Piaget Blog Post 2

The little boy appears to be in the pre-operational stage of Piaget's theory. This is because he was told that if you hit the glass with a hammer, it will break. Then Don hit the glass with a hammer, what happened? The little boy said that the glass broke because the hammer is hard. He was asked the same question with the feather and he said that nothing happened because the feather was soft. The little boy is in the pre-operationtal stage which means that he understands that the hammer is hard and the feather is soft so he associates that with what happens to the glass. On the other hand, the older girl is in the concrete operational stage because she was able to relate back to rule number one that the feather will break the glass even though she knows that it is soft. If the rule is the rule, then that is what her answer will be. She was able to reverse her thinking, unlike the little boy who was unable to reverse his thinking and have one-way thinking that the hammer is hard and the feather is soft. The little boy shows centration because he has an inability to focus on two-dimensions simultaneously. He also cannot engage in reversibility, while the older girl could go back to rule one.

In order to teach each child, different techniques are required because they are in different stages in cognitive development. For the younger boy, since he is experiencing centration he has an inability to focus on two-dimenstions at the same time. In order to help him, I could teach him how sort something by shape and color or size and color. Sorting something in two ways rather than one can help with the centration. Also, to help with reversibility, I could use the technique of conservation and show the younger boy that the number stays the same in two rows of marbles even if one row is spread out more than the other. This can help with going back to rule one when asked about the feather to understand that it still broke the glass even though it may be soft. With the older girl, it is important to help her use reasoning skills to explain why the feather broke the glass even though it is soft because in the concrete operational stage children have difficulties related to concrete thinking. Using reasoning would be a good technique to help the older girl move on to the formal operational stage. In order to help students with moving forward in Piaget's theory, we must recognize which stage they are at to help them in a beneficial way.