This week’s term is less of a term and more of a group of tests or ‘tasks’. In any event, Piaget was always cool in my books, so I thought I’d chat a bit about some of his tasks, reversibility in particular. I was inspired by a chat I had recently with a very passionate professor – she rattled off one of the tasks she has her students do (so these are on average 18-22 year olds):
- First, she presents the students with two jars of jelly beans; one contains all red jelly beans and the other contains all black jelly beans. She explains that there are 250 jelly beans in each jar.
- Then, she shows her students a scoop, explaining that it holds exactly 15 jelly beans.
- She takes a scoop or red jelly beans and puts them in the black jar and then takes a scoop of now black and red jelly beans and puts them in the red jar.
- Finally, she asks the students how many jelly beans are in each jar.
The result she gets is much the same as one a child might get. Why? The correct reason is because the students, at 18-22, still have issues with the concept of the reversibility. Another reason might be that the students became confused by the word problem…similar to any time I was presented with one of those ‘a train is traveling south west at a speed of X…’ problems – which I HATED. Anyhow…so that discussion was my inspiration for this week’s post.
Alright, but what is a Piagetian task?
Jean Piaget was a developmental psychologist who some may refer to as the pioneer of cognitivism. He was a pretty cool cat, and is often chatted about in close proximity to Vgotsky (another name, another theory). His theory basically stated that cognitive development occurs in stages, as we grow, age, and learn from the world around us. Throughout his research, he tested children in varying stages of development with Piagetian tasks to determine whether they understood concepts of conservation, centring, and reversibility, to name a few. Based on their responses, Piaget posited that he could determine (or approximate…in the example of the 18-22 year olds) what stage of cognitive development the child was in. How neat is that?!
Another popular Piagetian task you might be more familiar with is one having to do with conservation of volume:
- The child is presented with two beakers; one is squat and wide, while the other is tall and slim.
- There is water in both beakers, and the instructor asks “which beaker contains more water?”
- The child typically responds that the taller one contains more water, when in actuality, both beakers contain the same amount of water. BAM!
Intrigued? Here are some resources:
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