>Dewey called me to task for using the term " a strict Piagetian
>interpetation." Well, I meant that perhaps more in the sense of a
>strict expectation -- that is Piaget says kids are in the sensorimotor
>stage until 24 months, and these two stages of combinatorial play are
>theoritized, and observed, by McCune to happen past the sensorimotor
>stage, in the symbolic phase of the stage of preoperations. But my point
>was that those age limits are far from fixed in real ife, and the child
>that can DO those things, regardless of how young, has acquired mental
>representation, and the ability to use symbols.
My original comment was aimed at two issues:
One was the notion implied that Piaget intended us to believe that the
patterns he saw had strict age limits. To say "In the population we
observed, the patterns we associate with the stage we are calling concrete
operational seemed to begin by age 24 months." is not the same as saying
"The concrete operational stage starts by 24 months." I believe that
especially when read in the original French, Piaget's work reads much more
like the former than the latter. So I doubt that one could find the
equivalent in French in Piaget's writing of "kids are in the sensorimotor
stage until 24 months." On the other hand popularizers of Piaget's work
are more likely to have used language such as the latter. I believe that
Piaget would not have hesitated to have agreed with you if you had had a
chance to put to him the notion that "age limits are far from fixed."
It seems to me that part of Piaget's point about stages is that they seem
to be a natural series or sequence which his group seems not to have
observed people skip a stage or display them out of sequence. It also
seems to me that he was not suggesting that one stage _replaces_ another,
hence elements of previous stages continue to be present in a person's
behavior.
My second point is that it appears that apparently what is popularly
associated with the stages Piaget described are far from anything that any
serious observer of children could thoughtfully suggest. Piaget, if
nothing else, was a close observer of children. How could it be seriously
imagined that Piaget could have suggested that there is no mental
representation in the sensory motor stage when, for one example, he talks
about the development of object permanence during this time? Again,
popularizers of Piaget have not helped in this issue. Taking them at their
word robs us of contributions Piaget might make to our thoughts by trying
to take _his_ words seriously into account as we try to make sense of our
experiences.
One should wonder about this same phenomenon in the case of the
popularizers of _anyone's_ work. How about Vygotsky?
>Incidentally, I did not add that much of what children do at that stage
>can also be explained by Vygotsky's ideas of scaffolding and the ZPD. Many
>parents explicitly show kids what to do with replica toys. There are one
>or two nice articles in the Bretherton book that indicate how parents
>scaffold early pretend play with their toddlers.
It is often the case that more than one explanation can be given for the
same observations. The importance of any one of the explanations is the
extent to which it makes sense to us personally and to which we find it
useful in accomplishing our goals.
Dewey
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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775
Department of Physics/SN318 Fax: (208)385-4330
Boise State University dykstrad who-is-at varney.idbsu.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper
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