Piagets Cognitive Development - Essay Example

?Case Piaget’s Cognitive Development Mrs. Arling is handling a very active kindergarten Her are very demanding and insistent of their own understanding of things. The children, with their young age, insist on what they want and how they believe in things. Mrs. Arling’s classroom techniques focus on teaching the kids options and decisions although sometimes this creates conflict since they want to do things their own way. Some children have the ability to compromise although it needs persuasion from their teacher. Analysis The scenario in Mrs. Arling’s class shows how children’s cognitive thinking are different from that of an adult’s. Their knowledge and belief is based on what they see rather than what the facts are. This does not mean that they are wrong rather their understanding is structured differently from that of an adult’s. Using Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, we can see where the children base their understanding and beliefs from. Children have their own schema, or cognitive representation of things. This is based on how they get something out of the action or behavior. We can see this in their insistence that two small brownies are more than a bigger brownie, regardless of the size or weight of it. They see it numerically, since two are more than one, then the classmate with two small brownies have more than the rest of the class who had just one big brownie. When Mrs. Arling cut all of the brownies into two, regardless of the shape, everyone is happy since everyone believes that now they all have a fair share of two brownies. These kindergarten students are at their preconceptual stage, which limits their thinking focusing on the self, egocentrism and representation, animism. They have a difficulty understanding the explanation of their teacher according to factual and mature form because their perspective is based on their own view of the world (Oakley). At this stage, children also form a perspective that inanimate objects have feelings and because of egocentrism they cannot understand yet why inanimate objects cannot feel anything since they are able to feel emotions(Oakley). Children believe that since they are feeling something, these inanimate objects, their favorite toys, can also feel the same things because they think of them as companions and friends. Suggestions To improve the children’s understanding of things, Mrs. Arling can create an environment of role play. With this, the children will be able to put themselves in another’s shoes, thus, expanding their perspective of things and experiences (Oakley). Since the children are at the stage of learning that the world can be different from how they view it, it is important that they are not bluntly reprimanded that they are wrong in their thinking. It is good to show them things, maybe even repeatedly, for them to understand it. This is more effective if the teacher uses things that they use or see normally, like food, candies, toys and such. Mrs. Arling can also help the children mature by slowly bringing them out from the animism perspective by creating different pictures of the inanimate objects that the children use. For example, she can use Teddy in a puppet show while showing the kids that they can also make the bear sing, dance and speak, allowing them to think and feel that they are the ones controlling the toy not the other way around. Case 11: Classical Conditioning Mr. Robinson is handling a class of teenage students, with a developing emotional understanding of love and relationships. When Mr. Robinson discovers that one of his students is occupied with something other than the lesson for the day, he announces it to class bringing embarrassment and anxiety to the girl. And because the girl is embarrassed, she feels physically and psychologically sick when she thinks about the class and her teacher, thus, avoiding the class by staying at home and skipping class. Analysis At this stage, children are preoccupied with their anxiety over attraction to another person. Children, at this stage, are easily embarrassed when they forced to face their anxieties, and this leads them to connect that embarrassing moment to the place, thing or people related to their anxiety. This is a classic explanation of classical conditioning, wherein the stimulus and reaction is connected by another stimulus (Coon and Mitterer) . In this case, the stimulus is hearing the teacher read the note and the sight of the teacher, the note, and the class. When the teacher read the note aloud in the class, the girl felt sick from embarrassment and so the thought of seeing the teacher and the class makes the girl embarrassed and sick at the same time. This creates a condition in the girl that even if she does not see the teacher and the class, just thinking about it makes her feel embarrassed and sick because of the memory of the incident. Suggestion Since the children at this stage can easily connect an embarrassing, scary or other intense emotion to an experience or incident, the teacher should have pulled the girl aside and talked to her rather than embarrassing her in front of the class. The behavior of the children at this stage operates strongly on conditioning, wherein they relate one action to an emotion. With this, it is important to recognize how they can be conditioned, which is based mostly on their emotion about things. Mr. Robinson should create an environment of respect rather than mockery as this affects not only the focal point of the incident but also other children in the class. They might think that doing it is okay. Or they might be conditioned to laugh everytime someone is embarrassed, which in turn, creates more embarrassment to the child being embarrassed. It creates trauma not only to the one being embarrassed but also the rest of the class. Case # 18: Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory of Achievement or Achievement Goal Theory Mrs. Reynolds notices that one of her students lacks focus during their class, whether its discussion, exam or quizzes. She managed to talk to her one day, motivating her by saying if her friends can do it, she also can. After some time, when she was grading the unit tests, she realizes that the talk they had had no effect on her because of the low grades that her student still has. Analysis This case is an example of a child with low self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is grounded in the belief that the self has the power to affect the desired output of a behavior or action (Farenga and Ness). People’s belief on how well they will do in a task have an effect in the outcome of the task. The outcome of the task, then is a combination of a person’s skill and will. If the invidual feels that they are making progress, they have an increase in their self-efficacy. Being able to determine whether they need to improve or restrategize their actions in order to get their desired outcome enables them to move forward. But there are situations wherein the person have a decrease in their self-efficacy when they feel that they are not moving forward as they should. The result of this lowered self-efficacy is a judgment that they are not skilled enough to do their task which creates a problem in finishing their task. This hampers their strategies and eventually leads them to think that they cannot do the task at all. This is what happened with Mrs. Reynolds student. She feels that algebra is hard because she thinks she is not making progress at all, with this lowered self-efficacy, it also lowers her self-confidence, which leads to her not trying to improve at all. Suggestion Mrs. Reynolds should not have stopped talking to her student. She should have created an environment of cooperation in the class, through groupings for study sessions. She could create incentive programs for improved students targeting low performers in the class. With this, it increases the motivation factor within the students, and eventually increase their willingness to do the tasks. Also, she could create tutoring programs for the low performers recognize their efforts. She could also make the class fun and exciting by incorporating situations or events that are significant for the students, like mingling or fun time, quiz bees or other activities that allows them to socialize with other students through mixed groups or performers and low performers. References Coon, D. and Mitterer, J. (2007). Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior, 12th ed. CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Eds. Farenga, S. and Ness, D. (2005). Encyclopedia of Education and Human Development. NY: ME Sharpe, Inc. Oakley, L. (2004). Cognitive Development. NY: Routledge Read More