Question

In Chapter 9,hDEV the text discusses the advances that occur during the transition from preoperational to concrete operational thinking. What is unique about the thinking that occurs in the concrete operation stage? Please describe the three specific areas of cognitive function that see the most substantial growth during the progression into concrete operational thinking. What would Piaget think about designing an elementary school classroom? Please attempt to put yourself in his shoes and describe the physical environment, supplies, books, teaching behaviors, and teaching practices for a perfect "Piagetian" school. How would this classroom differ from the common modern elementary school classroom?

Answer 1

In concrete operational stage children learn to develop their ideas in a more logical way, but their thinking is still far behind the thinking of an adult. They learn solve many problem systematically, but their cognition are still mostly unconscious. During this period the the children learn reversibility, which is the ability to reverse an operation and understand all the steps of that process. The other feature of this stage is decentration, which is the ability to decenter and focus on more than one aspect of a problem. The third important development and change from the preoperation stage which happens is egocentrism starts to reduce. Egocentrism involves not able to think from others point of view, but here the child slowly learns to acknowledge others view as well.

Children start to become very curious in this stage and want to learn about how things work. So, in order to create a perfect piagetian class room, some supplies can be bough such as different sizes of cups to measure liquids and get to know that different shapes of cups can contain the same amount of water. Getting real tangible toys for the children to make them learn abstract concepts should be done, or asking the children to make models of the planets and the solar system to understand scientific concepts.