According To Piaget, What Is A Child's Motivation For Change?


Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the great creative intellects of this century. His theory has had massive impact on the thinking and behavior of all of those who bargain with children, including researchers, parents, teachers, day care workers, therapists, and those who design products and services for children. His theory has inspired thousands of research studies, innovations in curriculum and instruction, and new approaches by parents to the intellectual development of their children. These furnishings bear witness every sign of continuing into the next century. Although his theory is familiar to many, information technology is non always well-understood.

Unlike the perspectives discussed earlier in this chapter, Piaget's theory focuses almost exclusively on cognitive development. It explains how children develop knowledge of their world, how they think and solve problems, and how these cognitive processes change in a stage past stage progression from birth to maturity. Thinking is an extraordinarily complicated process, and Piaget developed an extraordinarily complicated theory to explain the process. Fully understanding this theory demands years of study, a task well across our scope here. The next few paragraphs are intended merely to provide an initial overview.

THE Agile NATURE OF THE Child

Piaget portrayed the child as innately and irrepressibly active, acting upon their surround rather than just reacting to it. Action is, therefore, causeless every bit a spontaneous and universal quality central to the cognitive development of all children. Children are by nature curious and explorative, persistently seeking novelty, and effort to incorporate that novelty into their understanding of the world. Infants express the agile nature of their cognitive system past exploring every object within their reach. Older children limited this agile quality in persistence in problem solving and intellectual curiosity.

Piaget assumed that children do not passively wait for other people to present problems to them; they actively seek issues to solve. It is just in their nature to be curious, inquisitive, and interested in novelty. In practical terms, those who deal with children should presume that, irrespective of historic period or stage, all children are intrinsically motivated to improve their agreement of the earth around them. Optimal cerebral development requires a rich environment that tin can be actively explored for novelty and challenge. In this view, rigidity of thought, passivity, and lack of curiosity are considered aberrant states that crave caption. Unfortunately, Piaget'south theory offers piffling explanation for children who announced intellectually unmotivated and irksome to learn.

MENTAL STRUCTURES AND ADAPTATION

The central focus of Piaget'due south theory is the concept of structure. He used the term structure in ii ways. First, he suggests that all aspects of the real globe are structured entities. In the earth of an infant, for case, private objects such as rattles, blankets, and female parent's confront have structure. In the expanded world of the preschool child, the arrangement of toys on a shelf, friendships with peers, and bug encountered in preschool take structure. Nevertheless afterwards in development, children must solve structured math issues in school and engage in structured social relationships. In this use of the term, structure refers to the complication of some aspect of the surroundings.

Piaget's 2nd use of the term structure refers to cerebral structures--the mental units that children employ to stand for reality, to think about the objects, events, and relationships in their experience, and the strategies they use to solve problems. Put simply, cognitive structures are the fashion the child knows the world. A kid knows the globe to the extent that he or she has cognitive structures that match the structure of objects and events in the real world. Piaget's theory is an explanation of the development of cerebral structures from infancy through boyhood, and how cerebral structures facilitate adaptation to the environment.

Adaptation is the process by which cognitive structures are practical to and are modified past the child'due south experiences. Piaget defined two distinct processes by which adaptation occurs: assimilation and adaptation. In absorption, a child uses an existing cognitive structure to interpret some experience. For example, when a familiar rattle is presented to an infant, she shows that she knows the rattle past grasping it and shaking it to brand a rattling audio. Piaget would say that the infant has alloyed the rattle to the cognitive structure of "things-that-milk shake-and-make-dissonance". However, the infant may later on grasp a pacifier, assimilate information technology to the same cognitive construction, and milk shake information technology in anticipation of the sound. The new object has been interpreted as if it were an example of "rattle". Thus assimilation interprets the new in terms of the one-time.

In accommodation, the kid modifies an existing cognitive structure to suit to some new attribute of reality. For instance, for young infants a rattle is at showtime just one more than object to be grasped and all objects are assimilated to the cognitive construction for grasping. Subsequently repeated experience with rattles and other objects, though, the babe modifies the cognitive structure and begins to distinguish betwixt rattles and non-rattles. Thus accommodation represents developmental change in cerebral structures--an integration of the new into the old.

Piaget viewed the listen equally never completely satisfied with its electric current level of understanding of objects, events, or relationships. Every deed of assimilation implies some degree of accommodation to some heretofore unnoticed feature of reality. The result is an improved adaptation to that reality. Thus cognitive structures are always moving gradually but steadily toward better and better approximations of reality.

STAGES OF COGNITIVE Evolution

Piaget described cognitive development as a serial of qualitative changes in the way children think and solve problems from infancy through adolescence. He identified four stages of cognitive development, each with its own unique form of cerebral construction. Each new structural form derives from the previous grade, but with new and more sophisticated capabilities. Piaget believed that all children in all cultures progress through these stages in exactly the same sequence and that no 1 ever skips a stage. However, some children progress through the stages more quickly than others, and those who progress more slowly may never attain the final stage.

Piaget'southward 4 stages are described briefly below. Every bit with the theories of Freud and Erikson, more detailed accounts of development within each stage volition be provided in appropriate capacity afterwards in the text.

Sensori-motor Stage (0-24 months)

The sensori-motor stage, is characterized past action-oriented problem solving. At the commencement of this stage, the newborn's cerebral organization is limited to an elaborate gear up of "wired-in" reflexes such as startling in response to a loud noise or turning the caput toward a stroke on the cheek. As newborns actively touch, taste, and visually scan the world effectually them, though, they develop what Piaget called sensori-motor schemas--uncomplicated cognitive structures that regulate the babe'south body movements and the furnishings of those movements on objects. For instance, the grasping schema organizes the infant'southward voluntary opening and closing of his or her easily and the grasping and manipulation of objects. In fourth dimension, they conform these primitive schemas into more than sophisticated schemas that enable them to influence their environment in increasingly complex ways. For example, they adjust their aimless arm and hand movements in the first three or four months into movements that manipulate the environment by pushing, squeezing banging, fierce, lifting, and burdensome by half dozen to eight months. Past the finish of the get-go year they use their arms and hands to manipulate simple instruments such a fork or spoon, a milestone of sensori-motor intelligence.

Preoperational Stage (ages ii-six)

The action-oriented problem solving of the sensori-motor stage is gradually replaced by thought that is mediated by words and images. Piaget chosen this type of thinking every bit symbolic reasoning. Children will appoint in increasingly complex forms of symbolic reasoning as they develop from babyhood to adolescence. Piaget named each of the remaining stages after the course of symbolic reasoning that characterizes each phase: In the preoperational stage, preschoolers reason with preoperations (or preconcepts); In the concrete operational stage school-historic period children reason with concrete operations; and in the formal operational stage, adolescents' reason with formal operations.

During the preoperational phase, children no longer are limited to thinking about the objects in their immediate perceivable surround. They tin at present organize mental images of events and objects both present and absent into archaic concepts (or preoperations) that they can use to solve simple issues. For example, preschoolers know what toys they own and where they are at all times, and utilize that cognition to organize their play.

Although preoperational thought represents a breakthrough leap from earlier sensorimotor thought, information technology has many limitations. One is a tendency to focus on isolated parts of an event rather than seeing the whole pic. Piaget called this centration. For instance, afterwards meeting the new instructor at day care, a preschooler may be unable to think what she looks like only remembers her earrings in neat detail. Another limitation of preoperational thought is that it is often casuistic. Parents and practitioners are alternately frustrated and entertained by the preschooler'southward confused concepts of time, infinite, classification, and quantitative relationships. For example, when preschool children are asked to retell a story read to them, they tend to contrary sequences of events, misfile cause and outcome, and mistake appearance for reality.

Perhaps the most serious limitation of preoperational thought, however, is its irreversibility. Preschool children can literally think their mode into a problem only are unable to reverse their idea process. That helps to explain why immature children take things autonomously, but have a dandy deal of difficulty putting those things back together. Thus, while preoperational thought represents a bully step forward beyond sensorimotor thought, it fails to provide a logical, systematic fashion of adapting to the world.

Concrete Operations (ages 7-xi)

During the concrete operations stage, children's thinking becomes increasingly logical. The new grade of cognitive structure, the concrete operation, organizes thoughts into logical systems. For example, children gradually come up to understand that calculation, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing are interrelated mathematical operations, and that classes are composed of subclasses. They also begin to empathise logical relationships--for instance, if three sticks of different length are displayed, a child will reason that if the first stick is longer than the second stick, and the 2nd is longer than the third, and then the first stick must exist longer than the tertiary stick. Concrete operational thought is reversible, allowing the child to think his or her way into bug and back out. For example, an eight-year-old is much more likely than a 5-year-old to think well-nigh how he is going to put something back together earlier he takes it apart.

The child does well with such bug because they involve concrete items that are familiar to the child. If, however, the trouble involves abstract concepts or objects with which the kid is not familiar, the kid does poorly. For example, if a child is told (with no objects nowadays) that "A" is greater than "B," and that "B" is greater than "C," the child is unlikely to conclude that "A" must exist greater than "C." At this phase the child can bargain only with real objects that tin exist seen and touched. Abstract concepts of hypothetical events and outcomes are still beyond the child'southward capability.

Formal Operations (age 12 and beyond)

The authentication of the formal operations stage is the ability toconsider general propositions and principles and to retrieve nigh hypothetical events. For the first fourth dimension, the individual can reason about phenomena that do not be in reality, such every bit abstruse concepts of morality, science, and mathematics. One time individuals enter the formal operations stage, they are too able to think well-nigh thinking--both their ain thinking and other people'due south. This capability is an enormous advantage in communication and social relationships. For example, when a formal operational teenage boy wants to meet a certain teenage daughter, he can call back about what she might exist thinking about him and program his behavior accordingly.

Although Piaget proposed four stages, he noted that not everyone reaches the stage of formal operations. At each stage of development, children must have access to appropriately challenging experiences. Children who are deprived of these experiences will develop more slowly than other children and are unlikely to fulfill their full intellectual potential.

CRITIQUE OF Cerebral-DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY

Piaget'southward theory satisfies some criteria of good theory ameliorate than others. Despite his utilize of highly abstruse terms and concepts, Piaget's detailed descriptions of children's beliefs have helped communicate the significant of his concepts to researchers and practitioners. While Piaget and other researchers have had little difficulty testing the theory in thousands of research studies, his more abstract concepts have proven difficult to inquiry. Pregnant questions remain concerning the generalizability of his concepts. For case, it is unclear whether his descriptions of stages concord upward across children in different cultures and socio-economic status. More positively, Piaget's theory is good "developmental" theory. Piaget'due south detailed descriptions of the gradual accumulation of age-related changes in specific content areas are exemplary.

The great forcefulness of Piaget's theory lies in its broad view of cerebral development. Piaget presented both general principles that integrate all cognitive operation and detailed descriptions of evolution in numerous content domains, such as logic, language, morality, causality, time, space, number, seriation, and classification, to name just a few. His theory has stimulated thousands of inquiry studies over the last thirty years, and it has spawned several spin-offs, including the provocative work of Robbie Example (1978) and Kurt Fischer (1980).

Piaget'southward theory has also had significant impact on the do of child evolution. His detailed accounts of descriptions of development in specific content areas has helped educators develop new curriculum and approaches to pedagogy at all historic period levels. His concept of the kid equally an active learner has encouraged teachers to gear instruction to children'due south intrinsic motivation and natural curiosity.

But Piaget'southward work has significant weaknesses. Some of his concepts--such as assimilation and adaptation--are highly abstruse and hard to tie straight to children's behavior. How do we know when a child is accommodating in a learning situation? What criteria should nosotros use to make up one's mind when a cerebral structure has inverse? Other concepts--particularly some of his notions of formal operational reasoning--have not been verified by research.

Despite its shortcomings, Piaget's theory has transformed our understanding of child development and continues to influence researchers and practitioners decades after his death in 1980.