LET Tips: Possible Questions on Piaget and His Theory

One of my reasons why I made this blog was to actually help those who will get the LET or the Licensure Examination for Teachers pass the exam. I just took the exam last October 2009 and I was blessed that out of over forty thousand examinees who took the exam, I got the highest rating all over the Philippines. I was very honored and happy and I really want to share what I have.
Below are some of the possible items that are usually included in the exam. They may not the exact questions but at least you will have an idea of the possible questions given in the exam. Just try to answer as best as you can. Please don't immediately scroll down because I placed the answers at the bottom.

1. Two identical beakers A and B are presented to the child. The teacher pours the liquid from B to C, which is taller and thinner than both A and B. The teacher asks which beaker has the most amount of water. The child points at beaker C. In what cognitive developmental stage the child is?
A. Formal Operational Stage
B. Concrete Operational Stage
C. PreOperational Stage
D. Sensorimotor Stage
2. Liz's mother has two crackers, both equal in size. She broke one of the crackers into four pieces. Liz's wants more crackers so she chose the cracker which was divided to four pieces. What does Liz's choice illustrate?
A. Assimilation
B. Centration
C. Accommodation
D. Conservation
3. Which level of cognitive development will properties of mathematical operations can be taught?
A. PreOperational Stage
B. SensoriMotor Stage
C. Formal Operational Stage
D. Concrete Operational Stage

Correct Answers:
1. C- The child manifests centration which is one of the characteristics of preoperational children.
2. D- Liz has not yet develop conservation, or the ability to know that certain properties like the mass do not change even if there is a change in appearance.
3. D- At this stage, children know the concept of reversibility.

Applications: Piaget's Formal Operational Stage

1. Continue the previous applications but with more complexity and difficulty. Still use diagrams but let the students explain and interpret these themselves.
2. Have open discussions, symposiums, panels and debates.
3. Be open to "out of this world" questions and ideas from the students. Explore what ifs.
4. Encourage reflective thinking. Give a topic then let the students share their perspectives.
5. Give a problem and discuss with them possible solutions. It will be more meaningful if problems are related to students' lives and environment.

Haaay... At least I'm done with explaining all about Piaget. I hope I have discussed this as simply but as credible as possible. The next will be what I will call LET Tips. In these posts, I will be discussing possible questions related to a certain topic in which in this case, will be still about Piaget Theory of Cognitive Development. So just watch out for it....

Applications: Piaget's Pre Operational Stage

1. When presenting something, whether these are instructions, explanations lessons or directions, be concrete. Use illustrations, real objects, models even demonstrations. Don't only say them, don't be too verbose. Show them and even act them. You can be a model or even one of your pupils to demonstrate a given instruction or a scenario.
2. Since at this stage children are egocentric, avoid lessons or examples that are not immediate on child's experience. Listen to their stories, have an open discussion and sharing of experiences.
3. Have more of hands on activities than paper and pencil tasks. Let them manipulate objects and experience objects themselves especially if these will give them the opportunity to understand more about conservation. Objects like clay, water or sand could really help a lot.
4. Widen the world of a child. Let them explore their environment by having out of the classroom activities such as visits to different places or field trips.

Preoperational Stage: Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

   This is the second stage of cognitive development according to Piaget. This includes children who are two to seven years old and probably who are in preschool. The notable characteristic of this stage is that children can now make believe or pretend through the use of symbols. This is called "symbolic function". The most dominant symbol used is language, wherein children represent the objects that they experience through names or words. They can also use a certain object to symbolize or represent something else. Just imagine the tv commercial of a popular milk. The girl was singing something like "Mom said, don't eat your WOOOOOORDS!...She said, I have a beautiful VOOOOOOICE!".hahaha... Well, as you have seen, she was singing using a hair brush as her microphone. She pretended that the hair brush was her microphone. Have you seen your little brother or sister play? The boys especially in which they use sticks as their swords. But as they grow and develop, they can pretend only in their mind even without these objects. Again, imagine you as a child or seeing children play "Power power rangers" or " Good Morning Princess".(Do you know these games?hehe). Those explain it.

     Aside from symbolic function, children have the tendency to be egocentric. It means that they do not assume that each of us has different perspective. They believe that their point of view is the same as with all the people. This is the reason why for example, children have occasional "mine is better than yours" arguements with their agemates or your nephew or niece will ask you why you didn't call his/her mama or papa "mommy" or "daddy".

    Another characteristic of these stage is what we call centration. This can be explained by the experiment done by Piaget himself. In his experiment, he presented a child two identical glasses with the same amount of water. When the child was asked which glass has more water, he answered that both glasses are the same. However, when the water from one of the glasses was transferred to a narrower but taller glass, and was asked again, the child chose that the taller glass has the greater amount of water. This is centration. The child "centered" only on one aspect that is the tallness of the glass without taking into consideration the narrowness of it. This can also be seen when children tend to determine the sex of the people they meet. Boys wear pants while girls wear skirts. Or they will say that a person is already old when they see that that person is wearing glasses, has gray hair or has a mustache, without considering the age or the other details.
  
     Furthermore, children on this stage are very animistic. This is very obvious when they play dolls and stuff toys. And they will say to you not to throw their teddies and handle it with care because teddy might get "hurt". Or seeing a girl telling her agemate not to pick the leaves or the flowers of a plant because the plant will cry.
 
   According to one of our textbooks in college by Corpus, preoperational children has transductive reasoning. For example, if a preschool will be asked why there are no classes, he will probably answer "because it's Saturday." And if you'll ask again, "How did you know that it's Saturday?" He will probably answer "because there are no classes."

     Lastly, children on this stage has still the inability to reverse their thinking. In short, they still don't know that 1+2 is still the same with 2+1. This is the reason why I really had a difficult time explaining to my 6-year old tutee the commutative property of multiplication. That is why I wondered how come this topic was included in an Elementary Mathematics textbook for grade 1. Psychologically, this is inappropriate considering the mental stage of children. However, I thought that the author intended to put this topic maybe in order to help children develop reversibility. This might be true especially with the help of an adult, a teacher or a parent, or an older significant other, children will gradually develop the ability of reversibility.

SensoriMotor Stage: Piaget's Cognitive Theory of Development

This is the first stage of Piaget's Cognitive Development. This stage is from birth to infancy or zero to two years old. As the name implies, this is a stage where humans focus on the movement of muscles and body reflexes. Just imagine a baby and how he/she moves. And notice how baby toys are designed. In this stage, humans still have to familiarize and learn the world through interaction to objects, concrete objects in the environment.
According to Piaget, babies have the ability of "object permanence" or the ability of the child to know that an object still exists even without of sight. So if you show a baby a teddy bear, and then block or hide the teddy behind a cardboard, the baby would still believe that the teddy is there.
So to the parents, or even teachers, they have to provide a stimulating environment that will give the opportunity for the babies to learn his or her environment. Toys that captivate the senses like those with appealing colors, catching sound(not too much for the ear) and texture would be a great help for the development of this stage. But these toys will be useless and even hazardous without guidance of an adult or an older significant other.