Blog Post 2 (Activity)
· What stages of development do the two children appear to be in? How would Piaget explain what is happening here?
· What sort of techniques could you use to teach each child? Why must the techniques differ?
The first child seems to be in the pre-operational stage because he knows that a hammer would break the glass, but a feather would not, but he did not fully understand what the cards said. The card said a feather would break the glass, but he overruled what the card says because of prior knowledge about a hammer and feather. Piaget would explain that the boy focuses more on what the object does than the information that he was just told. I would use techniques that allow the boy to think for himself, but make him think about more than just his prior knowledge about the item. The girl is in the concrete operational stage because she understands what the cards represented and came up with a response that was aligned with what the cards said. Piaget would explain that even though her prior knowledge tells her how light a feather is, she still understands what the card says. I would use a technique that allow her to do more higher-level thinking and problem solving. The techniques must differ because both students are in different stages and are in different stages.
Yes, exactly, the boy does have existing experiences that he applies to the new situation. The thing to notice is that he CANNOT represent the abstract idea of the hypothetical 'A feather can break a glass'. I think someone could argue that he is in the concrete operational stage, because he's able think about about a situation of a hammer breaking a glass, even though it's not in front of him. He's not able to do anything MORE abstract than that.
ReplyDeleteI think I'd argue that the girl is in formal operational stage (the highest one). She clearly completes the activity as if it were a logic problem in her head. She may be more familiar with those types of problems, but it appears the boy did not have the capacity to do so.
It's not really about 'understanding what the card says', it's more of the MEANING the card has for each of the two children. You definitely need to teach using different techniques to the two children. Here are some examples.
For Pre Operational:
Use concrete props and visual aids.
Use actions as well as words.
Give abundant hands-on experience.
Be aware that they are likely to be deficient or inconsistent in seeing things from others' point of view.
They may have unique viewpoints and parts of their language that you may be unaware of.
For Concrete Operational:
Use concrete props and visual aids.
Give them opportunities to classify objects and ideas into increasingly complex groupings.
Present problems that require logical thinking of a relatively non-abstract level.
Use familiar objects and ideas to explain more complex concepts.
Formal Operational:
Build abstractions upon solidly understood concrete concepts.
Give them opportunities to explore hypothetical questions.
Give them opportunities to solve problems that seem impossible to solve.
Promote scientific thinking.
Integrate concrete concepts with broad concepts, and encourage them to apply concepts in numerous settings.
Respect and encourage apparently off-the-wall thinking that involves insightful hypothetical reasoning.
Model effective formal operational thinking to them.