Educational Psychology / Unit 3 EDP 0231 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Placing Reasoning in a Stage
The idea
To place a child's reasoning in one of Piaget's stages, look at what the reasoning depends on. Thinking tied to action and the senses, without lasting representation, is sensorimotor. Symbolic thought with centration and egocentrism is preoperational. Logic that works on concrete objects but falters on verbal abstractions is concrete operational. Reasoning about possibilities and hypotheses, testing them one variable at a time, is formal operational. The evidence is in how the child reasons, not in the answer or the age.
In practice
Worked example: a child says the flattened clay ball has more clay because it is longer, and still insists after a second look. Centration without reversibility: preoperational.
Where people slip
Two errors are common. Placing by age alone ignores how much ages vary and how schooling affects formal thought. And 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.
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