The Winding Path

Jean Piaget was a pioneer in the field of developmental psychology, though he began his scientific career as a biologist, studying molluscs and producing many papers on them and other animals from the early age of 11.

But it’s his work on a theory of cognitive development for which he is most well known. I’m still studying him so I won’t go into much detail now, but I would like to highlight some of the aspects of a child’s development which I think are relevant for all of us, throughout our lives.

One of Piaget’s key ideas was that of adaptation to the world through the twin processes of assimilation and accommodation. He proposed that children have two options when forming an understanding of their environment. They could assimilate new information, perhaps making some slight adjustments to allow a good fit, but it’s usually a simple, effortless process. An example is seeing a bird fly past. Even if it’s an unfamiliar bird the child can recognise it as a bird and assimilate that understanding, including the knowledge that a bird can have the specific colours, patterning, style of flight, etc., seen in this new bird.

The other option is accommodation, where new information goes not fit well into any existing understanding. In this case known concepts must be altered allow the new information to be included. Continuing the bird example, the child might see a butterfly land on a branch. He might exclaim, “Oh look, a little birdie!” His mother might reply, “No son, that’s a butterfly.” He now has to accommodate this new information, creating a new category and altering his understanding of birds to accommodate the idea that not all flying creatures are birds.

You can see that the processes of assimilation and accommodation can happen in tandem. The child assimilates the idea of a new type of bird, and accommodates greater variety into his understanding of birds. Later his understanding of birds accommodates an exclusion of different flying creatures, and assimilates the butterfly into his understanding of all things that can fly.

The overall process of adaptation moves through a series of states, from equilibrium to disequilibrium then to equilibrium once again, over and over. It’s this movement that fosters the process of reflective abstraction, which allows the child to notice differences and similarities in his current and newly learned knowledge. In the first state of equilibrium the child knows certain things about the world and is comfortable with that knowledge. Then something new appears, something which doesn’t quite fit with his understanding, nudging (or sometimes throwing him) into a state of disequilibrium. He’s no longer so certain. He can then reflect (often after asking an adult a question or 20) on this new knowledge and then adapt to it.

I think this is important for all of us to understand too. If we don’t allow ourselves to move to that state of disequilibrium, or uncertainty, even if only a little, then we can’t adapt. If we stoically affirm that our knowledge is complete, we deny ourselves the opportunity to learn. We become the child who confidently states that his stick figure drawings do so show bodies. See, right there, head, arms, legs, body!

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Beliefs, Learning, Psychology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.