"Can we categorize kids' progress through
time into "periods" and if yes, are there any transitionals and how
can we help kids progress smoothly throughout these periods?"
Ghada and Yaser
This is a really good question, and I will answer it through my somewhat limited understanding of both Piaget and Vygotsky. Piaget had his now famous stages of intellectual development - Sensorimotor; Pre-Operational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational. He has been criticized for many issues related to his stages, including the fact that he did not offer a good explanation for how children moved from one stage to the next, nor did he account for gifted children and their ability to move so rapidly through the stages. Also, as I have mentioned, he also neglected to account for the transition of egocentric speech into a tool for cognitive development and later thinking. He characterized the transition from one stage to the next as a function of "disequilibrium" where some sort of conflict arose and the child's mind had to change radically to accommodate it (here accommodation is when we actually have to change our schema or mindset to account for new information, not as we usually assimilate where we change new information to fit our existing schema or mindset). These moments of disequilibrium often correspond to curricular junctures, like the point where children shift from expository to narrative analysis, or when they move into more abstract modes of mathematics. The point being, they have to reach a stage where they can no longer deal with the challenges facing them with familiar strategies or mental techniques. It is also interesting to know that in biology, there is the theory of a "critical period" of acquisition where an organism is most likely to develop a specific skill (for humans, walking, talking, potty training, etc.) and if that organism fails during that time, it becomes less likely it will be successful, and increased the chances there will be great difficulty in the future (of course Freud outlined the psychological aspects of these acquisition issues very vividly, the most powerful being "anal retentiveness" where children who don't master potty training at a reasonable age will later overcompensate for control in their lives). Halliday called this time period a "teachable moment" but the term has been corrupted in the West to mean an opportune time to teach something in the semester as it comes up naturally rather than wait for its unnatural spot in the curriculum.
Vytostky had much more to say about transitions through cognitive stages through peer-teaching, his Zone of Proximal Development, and inner speech. We will talk about these concepts, and I will even show you a model from a family literacy program I developed where we tried to capitalize on these concepts helping low-literate mothers and fathers read to their children. I think the most important lesson on these transitional stages is two fold: 1) different children reach them at different times and in different ways, and 2) we cannot always wait around and offer enough different interventions for this to happen in a formalized school setting. We will talk about this, don't let me forget to address it next week! Yes, I said next week - get ready.
One final word about Piaget and his levels - shortly before his death he reconsidered and admitted that he thought that only about 40% reached full formal operational thinking (ouch).
Ghada and Yaser
This is a really good question, and I will answer it through my somewhat limited understanding of both Piaget and Vygotsky. Piaget had his now famous stages of intellectual development - Sensorimotor; Pre-Operational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational. He has been criticized for many issues related to his stages, including the fact that he did not offer a good explanation for how children moved from one stage to the next, nor did he account for gifted children and their ability to move so rapidly through the stages. Also, as I have mentioned, he also neglected to account for the transition of egocentric speech into a tool for cognitive development and later thinking. He characterized the transition from one stage to the next as a function of "disequilibrium" where some sort of conflict arose and the child's mind had to change radically to accommodate it (here accommodation is when we actually have to change our schema or mindset to account for new information, not as we usually assimilate where we change new information to fit our existing schema or mindset). These moments of disequilibrium often correspond to curricular junctures, like the point where children shift from expository to narrative analysis, or when they move into more abstract modes of mathematics. The point being, they have to reach a stage where they can no longer deal with the challenges facing them with familiar strategies or mental techniques. It is also interesting to know that in biology, there is the theory of a "critical period" of acquisition where an organism is most likely to develop a specific skill (for humans, walking, talking, potty training, etc.) and if that organism fails during that time, it becomes less likely it will be successful, and increased the chances there will be great difficulty in the future (of course Freud outlined the psychological aspects of these acquisition issues very vividly, the most powerful being "anal retentiveness" where children who don't master potty training at a reasonable age will later overcompensate for control in their lives). Halliday called this time period a "teachable moment" but the term has been corrupted in the West to mean an opportune time to teach something in the semester as it comes up naturally rather than wait for its unnatural spot in the curriculum.
Vytostky had much more to say about transitions through cognitive stages through peer-teaching, his Zone of Proximal Development, and inner speech. We will talk about these concepts, and I will even show you a model from a family literacy program I developed where we tried to capitalize on these concepts helping low-literate mothers and fathers read to their children. I think the most important lesson on these transitional stages is two fold: 1) different children reach them at different times and in different ways, and 2) we cannot always wait around and offer enough different interventions for this to happen in a formalized school setting. We will talk about this, don't let me forget to address it next week! Yes, I said next week - get ready.
One final word about Piaget and his levels - shortly before his death he reconsidered and admitted that he thought that only about 40% reached full formal operational thinking (ouch).
I cannot help laughing :))
ReplyDeleteWhen we thought about the questions, we tried to predict your answers, and guess what??? YOU proved us right.
I cannot wait to hear what you have to say next week, and do not worry, we will not let you FORGET.
Well done, Michael. Students do move from one intellectual stage to another with differents paces and levels ( this might have to do with individual differences).
ReplyDeleteI do find Vytostky's ZPD more interesting than Piaget's "disequilibrium". I think the below link is of good benefit:
http://psychology4a.com/cognitive_development.htm
Zeinab