September 17th, 2018

I learned about Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development and how humans make sense of their world by “gathering and organizing information”(Piaget, 1954,1963,1970a,1970b). Although as adults certain ways of thinking come easily to us, our students may have great difficulty understanding these concepts. I was unaware of the four stages of cognitive development before reading the textbook this week. I found it very interesting that each of the four stages has a fairly distinct range of ages in which children are in the category. For example, the preoperational stage being from when a child begins talking, to the age of seven. The reason I find this interesting is because as a physical education major, we are always taught that all students in a certain grade level will not be at the same developmental stage. I was also unaware of Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective, which I found to be very interesting. He believed that our thoughts and processes are shaped largely through our cultures and those we interact with (pg49).

My first connection came when the book was talking about teaching children something that is simple to us as adults. My niece kept asking me what the time was one day, so I had the thought that I should teach her how to tell me what time it is. This was a much more difficult task than I had imagined, and was explained to me through Piaget’s theory. Another connection I had was in the beginning of the chapter when the anatomy of the brain was being explained. I learned about the regions of the brain, neurons, and the major functions of the different regions when I took anatomy in first year.

It is mentioned in Educational Psychology by Woolfolk, Winne & Perry (2016) that stressors in the classroom can create even more difficulty for students and how they perform (pg33). This leads me to my question, I am wondering what would be a better strategy to use instead of bringing students up to the board?