Educational Psychology / Unit 13 EDP 1213 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Placing Reasoning in a Stage
The idea
Placing a child's reasoning in one of Piaget's stages depends on what the reasoning rests on, not on the answer or the age. Thinking tied to action and the senses is sensorimotor. Symbolic thought marked by centration is preoperational. Logic that works on concrete objects, using reversibility and decentration to solve conservation and class-inclusion problems, is concrete operational. Reasoning about hypotheses, testing possibilities one variable at a time, is formal operational.
In practice
Worked example: asked whether there are more dogs or more animals, a nine-year-old answers animals: class inclusion on concrete objects, concrete operational. Asked what makes a pendulum swing faster, a teenager varies one factor at a time: formal operational. A child who says the flattened clay has more because it is longer, and still insists after a second look, is preoperational.
Where people slip
Placing by age alone ignores how much ages vary and how schooling affects formal thought. A correct answer reached by rote is not an operation, so ask the child to explain why.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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