The youngest children choose whatever looks like the biggest amount of juice. They seem to believe that the juice becomes “more” when it is poured from one glass to another.
from watching video of these studies, i reached a different interpretation. specifically, i believe that group 1 is best modeled as playing a language game with the facilitator.
the facilitator places the lumps of identical clay, and asks which is more. the child indicates that they are the same. one piece of clay is flattened, and the facilitator asks again which is more. the child now indicates the flattened clay.
what’s interesting to me, here, is that the child’s focus is on the facilitator, and not on the clay.
my best understanding is that the child is uncertain about the meaning of the word ‘more’ in the context. it’s a bit of an odd question the facilitator is asking, right? and perhaps the child is thinking “well, maybe ‘more’ means ‘bigger’?” or some unverbal equivalent. (note that, if the facilitator did ask “now, which one is bigger?”, then the flattened clay would be a natural choice, even for an adult.)
(i think this is actually in accordance with the overall essay, which essay i found very interesting!)
Glad you liked it. And yes, I would agree that this is in accordance with what I tried to point out.
Being asked a question two times incentivises children (and adults, I might add) to favour a different answer. This makes interpretations blurry and the categorisation notoriously unreliable. The child in the video you describe could well be regarded as in second or even third phase, yet not engaged in the intended task (but focussed on the “language game”) -- or simply unclassifiable. Criticism will often point out these weak data points but fail to check how that affects Piaget’s deduction of constructivism as a description of how concepts are acquired (not at all, as long as there is also some compelling evidence for phase 2).
Maybe some day we will have more objective measurements of people’s reasoning. Evolutionary biology started out with spotty data and took a long time to fill the gaps it couldn’t explain in detail, the human eye being the most prominent example,* but nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. For me, it’s the same with constructivism and learning theory. And it’s exciting, if scary, to see how we might learn more about our own minds in the near future.
*) I think it’s 300-odd evolutionary steps, and every single one brings a gradual fitness advantage.
from watching video of these studies, i reached a different interpretation. specifically, i believe that group 1 is best modeled as playing a language game with the facilitator.
the facilitator places the lumps of identical clay, and asks which is more. the child indicates that they are the same. one piece of clay is flattened, and the facilitator asks again which is more. the child now indicates the flattened clay.
what’s interesting to me, here, is that the child’s focus is on the facilitator, and not on the clay.
my best understanding is that the child is uncertain about the meaning of the word ‘more’ in the context. it’s a bit of an odd question the facilitator is asking, right? and perhaps the child is thinking “well, maybe ‘more’ means ‘bigger’?” or some unverbal equivalent. (note that, if the facilitator did ask “now, which one is bigger?”, then the flattened clay would be a natural choice, even for an adult.)
(i think this is actually in accordance with the overall essay, which essay i found very interesting!)
Glad you liked it. And yes, I would agree that this is in accordance with what I tried to point out.
Being asked a question two times incentivises children (and adults, I might add) to favour a different answer. This makes interpretations blurry and the categorisation notoriously unreliable. The child in the video you describe could well be regarded as in second or even third phase, yet not engaged in the intended task (but focussed on the “language game”) -- or simply unclassifiable. Criticism will often point out these weak data points but fail to check how that affects Piaget’s deduction of constructivism as a description of how concepts are acquired (not at all, as long as there is also some compelling evidence for phase 2).
Maybe some day we will have more objective measurements of people’s reasoning. Evolutionary biology started out with spotty data and took a long time to fill the gaps it couldn’t explain in detail, the human eye being the most prominent example,* but nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. For me, it’s the same with constructivism and learning theory. And it’s exciting, if scary, to see how we might learn more about our own minds in the near future.
*) I think it’s 300-odd evolutionary steps, and every single one brings a gradual fitness advantage.