PRE 305 1st Edition Lecture 9 Outline of Last Lecture I Infant social development A Transition to parenthood B The parent child relationship C Attachment through the life course D Adult attachment styles Outline of Current Lecture I Cognitive Development Theories of cognitive development A Theories in the classroom B Piaget s cognitive developmental theory C Piaget s cognitive developmental perspective in the classroom D Information processing theory Current Lecture Theories of cognitive development Theories in the classroom Theoretical viewpoints differ in their views of how teacher should teach and students should learn Piaget s cognitive developmental theory Children as little scientists Stages of cognitive development universal idea of development Development through assimilation accommodation and equilibration Piaget s methods 1 Naturalistic observation 2 Clinical observation 3 Clinical interviews He was very interested in mistakes What do mistakes reveal of children s underlying process Assimilation using existing schema and applying it Accommodation creating a new schema or modifying their existing schema Piaget s Stage 1 Sensorimotor stage 0 2 yrs understanding the world through senses and physically interacting with objects Trends in development are reflexes to goal directed activity body to outside world development of object permanence development of mental representation 2 Preoperational stage 2 7 yrs increasing use of symbolic representations Limitations rigid thinking this is the way things have to be centration focus on one particular element of the object and not anything else egocentrism lack of ability to take perspective of others Children in this stage tend to not understand conservation task Children in this stage also have trouble with egocentric communication three mountains task 3 Concrete operational stage 7 12 logical thought in application to concrete information reversibility and conservation abstract thinking not yet present 4 Formal operational stage 12 and up application of logical mental operations to abstract problems and questions scientific reasoning Piaget s cognitive developmental perspective in the classroom Desirable qualities of teacher 1 Knowledge of cognitive development 2 Ability to work as collaborator and guide Desirable qualities of student 1 Curiosity 2 Creativity 3 Problem solving and critical thinking skills 4 Intrinsic motivation Preferred educational practices 1 Student centered instruction 2 Student choice 3 Developmentally appropriate practice 4 Guided discovery 5 Cooperative learning Information processing theory Stores model Information comes in through the senses and the things we are paying attention to come into the short term memory and once we ve processed that information we may use some memory strategy to move the information into long term memory Attention is a limited resource factors such as novelty emotion and personal significance can promote attention Memory 1 Why do older children remember better than younger children o Improvements in processing speed o Use of memory strategies o Content knowledge