Cognitive Development in Adolescence

Publisher Summary This chapter describes Piaget's picture of the intellectual developments occurring during adolescence. It discusses the empirical status of this picture and describes four major ways in which it might influence secondary education. The specific areas of influence include educational goals, assessment methods, matching curricula to students, and instructional methods. The chapter discusses how the Piagetian approach is being used and might more profitably be used. Piaget asserted that knowledge is constructed by the activity of the child. He insisted that intellectual growth is a form of adaptation that, like biological growth, has an inherent structure and developmental trajectory. Each stage of cognitive development reflects a particular mode of operating on information that carries with it the seeds for change and a resistance to it. Change comes about as children become aware of inadequacies and inconsistencies in their thought, but this change occurs slowly. Piaget's description of the development of formal operations has been attacked on logical and empirical grounds. Incorrect inferences regarding the logical abilities presumed to underlie the performance on formal tasks and inconsistent performance across tasks have led some observers to conclude that Piaget's description of adolescent development is neither accurate nor useful.

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