Application to Education

Applications of cognitive development theories to education

Piaget Education Application

·        Useful to know what stage of cognitive development a child is in so that tasks appropriate to learning are set and stage specific instructions are given.

└->only the material that a child is ready to learn is taught.

o   Burns & Silbey- Children learn best when activities match their stage of development.

o   Stage specific instruction may be good for some children but not for others.

o   Piaget underestimated the readiness of children to learn. 4 year olds were able to complete tasks from the concrete operational stage.

·        Children must be able to self discover, be challenged and learn on their own. Role of the teacher is to encourage self learning and place the child in a state of disequilibrium.

o   Cultural bias- may not be universally appropriate. Asians usually do well with traditional instruction-> can be misleading as more time may be spent on that subject.

o   Effective in computer based environments.

o   Underestimates the added benefits of direct teaching.

AO2

·    Evidence that traditional teaching methods i.e. lecturing, are better than Piaget’s method.

·    The approach is best used on…