Description
The focus of the reflection in EDAT 6115 this week was on Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development for teaching a new science concept to second grade and to eight-grade students. Based on Piaget’s stages of Cognitive Development, teacher should decide what is appropriate to teach based on what stage a child is in their developmental stages so that they will understand what is being taught.
Analysis
According to Piaget, children are born with an innate tendency to interact with and make sense of their environments (Slavin, 2012, p. 25). They form patterns of behavior known as schema, which they use throughout the duration of their life, to deal with objects in the world. Piaget broke these stages into four categories:
- Sensorimotor (Birth to age 2) is where children use their senses and motor skills to learn the world around them.
- Preoperational stage (Ages 2 to 7) is where children learn to think about things and can use symbols to mentally represent objects.
- Concrete Operational Stage (Ages 7 to 11) is where children see the world for what it is; having difficulty with abstract thoughts.
- Formal Operational stage (Ages 11 to Adulthood) is when children began to think abstractly and beyond what is in front of them.
Based on Piaget’s philosophy if I were to teach a new science concept to second-grade students, I would need to incorporate pictures or simulate a scientific concept to help my students understand the concepts that I am trying to teach. The eight-students should be able to reflect on experiences or things that they have previously observed to help them grasp a new concept. For example, if I was teaching Force, I might show my second-grade students what force looks like by pushing or fulling an object across the class. If I was teaching this same concept to 8th grade, I may simply be able to list examples of a force being acting upon and objects and they would be able to visualize it without seeing it in that moment.
The positive aspect of Piaget’s philosophy is that is did provide steps to how a child might development. The negative aspect was that they do not happen at the same rate for each student. According to the text, researchers argue that children’s skill develop in different ways on different task and that their experiences have a strong influence on the pace in which a child develops (Slavin, 2012, p. 32). So, I may have students in the second grade that could visualize and example of force, but on the flip side, I may have and eighth grader that has not experienced or recall experiencing those examples.
Reflection
After reading through his philosophy, I began to understand some of the experiences I have had with my students in the classroom. I teach math to students who are in grade 5th-8th. My youngest students are 10 and 11 which falls in the Concrete Operational Stage. My oldest students are 13 and 14 who fall in the Formal Operational stage. My challenge in the past has been preparing the same flow of lesson to all groups of students not fully realizing that I had not considered their developmental stages or that they may not fully understand the examples I use to help them grasp new concepts. Over the years I have watched my student’s excitement for my class diminish and it may be due in part that I have not considered that my students are changing from year to year. The rate in which some of my students are learning new concepts seem to be hindered by their interest in other topics such as extracurricular and technology.
After exploring Piaget’s philosophy and those of others, such as Vygotsky, I realized that it is time for me to reevaluate my teaching style so that I can assist my learners better in the classroom. By understanding that my students may not all be at the same stages in their development or have the same environmental factors influencing them, I could scaffold my lessons better so that I am able support my students with growth.
Over the years, I have been trying to make learning more accessible to by students by using and online classroom platform. By using this platform, in the future, I hope to be able to post more pictures videos and pose questions that are more abstract that way I have a better chance of reaching all my students. My hope is that by doing this, I will be able to move the students who have not reach the developmental stage of being able to think abstractly into that stage by providing them with these different items.
References
Slavin, R. E. (2012). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (10th ed.). Boston, MA:
Pearson Education.
