Cognitive Development Study Guide & Piaget and Vygotsky's Review

Study Guide

Cognitive Development Study Guide

Objectives:

●     Compare and contrast the perspectives and principles of Piaget and Vygotsky

●     Identify specific ways to implement the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky in classroom instruction

●     Recognize the limitations of these theories

Key Terms:

General Principles of Development - Pages 31-33

Sensitive periods – A time period in your life where you are ready or more responsive to certain experiences and circumstances.

General Principles of Development

·         Students will develop at different rates.

·         For the most part development is orderly. Abilities develop in a logical order. Orderly does not mean linear or predictable. It means that some will advance, some will stay in that realm for a time period before progressing, and other could take steps backwards.

·         Development will take place gradually. It will not happen overnight. You have to allow time for the change to take place.

Piaget - Pages 45-57, 67-68

Scheme – Building blocks of thinking. They are organized thoughts that allow us to think about certain objects or events. An example of a scheme is learning how to ride a bike. You have to learn how to balance yourself and steer and pedal at the same time.

Assimilation – when you try to understand something new by fitting it into something that you know already.

Accommodation – when new information is presented you determine if you need to alter an existing scheme or create a new scheme.

Equilibration – searching for a balance between schemes and new information.

Disequilibrium – when you realize that your current way of solving or understanding a problem is not working

Sensorimotor stage (and its attributes) – thinking that involves the motor and senses activities.

·         Children in this stage make sure of memory, thoughts, and imitation

·         Children start to realize that objects do not disappear they are just hidden

·         Children move from reflex actions to goal-directed activity. 

Preoperational stage (and its attributes) – thinking is preoperational because children has moved toward mastery but has not mastered mental operations.

·         Children start to think in symbolic form

·         Children can start to think problems through logically in one direction

·         Children usually have a hard time seeing other people’s point of view.

Concrete operational stage (and its attributes) – mental tasks tied to hands on activities and situations.

·         Children can solve problems in a logical order

·         Children can understand the laws of conservation and they are able to classify.

·         Children can understand that tasks can be reversible

Formal operational stage (and its attributes) – tasks that involve children to think abstractly and coordinate various variations.

·         Students can solve abstract problems in a logical order

·         Students are able to do more scientific thinking

·         Students can identify and develop concerns around social issues.

Adolescent egocentrism – adolescents know that there are other perceptions and beliefs however they are more focused on their own. They spend more time analyzing their own attitudes and beliefs.

Vygotsky - Pages 58-66, 69-71

Sociocultural theory – It is the theory developed by Lev Vygotsky. This theory emphasizes the importance of socialization on cognitive development.  Cognitive development occurs through dialogue between children and more knowledgeable individuals (teachers, parents, peers, etc).

Internalization – Knowing that knowledge existed outside first and that we eventually brought it in and made it part of our own skill sets.

Co-constructed – collaboration between a student and a teacher (can even be child and parent, or two students) to interpret, understand, and/or solve a problem.

Cultural tools – tools such as calculators and spell checkers that allow people to think, communicate, and solve problems.

Private Speech (Self-talk and Inner speech) – self-talk that guides thinking and action. They start out verbally and eventually they become internalized as silent inner speech.

Zone of proximal development (ZPD) – the space between what the student already knows and what the student has not yet ready to learn. In this space scaffolding can support their learning.

Scaffolding – Using cues and structure to guide students learning.  Scaffolding moves students beyond their current skill set into more challenging skills.

Funds of knowledge – Knowledge that is acquired through many areas of home life, religious factors, and work life that can be used as a basis of teaching. As teachers this can be beneficial to know so that you can help make students make connections with new concepts by knowing their prior knowledge and personal background.

Guided participation – students engage in learning activities where the teacher provides the guidance and structure needed in order for the students to acquire the new skills

Cognitive apprenticeship – similar to a mentor or student – a student with fewer capabilities is peered with a more experienced person. The goal is to teach the student how to think like an expert in the given field.

Summary:

Jean Piaget developed a model that describes how adolescent’s process, organize, and develop information. His theory centered on the idea that children are motivated and active learners. He theorized that children developed schemes (or file cabinets) to develop concepts. This learning occurred through assimilation and accommodation. 

Vygotsky theory is referred to as "social constructiveness " The main idea of this theory is that children develop their thinking based off of exposure through their parents, teachers, elders, etc (whoever is more knowledgeable than the child). The development occurs through a process called internalization. Internalization occurred when children knew that their knowledge existed outside of themselves first and that eventually they brought it internally and made it part of their own skill sets. 

Application Questions:

1.      Which of Piaget’s stage(s) will your students be in? How will this impact how and what you teach? Be very specific.

Most of my students are going to be in the formal operational stage however I could have some students in the concrete operational stage. Since I may have students in a couple of stages I will need to make sure that my instruction compensates for that. For the formal stage students will be developing or have started to develop abstract skills and students in the concrete operational stage are able to think logically but may not be able to grasp the abstract skills quite yet. I can use teaching models such as the Concept Attainment model. This allows me to teach to both types of students but allows them to process the information that works best for them. They will be able to define a concept buy observing examples and non-examples and from that definition name the concept.

2.      Describe a topic in your content area that may cause your students to experience disequilibrium. How will you help them to assimilate and/or accommodate this information?

Disequilibrium can occur in almost any topic in Business/Marketing. One specific topic is Business Law. In Business Law you have multiple processes of law i.e., procedural law, criminal law, tort law, contract law, etc. Students will be in disequilibrium at first because tort law may not fit into the typical laws they are aware of. Typical laws can be traffic laws, mandate curfews, drinking/smoking ages, etc. Using teaching models such as the Concept Attainment model or the Concept Development model will cause students to accommodate the information and form new schemes.

3.      Describe an instance of scaffold instruction in your past.

Last semester one of my professors used scaffolding in her class. We had to create an Integrated Marketing Plan for a real company in Utah County. Instead of having just lectures every class period and then the assignment at the end of the semester she broke the assignments up into major sections. Each class period she would focus on one part of the first section and then the next part, etc. until the part 1 assignment was due. For a class period she would introduce the topic, go over main points, and then she would apply it to our companies. She would go around the room and ask each group how it applies to the company they are working for and if we could list examples. By the end of the unit we would be able to turn in a “masterpiece” that we have worked on our own based off the class discussions.

4.      How might you differentiate a lesson in your content area for different Zones of Proximal Development? Pick a specific topic and think of a concrete way to differentiate your instruction on that topic.

The topic that comes to mind is Career Plans for Financial Literacy. Teaching this topic in class can have differentiation. For example, the class can be learning about how to make a career plan. I would introduce the topic, show them examples of career plans and outline the parts of a career plan. Then students can get into groups with sample scenario’s of careers and build their own career plan. For homework, individual students will make their own career plan on the career of their choice. Differentiation for this activity can be achieved by doing the following:

a.       Readiness:   Provide Spanish translations of the unit’s vocabulary.  There will also be computers in the room for students to look up work skills for specific careers.  We will also have dictionaries for the students.

b.      Interest:  Each group will get to work on the career plan to develop the research paper of their choosing.

c.       Profile:  Research online for their career research paper – allowing the kinesthetic learners to use their hands on the computer.

d.      Affect:  Create a fun business learning experience for the students with descriptions of some fun careers before they break into groups for the research paper to get them excited about some careers they might be interested in.

Piaget and Vysokie's Review

Concept Attainment Study Guide

Explain what a "concept" is, and how understanding the concept of concepts makes learning easier. (In other words, define the relationship between facts and concepts).

• Concepts are ideas that are formed through categorizing data from several observations
• Facts are bits of information from an observation and have no value without other facts.

Explain the difference between knowing a concept's definition and a concept's meaning.

• Applying what the definition means by knowing examples to real life.

 Distinguish between concrete and abstract concepts in your content area.

• Concrete – specific concept (right triangle)
• Abstract – broad concept (freedom)

Summarize the model.

• The concept attainment model uses inductive reasoning by observing than hypothesizing and developing a theory. The goal is to define a concept by finding out what all the examples and non-examples do/don’t have in common.

Identify ways that you can differentiate and assess this model. (This model actually works great as a pre-assessment).

• Teachers can scaffold by linking previous concept attainment model to today’s lesson
• For readiness the activity can focus and help students who have learned the concept but need reinforcement. 

Concept Development Study Guide

Explain how Concept Development goes beyond Concept Attainment.

• Concept Development goes beyond the definition to inferences that cannot be observed.
• Concept development refines and extends our knowledge through providing an opportunity to refine our personal concepts.

 Summarize the steps to the Concept Development model

·         The concept development model starts by having students list as many objects, ideas, memories, etc. related to the desired subject. The students then group the items by how they are alike. Students will then label these groups and state why they decided to label the groups the way they did. Next, students will look at the lists and groups again and see if they can find additional items or groups they can create. Lastly, students will make a generalization about the subject

Identify ways that you can differentiate within the model, as well as ways you can assess it. (This model can serve as a great pre- or formative assessment (see the Evaluation section on page 115). Either way, step 5 (summarize and generalize) will probably be the step you want to align to your indicator.

• Interest can be used by allowing students to generate data sets
• Readiness can be used by dividing students into group and varying information

Motivation & Study Guide

How do you expect to perform in Educational Psychology? Do you see value in this class? What about the other classes you're taking this semester? Why or why not?

How does Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs translate into real life? What will your students need? How can you help them learn? Watch this great video introduction to Maslow's Hierarchy.

In the video below, a Junior High School Teacher demonstrates how Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs can be applied in schools. The music is hokey, but the message is valuable. 

How can you use aspects of self-determination theory (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) to motivate your future students? Read this excellent (and short) article about how we can effectively implement self-determination theory in the classroom. It will also help you with one of your application questions on the study guide! Here's a good overview of this theory for you visual learners.

Are your learning goals typically mastery- or performance-oriented? (Here's a great review of goal orientations) How does this orientation influence your approach to learning? Read the goals a friend of mine made last New Year's Day. What type of goals do they represent? What might goals like this look like in an academic setting?

To what do you typically attribute your successes and failures? Are your attributions internal or external, stable or unstable, controllable or uncontrollable? Watch this explanation of attribution theory. Then check your understanding of attribution theory in the exercise below

1. For which tasks do you have high self-efficacy? Why? For which tasks do you have low self-efficacy? Why? Is your self-efficacy for teaching high or low? Why? What could you do to improve it, if necessary? (We will revisit this concept later in the semester, so I'd love for you to make your teacher self-efficacy a goal to work on) Here is a summary of how self-efficacy impacts students' performance, and another on the profound effect of teachers' attributions and expectations on students' success.
2. Have you ever experienced learned helplessness? Why? How did you overcome it? How can you help future students overcome learned helplessness? Watch this video explanation of learned helplessness. Thisoverview of learned helplessness is very informative and helps us better understand where it comes from. Additionally, there are some very basic strategies that we can use while working with students with learned helplessness (or if we have it ourselves).

1. How can you arouse students' interest and maintain the "right" level of arousal in your classroom?
2. Is there such a thing as "good anxiety?" If so, how can you induce it in the classroom? How do you avoid "bad anxiety?" Do you have any anxiety issues? What steps do/can you take to reduce your own anxiety?
3. Read this article. Will your students experience anxiety? How can you help them?

Study Guide

Motivation Study Guide

 

Objectives (These are to help guide your study. You do not have to respond to them):

●     Recognize the signs of learned helplessness and brainstorm ways to overcome it.

●     Understand the differences between mastery goals and performance goals and how and why you should promote mastery goals in your students.

●     Promote self-regulation in yourself and your students.

●     Differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and understand how and when to use each.

●     Define various psychological needs that affect learning

●     Discover ways to spark curiosity and build interest in learning

●     Explore the effects of anxiety and self-handicapping

 

Key Terms:

Motivation Basics, pages 459-464

Motivation – the reason or reasons someone has for acting or behaving a certain way.

Extrinsic Motivation – motivation that occurs because of an award or punishment. For instance studying for an exam because I want to get a B on the exam.

Intrinsic Motivation – motivation that occurs as I work on activities and challenges that I have a personal interest in. No rewards are incentive or necessary because we consider the activity satisfying and rewarding.

Needs, Goals, and Beliefs, pages 466-481

Mastery Goal – My intentions to improve and learn no matter how awkward I may appear.

Performance Goal – The need to demonstrate abilities to others and perform well in the eyes of others.

Attribution theory – how my explanations, justifications, and excuses impact motivation

Locus – internal or external local of the cause to myself

Stability – Is the cause of the event the same across time and in different situations?

Controllability – is the cause controllable?

Learned Helplessness – when you believe that events and outcomes in your life is mostly uncontrollable and will lead to failure.

Learned Optimism – positive psychology that means you can develop the skills of being happy or positive.

Entity view of ability – a characteristic that is stable or uncontrollable. It cannot change.

Incremental view of ability-a characteristic that is unstable and controllable. By working hard, studying, and practicing knowledge can increase and ability improves.

Self-efficacy – an individual’s belief about one’s competence.

Self-worth – the quality of being worthy of respect or esteem.

Self-determination Theory – A theory that states that we need to feel competent and capable, to have choices, and a sense of control over our lives.

            Need for Autonomy – the desire to have our own wishes over external rewards.

            Need for Competence – the desire to feel effective in interacting and succeeding.

            Need for Relatedness – the desire to establish emotional bonds with others.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – seven levels of human needs

·         Deficiency needs – the lowest level of needs and must be satisfied first

o   Survival, safety, belonging, self-esteem

·         Being needs – higher level needs and referred to as growth needs

o   Intellectual achievement, aesthetic appreciation, self-actualization.

Interest, Curiosity, and Emotions, pages 482-490

Arousal – physical and psychological reactions that can cause a person to feel alert, attentive, wide awake, excited, or tense.

Anxiety – feeling uneasy or self-doubt, or tension

Summary (Write one paragraph to help you remember the key points of this section):

Motivation and goals can help us become successful in whatever we decide to do. In order for us to become successful and have effective goals and motivations we need to know how we work physically, emotional, socially, intellectually, etc. If we know each of these levels we will know what we need to do to satisfy these levels and how to motivate ourselves to reach our goals.

Application Questions:

1.      How will you utilize students' needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness to motivate your future students? Include each of the above in your response.

·         One thing that I want to implement in my classroom that supports autonomy is to encourage more choices. Since my content area is Business Marketing there will be a lot of projects that will allow students to choose various ways to complete a project while learning the objectives. To increase their competence I am going to ensure students are evaluated based off of their own improvements. I want to make sure that the praise I am giving them gives confidence in them and that the students desire to learn more and not just to get a good grade. For relatedness, I want to be able to show students their abilities and give them belief that they can do anything and be anything they want to be.

2.      How will you help students in your future classes (or even yourself) to overcome learned helplessness? How can you help your students develop learned optimism?

·         I want to make sure that my students understand things that are in their control and things that are not and how to deal with it. In addition, I will monitor for negative self-talk and try to point it out to teach students to think differently about themselves. Lastly, I will monitor how I talk toward them and about them. I want my students to know that there may be other ways to go about solving a problem and that their way may work. I do not want to take their power away by saying things like “Let me do it for you” or “That is too hard for you.

·         One way to help my students develop learned optimism is to point out the “silver lining” in situations. I can also have students spend 10 minutes of class writing in a reflection journal but their entries have to be about positive experiences or learning moments they had during a class period.

3.      Provide an example of an internal, stable, controllable attribution. Provide an example of an external, unstable, uncontrollable attribution.

·         An example of an internal, stable, controllable attribution is a student that never studies.

·         An example of an external, unstable, uncontrollable attribution is bad luck. With bad luck, it is out of their control and it is external. The event is unstable and there is nothing the student can  really do about it. 

Intelligence & Study Guide

Intelligence Study Guide

Objectives:

●     Define "intelligence" and explain how your definition might impact your teaching

●     Describe multiple theories of intelligence

●     Analyze the impact of sex, race, culture, and socioeconomic status on intelligence

Key Terms:

Pages 137-152

IQ – Intelligence quotient is a score that compares mental age and chronological age. The formula is Intelligence Quotient = Mental Age/ Chronological Age x 100

Flynn Effect – the effect of increasing IQ score by James Flynn

Cognitive Ability – is the ability to create and remember images and spatial information.

Cognitive Style – There are two types of cognitive styles visualizer and verbalizer. Visualizer usually thinks using images and visual information. Verbalizers usually think using words and verbal information.

Learning Preference – a persons preferred way of studying and learning.

Intellectual Styles – a way to think about intellectual styles that is manageable. There are three types: Types I, II, and III. Type I – prefers unstructured, free-flowing, creative, complex, and autonomous learning. Type II – prefers structured and straightforward tasks. Type III picks and choices between types I and II.

Spearman’s g – General intelligence that is used to perform a mental test. Each test is required some specific ability in addition to g.

Catell’s Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence

·         Fluid intelligence is mental efficiency and reasoning ability

·         Crystallized Intelligence is the ability to use problem-solving methods that are appropriate to your culture.

Sternberg's Theory of Successful Intelligence – intelligence is more than your measurement of your mental abilities. It is about your successes based on your own definition of success in your culture. The theory has three parts: analytic, creative, and practical intelligence

Gardner's Multiple Intelligences – an individual’s intelligent abilities broken down into eight separate abilities: linguistic (verbal), musical, spatial, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic (movement), interpersonal (understanding others), intrapersonal (understanding self), and naturalist (understanding human made patterns).

Distributed Intelligence – the ability to use things, people, or resources beyond ourselves to act more intelligently.

Emotional Intelligence – our understanding and regulation of our emotions.

Mindset:

·         Fixed Mindsets

o   Thinking your intelligence and talents are a fixed trait.

·         Growth Mindsets

o   Abilities and talents cultivated through effort and instruction.

Summarize the information about sex and intelligence:

            From infancy through the preschool years, most studies find few differences between boys and girls in overall mental and motor development or in specific abilities. Scores on tests of specific abilities show sex differences. From elementary through high school, girls show higher scores than boys on tests of reading and writing. Boys, however, show an advantage when it comes to manipulating visual images and spatial abilities. Can intelligence be heredity or environment?? It is almost impossible to separate intelligence from experience and genes. Psychologists today believe that intelligence is the result of both heredity and environment.

Summarize the information about race and intelligence:

             There are studies that show a difference in IQ scores based on race; however Neuroscientists believe there are no physiological differences in the brains of people from different races that would explain different intelligence levels.

Summarize the information about culture and intelligence:

How people are raised, what their culture values, and what their environments are like can dramatically impact their performance on IQ tests. Some cultures think that reading books is useless while other cultures may value the way they hunt. Culture can play a large role in how intelligence is defined, what we feel is intelligent behavior, and what qualities we will try to teach future generations. Culture factors are an important factor to consider but socioeconomic status is one fact that has played a major role in IQ.

Summary:

Intelligence is the “ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations.” Intelligences are used to process knowledge for life and its complexities. Many theories describe intelligence gain and describe how the brain may compartmentalize the new information. Strategies and systems have been developed that measure Intelligence success in the classroom. However, more research and observation is needed. It may be that we will never know what intelligence really is, how our brain organizes the information, if it can expand, or if it is even quantifiable.

Application Questions:

1. How do you define intelligence? How will this definition impact how you teach, what you teach, and the expectations you have for your students?

            The definition that I really like is “the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations.” I want my students to be growth-mindset students. One of the reasons why I am becoming a teacher is that I know that some kids do not have a support system. I want to be able to show them their abilities and give them belief that they can do and be anything they want to be.

 2. How will you incorporate multiple intelligence's and intellectual styles/preferences in your teaching?

Learning styles and incorporating multiple intelligences will be incorporated into my teaching. Throughout this chapter I understand the benefits of incorporating them and it provides me with a strategy to make learning more effective. One way I would incorporate them was if I was seeing my students struggle with a topic I would try to find other ways to teach the concept. For example, if my lecture is heavily verbal/linguistic approach than I will try and incorporate as much as I can of all eight strategies into my lesson plan. My goal with this is to ensure that I am reaching every student through various means of learning styles.

 3. How will you help your students develop a growth mindset?

I will help my students develop a growth mindset by teaching students strategies. They can also develop mindset by me helping them understand and accept that errors and mistakes are a part of the learning process and to learn from them. I also read recently that to help develop a growth mindset teachers want to make sure that they are comparing a student’s progress to their prior work and not comparing them to other students.

  

4. How will you help your students develop Emotional Intelligence? Be specific about how you will help students develop each of Goleman’s 5 attributes.

I want to create an environment where students respect and understand emotions. They understand their own emotions and they can sympathize with other student’s emotions. This environment will allow my students to be honest and students can be themselves. In order for this environment to exist I will need to be the example and show students how to properly handle themselves as situations come up. To motivate my students I want to create an award system. I remember in 5^th grade we had a reward system that everyone had a green, yellow, blue, and red card. If within two weeks everyone got a green card the whole class had some reward (movie, party, treats, etc.) The card system was to promote good behavior and encourage students’ interactions and environment to encourage students to get the green card.