JEAN PIAGET & the Conservation Theory

Clare LoCoco, Rose Schaner, Mariah Ayers

Child Growth and DevelopmentDecember 4, 2015

Biography • born August 19th,

1896 in Neuchatel, Switzerland

• 20 scientific papers published by age 22

• began formal study of psychology in in 1919

• studied in Zurich, Switzerland and then Sorbonne, Paris

• At age 25, took job as director of Institute for Research of Children in Geneva

• Married, 3 children– whom he used for studies

• Was Director of the International Bureau for Education

• Professor at various universities, including University of Geneva

• Died in 1980 in Geneva

Let’s be honest… not quite as cute as Lev.

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Stage I: Sensorimotor

The child learns by doing, via the sensual world. Primitive understanding of cause-and-effect.

Stage II: Pre-Operational

Child uses language and symbols, letters, and numbers; Egocentrism is present. Pre-operational stage ends with conservation.

Stage III: Concrete Operational

The child demonstrates conservation, reversibility, serial ordering, and understands cause-and-effect.

Stage IV: Formal Operational

The individual demonstrates abstract thinking, logic, deductive reasoning, comparison, and classification.

ConservationThe idea that quantity remains the same independent of appearance.

Examples:Number

Length

Liquid

Mass

Weight

Area

Volume

Formal Operational Stage

Large capacity for abstract thinking,

Tested various questions and activities“Third Eye Problem”

“The Pendulum Task”

Height / Inferential Thinking Question“If Kelly is taller than Ali and Ali is taller than Jo, who is tallest?”

Questions: 1.) Are students able to successfully perform Piaget’s pendulum task? Do students who can successfully perform Piaget’s pendulum task also identify the greatest number of metaphors in poetry?

2.) Does a student’s preference for either humanities or sciences affect his/her proficiency with either task?

HypothesisFewer adolescents (ages 18-19) will have reached the formal operational stage of cognitive development than expected by Piaget. Additionally, those students proficient in humanities, specifically English, will have reached the formal operational stage.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I.

Darkling ThrushBy Thomas Hardy

ParticipantsAge Gend

erMajor Field of

Study

1 19 M English +Math Conc.

Both

2 18 M Business History

3 18 F Humanities Humanities

4 18 M Econ/Finance

English

5 18 M Physics Literature

6 18 F Math Math

7 18 F Humanities Music

8 18 M Philosophy Humanities

9 18 F Humanities English

10 19 F Humanities English

Ideal Responses – Subject No. 1

Pendulum: “So originally I came in with the idea that a shorter string and a heavier mass would lend to a shorter time period of swinging. I saw that two bags had different weights but similar lengths of string and the heavier mass took less time to return to its starting point. However, I also realized that a shorter string would lead to a shorter time period as it has less distance to travel. I therefore concluded that a mixture of both of these characteristics would lead to a shorter time period: heavier mass and a shorter string.”

Ideal Responses – Subject No. 1

1. The poet is personifying the land to compare it to a living organism.

2. Contrast with the first as now the "alone-ness" has become a corpse.

3. Death imagery continues with a crypt being compared to a cloudy canopy (heaven?)

4. Same goes for this one.

5. What once was a pulse (living beat) of the earth has become "dry and hard" lots of oscillating between life and death.

6. Spiritual usually being connotations of energy and joy (high spirits) but in this case it has negative ones (fervorless). despite the somewhat depressing tone there is a sense of connection between the poet and the rest of the world ('every spirit upon earth').

Typical Response – Subject No. 10

Pendulum: The length of the string makes the arc of the pendulum longer or shorter.

Metaphors: 5 Metaphors. Century’s corpse is a metaphor for the land’s sharp features. Crypt. The Wine. Germ and birth. Shrunken hard and dry spirits.

Qualitative Analysis

We looked for a systematic and scientific approach to the pendulum problem.

We were also looking for an understanding of the variables involved, and the different factors that might affect it.

For the poetry, we looked for engagement in the work, and understanding of the metaphors and a good grasp of the poetic imagery.

RESULTSFORMAL OPERATIONS

CONCRETE OPERATIONS

1 Formal English + Math

2 Formal Business + History

3 Concrete Humanities

4 Concrete E/F + English

5 Concrete Physics + Literature

6 Formal Math

7 Concrete Humanities

8 Formal (Barely) Philosophy

9 Concrete English

10 Concrete English

LIMITATIONSYou cannot really trust 18 year olds.

Chaotic and distracting atmosphere.

Inadequate materials.

Not enough testing.

Not enough students for presentation.

More motivation for students.

More STEM students.

ConclusionNot everyone is at the formal operations

stage, even at the age of 18. We conclude that Piaget overestimated the cognitive

development of pre-adolescents.

Teachers and parents should be aware of the fact that not all students’ cognitive

development is correlated to age or grade level.

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