The first child is in his pre-operational stage. He uses one way thinking for the feather question. He isn’t really open to believe something that he thinks he already knows the answer to. This is very egocentric thinking. He is told that the feather would break the glass, but still insists that it would not. The second child is in her concrete operational stage. She is told a feather would break glass and even though it may be improbable, she uses that information from the first note card to answer the second. She is using two-way thinking that is logical and what you would expect to find in this stage.
For the first child, I would encourage more social interaction and to be more of an active learner. This way, he can start to see how conversations really work, which could begin to put an end to the egocentric thinking. Because he is pre-operational, he thinks very one-way, so I would focus on that and try to teach him about other ways. For the other girl, she is on her way to formal operational stage, so I would teach her more logical thinking problems and how to be analytical about it.
How do you know that the girl in the video is not in the formal operations stage? She appears to think hypothetically, through abstract manipulation.
ReplyDeleteAlong with your points, the boy appears to display something like centration. He cannot simultaneously represent his own idea of hammer or feather, and the new concept of the item given by the researcher. However, I think he may be in concrete operational because he CAN represent the concepts of hammer and feather in the imaginary scenario despite them not being in front of him.
Also, you need to remember, Piaget believed that you CANNOT change a child's stage (other than waiting for them to develop further). Your idea of introducing a more advanced kind of task to move them along is something consistent with Vygotsky. Piaget would say that you could promote learning by giving them a task appropriate to their stage that would cause disequilibrium. Through accomodation or assimiliation of their schemes, learning happens.
I agree that the boy in this video is in a very egocentric stage...it's interesting, because his opinion and take on the situation seems much more logical than the older girl (becuase he is going with his logic rather than following the rules given), but it's definitely the more immature reaction.
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