also becomes important in this
stage. Children are able to start classifying objects based on similarities or differences,
as well as quantity. They begin to say things like “more” or “bigger”. As evidenced by
exercises such as the balance scale experiment, children often expect the weighing
instrument to stay in place even as they adjust the input weights by hand. In addition,
they also develop a better understanding of symmetry, with some correctly unloading
weights from an overloaded balance and believing that a higher quantity or volume
equates to a higher weight.

Figure 4

Piaget’s balance scale experiment.

The preoperational stage can be examined through the lens of a preschool teacher. For
example, in the classroom a preschool teacher can use tools such as stories, songs and
games to teach basic vocabulary or even ways in which we interact with each other as
humans. These tools become an effective teaching method at this stage because kids
develop a deeper understanding of the abstract, symbolic nature of language and its
use to provide cues to navigate the social environment. This sets the stage for problem-
solving to emerge in educational settings at the concrete operations stage.
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 57

Concrete Operations Stage

The third stage of cognitive development is the Concrete Operational Stage. At this
stage, which spans between seven and 11 years of age, the child increases the inability
to deal with the properties of the world in a coherent manner. Children are able to solve
more problems, including mathematical operations, understand form and function, and
quantity at a deeper level. Their spatial abilities also improve. They become better at
understanding time and distance. During this stage, children are able to learn
classification and can-perform reverse operations. Numerical competence in
mathematics is important during this time, often warranting teaching multiplication
division and other computational operations. Qualitative studies have suggested that a
student’s analytical ability increases with age, and there are significant differences in the
analytical processing ability of a young adolescent compared to an older adolescent
(Klaczynski, 2001).

At the concrete operations stage, a second-grade teacher will use a different teaching
method from that of a preschool teacher to educate their students. A second-grade
teacher will employ methods such as small group projects to teach a concept such as
conservation (using two different shaped glasses of water to explain the concept of
volume), or have students write short stories to encourage creativity and begin
expanding their knowledge of the structure and use grammatical knowledge to express
ideas in writing and even speak to others.

Figure 5

Conservation activity (illustrated by Shantanu TilaK).

The last two stages of Piaget’s theory differ in that they are based on action, or
operation upon the world. The first of these, the concrete operations stage, allows a
deeper familiarity with the utility of knowledge and how to manipulate it. It lays down the
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 58

framework for formal logic and abstraction to take on a nuanced form in navigating the
social world.

Formal Operations Stage

In the formal operations stage, or the last stage in Piaget’s stage theory, which spans
between 12—15 years and extends into adulthood, is marked by an increased
competence with abstraction and problem-solving based on critical thinking. In this
stage, children are able to interrelate varied problems and ideas and examine the
possible relationships between them to solve a problem. Piaget suggests it involves the
logic of all possible combinatory, isomorphic solutions tested in an experimental or
deductive manner. Children let go of their need to have physical representations to
develop ideologies and conceptual repertoires about phenomena they have previously
observed in their environments, or things they have learned (Piaget & Inhelder, 2013).
They are able to use existent possibilities and outcomes to reappropriate new
possibilities beyond the realm of existing knowledge (Levesque, 2014). The idea of
formal operations, and stagewise progression into formal operation has often been
criticized by scholars such as Kuhn & Angelev (1976), who suggest that a schematic
stagewise progression is only a rough outline to understand the progression of
development, with a horizontal decalage leading to the displacement of the
demarcations of each stage depending on the nature of social experience. While
individuals develop the capacity for such formal operations differentially, this can be tied
to the idea that each individual is embedded in a highly complex social world,
developing varied dispositions and preferences with the passage of time.

An example of a teaching practice employing formal operations is a paper construction

activity used to teach Piaget’s theory in a preservice teacher classroom of
undergraduate students. This activity was employed in the class co-governed by the
authors of this paper. The instructor divided the classroom into groups of five students,
with two serving as a learner and instructors, and three others taking notes of the
interactions between them. The teachers were presented with a set of shapes and a
solution to a puzzle involving an arrangement of said shapes in a particular orientation.
The teachers would provide instructions to the learners, who sat with their backs to the
teachers and used the mental representation they developed of the teacher’s words to
faithfully recreate the provided puzzle. Recorders create abstract interpretations of the
activity, reporting what they see, and relating it back to Piaget’s theory. The instructor
then discusses these relationships to Piaget’s theory highlighted by the activity with the
whole class and works with the students to understand how the processes of
assimilation and accommodation can be applied to varied subject classrooms.
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 59

Figure 6

Construction activity (illustrated by Shantanu Tilak).

This activity is an example of formal operations as it allows students to perform a well-

defined, goal-oriented activity implicitly applying Piaget’s work, and then explaining
these links through abstract arguments and connections in the context of specific
classroom applications that teachers can engage in along similar lines.

PIAGET’S SOCIAL THEORY

In most understandings of Piaget, it is often assumed that his theory concerns itself
largely with individual development. However, Piaget’s theory can also be looked at in
relation to social, affective, and personality-related factors to understand how to design
developmentally appropriate cooperative learning. Just as individuals construct
knowledge of the object world, they also develop abstract socio-moral and cognitive
repertoires that they exercise throughout their lifespan, iteratively. Sophistication is
added to one’s standpoints by observing others and through relationships with both
peers and adults (DeVries, 1997). Heinz von Foerster (1972) highlighted the
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 60

possibilities of social learning during his heuristics course at the University of Illinois,
which led to the co-creation of art and scholarly perspectives by undergraduate students
and instructors, much like the class via which this paper was written (Segal, 1986).
Showing a lithograph of a seated student with a funnel attached to their head, von
Foerster explained to his students that a knowledge banking model of education may
prevent students from accruing the skills and social capital to navigate a highly
networked world.

As children develop, they interact with peers and adults and develop both
heteronomous and autonomous moralities, either by submitting obediently to the ideas
of others or exercising their own perspectives based on how they feel and think
(DeVries, 1997). This means every individual constructs knowledge iteratively based on
their affective and cognitive repertoires of schematized data from the environment.
Moral development may occur based on the standpoints that individuals take up from
others via heteronomous relationships. However, it also occurs through autonomous
morality, which involves the opportunity for self-reflection on whether something is
agreeable based on one’s own lexicon of ideas and schemes. A non-hierarchical,
distributed version of this morality may also be adopted, wherein both the expert and
child act as equals and collaborate to navigate the social world. Both the perspectives
that one accumulates over the lifespan and those learned from others play a role in the
development of thinking. Peer relations become a powerful sandbox to equip students
with the skills to understand their own perspectives and those of others.

In interacting with others, one may either agree or disagree with their standpoints, but
equilibration occurs when one is able to successfully navigate and integrate varied
perspectives. Piaget’s ideas about social learning and sociocognitive conflict suggest
that both comfortable and uncomfortable interactions with peers help kids develop new
perspectives and see the world from a different point of view than their own. These
ideas can be used to create healthy classroom discussion and group dynamics in
classrooms with young students. A study by Johnson & Johnson (2009a) emphasized
the importance of facilitating conflict in a classroom. Many teachers are initially
apprehensive to encourage debate in their classrooms because it may rile up the class
or make certain students uncomfortable; however, the authors of this article would
argue that conflict is incredibly constructive and a great tool to use in the classroom.
Conflict not only can draw in students’ interest in a topic, but also encourages them to
research more about the information they are debating and makes them care more
about the material. Holding debates or controlled arguments in classes has shown to
increase the amount of information students retain and helps strengthen peer
relationships by promoting conversation and allowing a safe environment to share
opinions. This relates back to Piaget’s idea that even unpleasant interactions are
necessary for development because through debate, students are able to open their
eyes to many new perspectives on a topic that they may not have considered before.
They can rely on one another to have productive, healthy interactions and create new
knowledge (Johnson & Johnson, 2009b). Moderated debates and small group
discussions driven by norms enable students to discuss existing knowledge, and also
accommodate new standpoints through civil discourse.
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 61

Sociocognitive conflict provides an effective way for kids at the elementary, middle and
high school level to reconsider their beliefs and open their minds to new perspectives.
While debates are helpful in opening children's points of view, Piaget also theorized that
pleasant interactions with peers are helpful with development. Having normal
conversations with friends and frequently being able to share ideas is another way to
help children open up their perspectives of the world (Ormrod et al., 2020). In the
classroom, such social interactions can be facilitated in a well-governed manner to help
students create new knowledge through a cooperative process.

Socratic Seminars: Operationalizing social learning

According to Piaget’s theory, children develop a very basic sense of self and
understanding of their own capabilities while they are young and begin to create a more
complex understanding as they grow and evolve; this is where the tie to the interaction
between biologically guided temperament interacts with the environment to develop
distinct personality profiles. While Piaget’s theory conforms children to a series of
developmental processes within a certain age frame, it can be used to understand the
complexities of identity of students at varied age levels. A student’s identity, across
factors ranging from personality to social, racial, and gender identities, can affect the
way they learn and help provide cues and modifications for teaching within the
classroom.

We provide a storyboard narrating a short story to show how peers can help construct
adaptive mental representations and standpoints related to one’s own feeling of
belongingness in the classroom, irrespective of appearance and cultural background.
This tool may be used for young children with basic reading capability to understand
ideas related to belongingness and how it is socially constructed. It also becomes a
semiotic tool for teachers to learn about Piaget’s theory here. The flower that blossoms
in the illustration is red, whereas all the surrounding flowers (peers) are purple. This
color difference causes the red flower to begin to doubt their identity compared to the
rest of their peers and focus on the aspects of themselves that don’t fit with peers'
expectations. . As you can see in the illustration, the other flowers begin to look at the
red flower differently since it is the only red flower. However, over the course of the day,
the sun and birds help the flower embrace its differences which helps to re-instill its
confidence and allow it to accommodate the idea of an inclusive safe space into its
present action and thinking, through a social process. This shows how healthy,
cooperative interactions lead to adaptive outcomes in moral development
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 62

Figure 7

A storyboard depicting social learning (illustrated by Gray Fulton).

Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 63
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 64
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 65
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 66

While a child is young, their personality begins to develop according to both nature and
nurture, meaning that both internal factors, such as heritage, and external factors, such
as a child’s lived experience at school and in public spaces, help to develop their
temperament and outlook on the world around them. In this section, we understand how
to develop capacities for abstract argumentation in late adolescence, when the capacity
for abstract reasoning heightens through Socratic seminars. At the high school level, a
student’s personality is often well developed, which may create discourse due primarily
to the fact the student has also developed critical thinking and argumentative skills that
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 67

allow them to defend their own position. This is not necessarily negative discourse
however, and a teacher can harbor this argumentative ability and help to guide it in a
productive manner within the classroom, through the use of techniques such as open
discussions and Socratic seminars. The latter has provided benefits to students of all
different ranges of personality, catering to both vocal and quiet students while allowing
for a fully “student-led” discussion (Tredway, 1995).

A high school aged student has the ability to discuss complex concepts according to
their belief systems with students who may have alternative points of view, and even
qualify their own argument to some degree, whereas a child just entering the secondary
level is unlikely to concede. A teacher can allow these students to discuss high level or
controversial subjects in Socratic seminars where each can add to the conversation with
their own experience and research. In order to address differences in temperament and
personality, an educator can include a group of students to serve as observers who take
down and analyze arguments made during the seminar, which allows vocal and
confrontational students to lead the conversation while more reclusive students are able
to participate and contribute in accordance with their capabilities. Discussion based
learning can also be facilitated at the transition to the formal operations stage during
elementary school. Such argumentation was seen in the Digital Civic Learning Project’s
collaborative social reasoning activity during the food security curriculum. Students were
able to record ideas in collaborative journals constructed on Google slides while
discussing prompts in their small groups. More vocal students tended to enjoy the small
group discussions, while those wishing to gradually express their thoughts would do so
through a blog post or Flipgrid (Tilak et al., 2022).

CONCLUSION
Per the arguments in this paper, it can be seen that while Piaget’s theory does explain
how individuals construct mental representations of the world, it also delves into how
these symbolic representations arise from social experience and interactions.
Understanding the interplay between assimilation and accommodation, and how it
progressively expands cognitive repertoires and action over time, and how such
processes relate to the development of sociomoral standpoints through social
interactions is key to a multidimensional and faithful understanding of Piagetian theory.
In this paper, we use storyboards to help future practitioners and researchers to
construct their own mental representations of the applications of Piagetian theory from
our co-generated work. The result is a narrative that allows other practitioners insights
into using physical objects, and facilitating productive conflict to induce deeper
abstraction in their classrooms across varied developmental levels, through practices
expanding learners’ cognitive complexities, and their capacity for productive
collaboration and standpoint taking
Stage development and social learning MacQueeney et al. 68

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