Behaviorism, Educational psychology SensoriMotor Stage: Piaget's Cognitive Theory of Development This is the first stage of Piaget's Cognitive

Development. This stage is from birth to infancy or zero to two years old. As the name implies, this is a stage where humans focus on the movement of muscles and body reflexes. Just imagine a baby and how he/she moves. And notice how baby toys are designed. In this stage, humans still have to familiarize and learn the world through interaction to objects, concrete objects in the environment. According to Piaget, babies have the ability of "object permanence" or the ability of the child to know that an object still exists even without of sight. So if you show a baby a teddy bear, and then block or hide the teddy behind a cardboard, the baby would still believe that the teddy is there. So to the parents, or even teachers, they have to provide a stimulating environment that will give the opportunity for the babies to learn his or her environment. Toys that captivate the senses like those with appealing colors, catching sound(not too much for the ear) and texture would be a great help for the development of this stage. But these toys will be useless and even hazardous without guidance of an adult or an older significant other.

This is my very first post about education so I really hope that whoever will read this post can learn a lot and should be able to apply it in their everyday lives, whether they are teachers, educators, parents, students and the like. Piaget is only one of modern psychologists who influenced the notion of learning most especially about how humans develop mentally. He believes that human mind has what he calls "schema" or mental/cognitive structures. In short, we humans are already born with something in our heads, not as empty vessels waiting to be filled. He also introduced the concepts of assimilation and accomodation. Assimilation is the adding of new experience or learning to an existing or already made schema. Example, if we had a schema of what a fish is, and we saw another fish of different color, then we try to add or fit in that new information to our current schema. And in the process of seeing another kind of fish, then we "accommodate" or create a new schema. As we grow, our minds pass through 4 stages: sensori-motor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational. Each stage has its own characteristics which later I will discuss one by one. I will also tackle the practical applications of this theory especially in pedagogy and instruction. This is only the introduction of my series of discussion about Piaget and the rest of other educational psychologists. I hope you find this post of mine helpful to your study. And I really hope that whoever got to read my post will tell their friends and classmates and teachers about my blog so that I could extend and share my knowledge about these topics. Preoperational Stage: Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development This is the second stage of cognitive development according to Piaget. This includes children who are two to seven years old and probably who are in preschool. The notable characteristic of this stage is that children can now make believe or pretend through the use of symbols. This is called "symbolic function". The most dominant symbol used is language, wherein children represent the objects that they experience through names or words. They can also use a certain object to symbolize or represent something else. Just imagine the tv commercial of a popular milk. The girl was singing something like "Mom

said, don't eat your WOOOOOORDS!...She said, I have a beautiful VOOOOOOICE!".hahaha... Well, as you have seen, she was singing using a hair brush as her microphone. She pretended that the hair brush was her microphone. Have you seen your little brother or sister play? The boys especially in which they use sticks as their swords. But as they grow and develop, they can pretend only in their mind even without these objects. Again, imagine you as a child or seeing children play "Power power rangers" or " Good Morning Princess".(Do you know these games?hehe). Those explain it. Aside from symbolic function, children have the tendency to be egocentric. It means that they do not assume that each of us has different perspective. They believe that their point of view is the same as with all the people. This is the reason why for example, children have occasional "mine is better than yours" arguements with their agemates or your nephew or niece will ask you why you didn't call his/her mama or papa "mommy" or "daddy". Another characteristic of these stage is what we call centration. This can be explained by the experiment done by Piaget himself. In his experiment, he presented a child two identical glasses with the same amount of water. When the child was asked which glass has more water, he answered that both glasses are the same. However, when the water from one of the glasses was transferred to a narrower but taller glass, and was asked again, the child chose that the taller glass has the greater amount of water. This is centration. The child "centered" only on one aspect that is the tallness of the glass without taking into consideration the narrowness of it. This can also be seen when children tend to determine the sex of the people they meet. Boys wear pants while girls wear skirts. Or they will say that a person is already old when they see that that person is wearing glasses, has gray hair or has a mustache, without considering the age or the other details. Furthermore, children on this stage are very animistic. This is very obvious when they play dolls and stuff toys. And they will say to you not to throw their teddies and handle it with care because teddy might get "hurt". Or seeing a girl telling her agemate not to pick the leaves or the flowers of a plant because the plant will cry. According to one of our textbooks in college by Corpus, preoperational children has transductive reasoning. For example, if a preschool will be asked why there are no classes, he will probably answer "because it's Saturday." And if you'll ask again, "How did you know that it's Saturday?" He will probably answer "because there are no classes." Lastly, children on this stage has still the inability to reverse their thinking. In short, they still don't know that 1+2 is still the same with 2+1. This is the reason why I really had a difficult time explaining to my 6-year old tutee the commutative property of multiplication. That is why I wondered how come this topic was included in an Elementary Mathematics textbook for grade 1. Psychologically, this is inappropriate considering the mental stage of children. However, I thought that the author intended to put this topic maybe in order to help children develop reversibility. This might be true especially with the help of an adult, a teacher or a parent, or an older significant other, children will gradually develop the ability of reversibility.

The main application that the behaviorist psychology teaches us is the role of external factors in learning. The factors include the people around the learner, the reinforcements given and the learning environment either physical or psychological environment. The following are just some of the applications. Take note that you as a teacher can actually apply these theories depending on how you understood them as long as this will help in the learning of your pupils/students. 1. Use conditioning especially in establishing routines. Routines are very effective means not only in saving time but also in maintaining order inside the classroom. For example, a teacher will raise his/her hand and sign as if counting 1-3. This signals that papers should be passed at the count of three. (Pavlov's Classical Conditioning) 2. Drills help especially in retention and improvement of learning. Allot a time for drills, practice and exercise especially before giving a test. Remember to give feedbacks and point out the things that need to be improved. (Thorndike's Law of Exercise) 3. Let pupils have proper mind sets before starting a lesson. A pre-activity, mini-game, warm up exercise, songs, energizers, icebreakers and a lot more can be used by the teacher. As much as possible, avoid promising something that will excite the pupils/students and then at the end break it. This might cause frustration among pupils. (Thorndike's Law of Readiness) 4. Rewards can be an effective means to motivate learners. However, use this very wisely especially in giving material rewards. Also remember that inner and non-material rewards like self-fulfillment, self improvement, positive emotions, praises and compliments are more fulfilling than any material rewards. (Skinner's Operant Conditioning Applications, Behaviorism 1. Continue the previous applications but with more complexity and difficulty. Still use diagrams but let the students explain and interpret these themselves. 2. Have open discussions, symposiums, panels and debates. 3. Be open to "out of this world" questions and ideas from the students. Explore what ifs. 4. Encourage reflective thinking. Give a topic then let the students share their perspectives. 5. Give a problem and discuss with them possible solutions. It will be more meaningful if problems are related to students' lives and environment. Haaay... At least I'm done with explaining all about Piaget. I hope I have discussed this as simply but as credible as possible. The next will be what I will call LET Tips. In these posts, I will be discussing possible questions related to a certain topic in which in this case, will be still about Piaget Theory of Cognitive Development. So just watch out for it.... Posted by jay-l at Monday, March 22, 2010 0 comments Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook Labels: Applications, formal operational stage, Piaget Applications: Piaget's Concrete Operational Stage 1.Reinforce and continue using concrete and hands on materials. For example, use models and demonstrate experiments in Science, show replicas or artifacts in History, demonstrate how to's in EPP and many more.

2. Organize the materials and concepts presented. Don't bombard children with too many factors and lengthy explanations. Be concise and brief. For example, Give an experiment or instruction with considerable number of steps. Or let children only read short stories 2-4 pages or children's book rather giving them lengthy stories with a lot of twisting plots. 3. Always relate the children to their prior experiences before presenting a new topic. Ask questions related to their lives or personal experiences so that it will be easier for them to assimilate information and to instill in their minds what is being presented. Like in discussing a story, teachers often ask if children can find similarities on the traits or on the situation the characters in the story are into. 4. Let the children classify or group things. Use graphic organizers to make it easier like matrices, charts, diagrams, etc. This will make their logical ability improve and develop. Riddles, Mind Twisters and Brain Teasers can also help. Give more of divergent questions rather than convergent questions because the former give children more opportunity to think and stimulate imagination. Posted by jay-l at Monday, March 22, 2010 0 comments Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook Labels: Applications, concrete operational Stage, Jean Piaget, Theory of Cognitive Development Applications: Piaget's Pre Operational Stage 1. When presenting something, whether these are instructions, explanations lessons or directions, be concrete. Use illustrations, real objects, models even demonstrations. Don't only say them, don't be too verbose. Show them and even act them. You can be a model or even one of your pupils to demonstrate a given instruction or a scenario. 2. Since at this stage children are egocentric, avoid lessons or examples that are not immediate on child's experience. Listen to their stories, have an open discussion and sharing of experiences. 3. Have more of hands on activities than paper and pencil tasks. Let them manipulate objects and experience objects themselves especially if these will give them the opportunity to understand more about conservation. Objects like clay, water or sand could really help a lot. 4. Widen the world of a child. Let them explore their environment by having out of the classroom activities such as visits to different places or field trips. Posted by jay-l at Monday, March 22, 2010 0 comments Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook Labels: Applications, Piaget, Preoperational stage Applications: Piaget's Sensori-Motor Stage A theory is useless if not applied. So I will now present the practical applications of Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development. Due to limited characters that can only be typed via cellphone, I will discuss this by stages. Below are the practical applications parents, teachers and the like can do. These are self-explanatory so I just enlisted them. 1. Interact with them more often. Show funny faces, play "pick-a-boo", smile at them, etc. Let them meet different people especially family members because at this stage, they can recognize faces. 2. Talk to them. Ask questions as if they know how to speak. Let them talk their own "language" because they like hearing their voices and other sounds too. 3. Let them do simple tasks by themselves like picking up their own toys when they play, reach a

nearby object, putting them inside the box, and others. 4. Provide toys that are appealing to the senses: brightly colored, have catchy sounds (but not too much!), textured surfaces, etc. 5. Let them play toys that will not only let them enjoy but learn as well. Give them simple puzzles, building blocks, and other toys that will develop their mental ability. Don't forget to play with them.