Module 7 Blog Post 2
The first boy in the video is in the preoperational stage of
development because he can’t put the two concepts of both cards together. He uses centration focusing only on the
second card that asks what happened with the feather and the glass. He can’t
simultaneously focus his attention on the two cards at the same time. Since he knew that in the real world a
feather wouldn’t break the glass, he didn’t pay attention to the first card and
focused only on what the second card was asking. The second girl is in the
concrete operational stage because she’s able to relate the two cards and
concepts. She knows that in the real
world a feather can’t break a glass, but she can make the connection between
the two cards to determine that the feather did break the glass since it
related to the first card. With the
first child the teacher could help try to make the connection with the first
and second card so that the student can learn to use their prior knowledge from
the first card to answer the question with the second card. It’s important for
teachers to understand that students at different developmental stages should
be taught differently. A student who is
in the preoperational stage could be taught through trying to categorize shapes
and colors so that they’re learning to focus on more than one thing and avoid
centration. When a student is in the
concrete operational stage it’s important to help them develop reasoning and
analytical skills so they can move into the formal operational stage. Even though the girl knew that in the real
world a feather couldn’t break glass, she used her reasoning skills to
determine that the feather would break the glass since she connected the two
cards in the sequence.
Your analysis looks good. How do you know the girl isn't in formal operations? Is she thinking hypothetically? How can you be sure the boy isn't in concrete operations? He is able to represent the feather and hammer and their physical properties without them being in front of him. <Just things to think about.
ReplyDeleteFor the second part, I see that you keep saying that a teacher could 'push' students past their developmental stage in some way--but Piaget would not agree with this! <This is important! Piaget would say you cannot help a student stop showing centration--you just need to promote accomodation/assimilation by communicating to them in the kinds of thinking they are capable of, and wait for the next stage to attempt different kinds of learning.