Essay: Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Approach to Learning

Piaget studied the growth and development of the child. The main objective of Piaget has described the process of human thinking from infancy to adulthood.

Jean Piaget has redefined intelligence, knowledge and the relationship of the learner to the environment-system is a continuing process that creates structures. In continuing interactions with the environment, he needs intelligence.

In the same way, knowledge is an interactive process between the learner and the environment. Knowledge is highly subjective in infancy and early childhood.

It becomes more objective in early adulthood. According to him, learning is a function of certain processes. They are assimilation accommodation, adoption and equilibration.

Four Process of Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Approach to Learning

1. Assimilation:

It is an incorporating new objects and experiences into the existing schemata. In this context, a schema refers to well-defined sequences of actions.

The observation of surroundings and process leads to assimilation in the early stages of learning. Thus, assimilation accounts for the children’s ability to act on and understand something new in terms of what is already familiar. Assimilation is followed by accommodation.

2. Accommodation:

Accommodation is the adjustment of internal structures to the particular characteristics of situations. For example, biological structures accommodate to the type and quantity of food at the same time that the food is being assimilated.

Similarly in cognitive functioning, internal structures adjust to the particular characteristics of new objects and events. Accommodation also refers to the modification of the individual’s internal cognitive structures.

As the child continues to confront experiences in the environment, he has either to combine his previous schemata and arrive at new schemata known as accommodation.

3. Equilibration:

In Cognitive development, equilibration is the continuing self-regulation that permits the individual to grow, develop and change while maintaining stability.

Equilibration is not a balance of forces but it is a dynamic process that continuously regulates behaviour. It indicates the balance between assimilation and accommodation.

4. Adaptation:

The accommodation helps in combining or expanding or changing the new schemata based on his new experiences. Thus, the individual is helped in adjusting to his new environment. This adjustment to a new environment is given the name ‘adaption’.

Adaption is not permanent one because he develops many new or modified schemata as he alters or extends his range of action. Adaption results from the interactions processes between the organism and environment.

Piaget has mapped out, in detail, the stages by which particular cognitive functions develop and the times at which given concepts may be expected to appear.

Various Stages of Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Approach to Learning:

(1) Sensory-motor stage:

This extends roughly from birth to age. As the name implies, the schemata that develop during this stage are those involving the child’s perception of the world and the coordination’s by which he deals with the world. During this period the child does as under:

1. The child forms his most basis conceptions about the nature of the material world.

2. The child learns that an object that has disappeared can reappear.

3. The child learns that some object even though it looks very different when seen from different angles or in different illuminations.

4. He relates the appearance, sound to touch of the object to one another.

(2) Preoperational stage:

It is known as the second stage extends roughly from about age 2 to 7.

1. The child has internal representations of objects before he has words to express them. These internal representations give the child greater flexibility for dealing adaptively with the world, and attaching words to them, gives him much greater power of communication.

2. The child begins to exhibit the effects of having learned language.

3. He is able to represent objects and events symbolically.

(3) Concrete operations stage:

The third stage extends from 7 to 11 years. The sort of operations includes classifying, combining and comparing.

The child in the stage of concrete operations can deal with the relationships among hierarchies of terms, such as robin, bird and creature. He is aware, as the preoperational child is not, of the reversibility of operations.

(4) Formal operations stage:

The fourth and final stage around age 11 years. It includes improvements in abstract thinking. Two characteristics are visible at this stage:

1. Now the person can view the issues abstractly.

2. The person can judge the validity of logical argument in terms of their formal structure, independent of content.

3. He can explore different ways of formulating a problem and see what their logical consequences are.

4. He is at least ready to think in terms of a realm of abstract propositions that fit in varying degrees in the real world that he observes.

Characteristics of Formal Operational Stage:

The important characteristics of the formal operation period or stage are as under:

1. Learners survey many possibilities.

2. Learners design a system of what is hypothetically possible is structured and followed by empirical verification.

3. Learners become critical of their own standards and look objectively at the assumptions in hand.

4. The learners can conceive of an imaginary world.

5. The learners generate hypotheses, discuss and proceed them to test.

6. The learners become conscious of their own thinking and provide rational justification for their thinking, judgement and actions.

7. Their thinking goes beyond the immediate present and attempts are made by them to establish as many vertical relationships as possible.

8. The learners go even to the extent of finding empirical and mathematical proofs for their observations.

9. Learners, notions, ideas and concepts are formal which belong to the present and future.

Educational Implications of Paige’s cognitive approach to learning

The direct or indirect educational Implications of Piaget’s approach to cognitive development are as under:

1. Piaget’s description of cognition indicates that cognitive development is a continuous process from birth to adulthood. So, the teacher should try to determine the level or stages of development of learners and accordingly he should plan his instruction or teaching.

2. It is accepted that childhood is a necessary and important phase in the development of logical thinking

3. It is accepted that the relationship, between the educational system and the child is unilateral and reciprocal one.

4. Active methods that require the students to rediscover or reconstruct to be learned should be used.

5. Experimental procedures and free activity through training should be introduced for liberal arts and science students.

6. Science and mathematics are taught with actions and operations.

7. The classroom should be a centre of real activities carried out in common so that logical intelligence may be elaborated through action and social change.

8. Give-and-take can be developed in the group.

9. Audio-visual aids can be utilized as accessories in the student’s personal investigations of truth.

10. Students must be allowed to make their own mistakes and to correct these errors themselves.

11. The process of experimentation by students at all ages is important. Only learner can acquire the skills that are necessary for formal operational thought.

12. The cognitive activity, generated by experimentation, is essential. A child can be mentally active without physical manipulation, just as he can be mentally passive while actually manipulating, objects.

13. Various activities in pre-school curricula can provide opportunities for cognitive development: e.g.: Block painting, finger painting, cooking, dramatic plays, etc.

14. Classroom activities should maximize the child opportunities to construct and coordinate many relationships.

15. The classroom should provide situations to children in constructing their own knowledge. As such, the children can comprehend the world in new ways at different cognitive levels.

16. The implications for educational practice are important:

(a) A variety of activities, games and experiences should be provided.

(b) Individualized mathematics laboratories that utilize a variety of materials, for measurement and experimentation. Examples should be used for blocks, dried pears, matchboxes, drinking straws, pipe cleaners and so on.

17. At the pre-school level, it is found that the child has greater interest in the observable effects of his or her actions than in relating the result to an organized cognitive structure.

18. Games and activities that can provide experience with classification and serration are also needed.

19. Drill and practice should be given in the classroom to make teaching learning effective.

Limitations of Piaget’s Approach

Limitations in Jean Piaget’s Theory of Approach to Learning

1. His terminology is not very clear to its readers.

2. It is forgotten that the children may lose confidence in their ability to figure out things.

3. A child cannot engage in abstract thought and cannot perform any useful scientific activity.

4. He is too preoccupied with numerous epistemological considerations.

5. Piaget’s whole work lacks scientific methodology as conventionally understood.

6. Piaget’s emphasis is on concepts of relationship. He does not investigate nominal concepts.

7. This approach is lengthy and time consuming.

8. In this approach no direct teaching is involved.

9. Mathematics and science cannot be applied in early childhood.

10. Tailoring narrow exercises for individual children has neither practicability nor necessity.

11. The child does not notice the contradiction in his or her own explanation.