However, there are some challenges to Piaget’s Theory. Most of the challenges to Piaget’s Theory stem on infant behavior and little research on environmental factors. Here are a few challenges:
· The timetable of cognitive skills. Piaget only credited a cognitive skill only when the child/infant mastered the skill and not when the ability to do the skill first appeared. So it makes you wonder do cognitive skills really occur in stages. Kids are individuals that come from various back grounds so how do you fit each child into a stage?
· How do social & cultural influences affect these stages?
· Piaget assumes that there is a simultaneous progress of skills. How about training a child to master a skill that lies in another stage? Is that not possible?
-Anna Kuchment with Newsweek reported on parents who potty-trained their kids as
early as 3weeks old. That’s a milestone reserved for 1.5 to 3 years old.
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9375368/site/newsweek/)
· Limited adult supervision and interaction. Piaget promotes children’s own play.
So as future educators who plan on incorporating Piaget style teachings. We need to understand these challenges and have solutions to the gaps in this teaching style.
3 comments:
Seeing as I hope to teach students going into the "formal stage" according to Piaget, I will try to implement lessons that stretch their ability to decenter themselves, to escape egocentrism, and to think abstractly. Piaget says people notice things and either accommodate or assimilate it. Accommodation is fitting it into an experience you've had, and to assimilate it to fit it into a theory you believe. Understanding that student are doing this with things they learned helps us to see why people can see things so differently. Piaget said we are all building on previous knowledge. So I want to relate to my student's knowledge and build on it.
I see the logic in Beccabaker's argument, and agree with Piaget's reasoning that we should be focusing on raising a generation of thinkers and innovators. Too often do students in schools only learn what they "need to" to get by in their coming classes. If we are going to grow as a species, we must shunt aside this educational paradigm and teach our children how they can GROW.
Like Becca, I plan to teach children in the "formal stage," and I look forward to challenging them to think critically. These days, we have a host of tools at our disposal to help us. Not only do these tools help us get our student's attention, but they give us faster and simpler ways to facilitate true and thoughtful interaction with the material. This is where I really agree with Piaget - in wanting my students to think critically and be fully engaged in understanding WHY they think and feel as they do about whatever content I'm trying to share with them.
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