Piagets theory of cognitive development

• what is assimilation

  > new experience understood within existing schema

  > doesn't radically change our understanding (child meets new breed of dog)
• what is accommodation

  > new experience that requires a major schema change,

  >cant be assimilated because it is so different so a new schema is needed (child has pet cat then meets a dog and tries to encorporate it into their dog schema but has to make new schema)
• what does piaget believe about cognitive development

  >cognitive development happens through innate abilities, environmental events and stages of intellectual development
• what is a schema

  >unit of knowledge of how the world is represented in your mind

  >cognitive development includes the construction of detailed schema

  >children are born with few schema but construct new ones in infancy
• what is our motivation to learn

  > unpleasant emotions associated with disequilibrium of not understanding something

  >children feel encouraged to understand and develop new schema when assimilation isn't enough

  >this results in equilibration
• what is equilibration

  >preferred mental state of balance

  >occurs when exeperiences in the world match our current schema
• how does piaget think knowledge is discovered

  >knowledge actively discovered through mental structures of functional variants where we have to accommodate and assimilate to swing between equilibrium and disequilibrium.

  >variant structures are how schemas change and develop as knowledge is discovered
• strength of piagets theory

  >impact on early years development and education: classrooms focused on play and activity to discover new aspects of world to engage children and construct own understanding of world
• limitations of piagets theory

  >limited explanation: Piaget doesn't see experts as a central role for learning which contrasts vygotsky who sees learning as a social process

  >equilibration overemphasised: not all children equally motivated to remove disequilibrium, lacks validity as equilibration was central role

  >role of language: Piaget sees language as just as cognitive ability what develops in line with other abilities, but vygotsky sees language as more important