Cognitive Approach to Learning

In the behaviouristic approach, learning is seen as the overt behaviours of learners, while in the cognitive approach, learning is considered as inner psychological functioning such as perception, concept formation, attention, memory and problem-solving. In this approach the learner first perceives the total situation in the problem field, finds a relationship between the elements of the object or the problem, and deduces a strategy for solving the problem.

The major tenets of this approach are as follows:

Learning is an active process involving change in the cognitive structure.

Learning requires cognitive effort and accurate conceptual understanding.

Concept of Cognitive Approach to Learning

The word ‘cognition’ is derived from the Latin word ‘cognoscrere’ which means to know, or to perceive. Cognitive theories discuss how people gain an understanding of themselves and their environment and how, in using this, they act in relation to their environment. According to cognitive theorists, teaching is a process of developing understanding or insight in the learner. Learning is the organization of precepts and purposes by the learner. Classroom experiences are related to the individual goals of learners. These experiences are encouraged to discover relationship to create the consequences of their efforts.

Cognitive approach emphasizes and gives importance to cognition (perception) in learning. According to this approach, learning is a complex process and it is viewed as acquiring changes in the cognitive structure. In other words, learning is the change in the cognitive structure. These changes (learning) take generally in basically three ways. They are:

Differentiation

Generalisation and

Restructuration

Let us elaborate each of these:

In differentiation, learning begins by differentiating specific aspects of oneself and of one’s environment. For example, an infant perceives every woman as his/ her mother. Later on s/he differentiates between mother, aunt, sister, etc. Thus the cognitive structure becomes more specific.

In generalisation, concrete and particular instances are given and the children reach general conclusion or generalisation. After differentiating the concept, the child gradually categories the differentiated concepts on the basis of specific unifying characteristics known as generalisation. For example, the child first learns to differentiate between various things as men, women, animals, birds, etc. and later on s/he unifies these differentiated concepts to form a single concept – living things and thus generalisation is reached.

Restructuration, as the processes of differentiation and generalisation take place, the individual restructures his cognitive structure to accommodate these differentiated and generalized concepts to gain control of him/her and the world. The child learns that all living things do not behave as human beings do. Thus, the concept of living things is restructured.

Characteristics of Cognitive Approach

The main characteristics of the cognitive approach are as follows:

Earlier cognitivists gave more emphasis to insight while the modern cognitivists place more importance on the human mental process, similar to a computer system in operation.

In the cognitive approach, learning is considered as an active and dynamic process

In this approach the perceptions of learner are processed through differentiation, generalisation and restructuration which help the learner in reacting to the specific cognitive structure to get a clear picture of the environment.

The cognitive approach is represented by a dynamic system.

The learner is purposive and interacting within the field of his/her goals.

It is the most suited for concept formation, problem solving and other higher mental processes.

Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Approach to Learning

In recent times, the work of Piaget has received a lot of attention. Piaget’s work has influenced a lot of thinking. Piaget studied the growth and development of the child. The main objective of Piaget has been to describe the process of human thinking from infancy to adulthood. Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development redefines intelligence, knowledge and the relationship of the learner to the environment. Intelligence, like a biological system is a continuing process that creates structures. In continuing interactions with the environment, s/he needs intelligence. Similarly, knowledge is an interactive process between the learner and the environment. Knowledge is highly subjective in infancy and early childhood and becomes more objective in early adulthood.

He believes that learning is a function of certain processes. They are: assimilation, accommodation, adaptation and equilibration. Let us discuss each process in detail so that Piaget’s cognitive approach to learning is understood properly.

Assimilation: It is a process of incorporating new objects and experiences into the existing schema (here, schema refers to well-defined sequences of actions). As soon as the schema of action is developed, it is applied to every new object and in every new situation. Assimilation of experiences into a succession of cognitive scheme takes place. Later, representation of words and actions using symbols takes place resulting in representational schema. The observation of surroundings and process leads to assimilation in the early stages of learning. This assimilation accounts for the children’s ability to act on and understand something new in terms of what is already familiar. Assimilation is followed by accommodation.
Accommodation:
In the individual’s encounters with the environment, accommodation accompanies assimilation. Accommodation is the adjustment of internal structures to the particular characteristics of specific situations. For example, biological structures accommodate the type and quantity of food at the same time so that the food is being assimilated. Similarly, in cognitive functioning, internal structures adjust to the particular characteristics of new objects and evens. Accommodation also refers to the modification of the individual’s internal cognitive structures. When the learner realizes that his or her ways of thinking are contradicted by events in the environment, the previous ways of thinking are reorganized. This reorganization, which results in a higher level of thinking, is accommodation. As the child continues to confront experiences in the environment, the schema is so formed so as to not remain permanent. S/he has either to combine her/his previous schemata or to modify them as per new experiences. The process of combining/modifying existing schemata and the arrival at new schemata is known as accommodation. Here, the child remains active and explores questions, experiments, etc.
Equilibration:
In cognitive development, equilibration is the continuing self-regulation that permits the individual to grow, develop and change while maintaining stability. Equilibration, however, is not a balance of forces but it is a dynamic process that continuously regulates behaviour. It indicates the balance between assimilation and accommodation. Equilibration is the factor that maintains stability during the process of continuous interaction and continuous change. Without equilibration, cognitive development would lack continuity and cohesiveness but instead would become fragmented and disorganized. Equilibrium is the balancing act between the old and the new, between perceptions and experiences. It is a dynamic process that attempts to reduce dissonance.
Adaptation:
Assimilation helps in getting new experiences into existing schema, while accommodation helps in combining/expanding/changing the new schema based on new experiences. Thus, the individual is helped in adjusting to new environment. This adjustment to a new environment is known as adaption. This adaption is also not the permanent one. S/he develops many new or modified schemata as s/he alters or extends her/his range of action. Adaption results from the interactionist process between the organism and environment –which helps the individual to organise her/his life experiences from the environment. In adapting to events in life the person tries to assimilate all experiences and information into existing cognitive structures. If this is possible, s/he accommodates by changing the cognitive structure. By assimilating the new to the old and by accommodating the old to the new, the person learns. The process of adaptation continues throughout life.

Based on his characterization of cognitive functioning as consisting of organization and adaptation, Piaget has presented a definition of intelligence. He believes that intelligence is not a fixed trait set for life but rather a process of adapting to the environment. The environment makes demands from the person.

These demands are reacted to when the person assimilates aspects of the environment into existing cognitive structures and accommodates the cognitive structures to environmental demands. In the first case, the person’s behaviour is determined by existing cognitive structures. In the second case, the person’s Approaches to Learning cognitive structures are modified by the environment. The result is adaptive behaviour or intelligence. Adaptation is a process through which a person seeks an equilibration or balance between what s/he presently perceives, knows and understands and what s/he sees in any new phenomena, experiences or problems. Adaptation is the human tendency to survive for equilibrium or balance between self and environment. The equilibrium is conceptualised by Piaget as a dynamic and growth-producing process which would be achieved at each intellectual stage, before a person reaches the next level of cognitive functioning. Therefore, the adaptation and the growth of organisms provide an explanation of the problems and processes involved in the adaptation of intelligence or knowledge (Piaget 1980).

Piaget has mapped out in detail the stages by which cognitive functions develop
and the times at which given concepts may be expected to appear. Piaget has propounded the four stages thus – probably the clearest version of his classification as sensory-motor, preoperational, concrete operations and formal operations. Each stage represents an increase over the previous one in the child’s ability to think abstractly, predict the world correctly, explain reasons for things accurately, and generally deal intellectually with the world.

i) Sensory-motor stage: This is known as the first stage. It extends roughly from birth to the age two. As the names implies, the schema that develops during this stage are those involving the child’s perception of the world and the coordination by which s/he deals with the world. It is during this period that the child forms his/her most basic conceptions about the nature of material world. He learns that an object that has disappeared can reappear. S/he learns that is the same object even though it looks very different when seen from different angles or in different illuminations. S/he relates the appearances, sound and touch of the object to one another. S/he discovers ways in which her/his own actions affect objects, and acquires a primitive sense of causality.

Thus, her/his world becomes increasingly an orderly arrangement of more or less permanent objects, related casually to each other and to her/his own behaviour.
ii) Proportional stage: It is known as the second stage and extends roughly from about age 2 to 7. In this stage, the child begins to exhibit the effect of having learned language. S/he is able to represent objects and events symbolically: not just to act towards them, but to think about them. The children have internal representations of objects before has words to express them. These internal representations give the child greater flexibility for dealing adaptively with the world, and attaching words to them gives him/her much greater power of communication. However, his/her intellectual abilities are still very limited compared with those of an adult. His/her thinking is still decidedly concrete by an adult standard. S/he tends to focus on one aspect of a situation to the exclusion of others, a process that Piaget calls cantering. His/her reasoning can be a logician’s nightmare, and s/he finds it difficult to understand how anyone else can see things from a point of view other than his/her own. S/he is thus, as the name of the stage implies, still early in the process of acquiring a logical, adult intellectual structure.
iii) Concrete operation stage: The third stage extends from age 7 to 11. Again, this represents an increase in flexibility. In this case, over the preoperational. The sort of operations to which the name of the stage refers includes classifying, combining and comparing. The child in the stage of concrete operations can deal with the relationships among hierarchies of terms such as robin, bird and creature. S/he is aware as the preoperational child is not, of the reversibility of operations. What is added can be subtracted, and a substance that has been changed in shape can be restored to its original shape. A girl at this stage will not fall into the fallacy that a preoperational girl may of saying, “I have a sister, but she doesn’t have any sister”.
Again, however, Piaget pointed out this is not the whole story. One child may have learned arithmetical operations by role fail to supply them when appropriate, while another child may deal effectively with problems without ever having been exposed to arithmetic. Learning of symbolic manipulations may be helpful to the child in going from the wide variety of concrete situations is more important.
iv) Formal operations stage:The fourth stage and final stage around age 11 years. It involves improvements in abstract thinking, continuing to about age 16. In this stage, the capacity for symbolic manipulation reaches its peak. Though children in the previous stage have been able to perform a number of logical operations, they haved one so within the context of a concrete situation. Now, the person intellectuality, because s/he is no longer a child, can view the issues abstractly. They can judge the validity of logical argument in terms of their formal structure, independent of content. S/he can explore different ways of formulating a problem and see what their logical Approaches to learning consequences are. S/he is at least ready to think in terms of a realm of abstract propositions that fit in varying degrees in the real world that s/he observes. S/he may not demonstrate all the tendencies in every possible situation, but s/he has reached the stage at which he is capable of doing so. The intellectual apparatus of formal reasoning that provides the basis for so much human achievement is at least potentiality at his/her disposal. Children may not show those stages within the age-ranges specified above, because of differing home and school environments. But what Piaget insists on, is that the sequence of these stages in intellectual development remains the same for all children.

At the higher education level, we are concerned with learners who are at the fourth stage i.e. formal operation stage. Therefore, we should know more about this stage. (learners at undergraduate level are expected to beat this stage). The important characteristics of the formal operation period/stage are listed below:

Learner at this stage survey many possibilities.

They design a system of what is hypothetically possible, is structured and followed by empirical verification.

They can conceive of an imaginary world.

They become critical of their own standards and look objectively at the assumptions in hand

They accept assumptions for the sake of argument

They generate hypotheses, discuss and proceed them to test

They try to generalize things

They become conscious of their own thinking and provide rational/ justification for their thinking, judgement and actions.

The older adolescents or adults are sufficiently detached from their ego and from their inner world to be objective one. They are also detached enough from external things to be objective observers and to be able to reason about the assumptions and the hypotheses and as such they can establish general laws.

They go even to the extent of finding empirical and mathematical proofs for their observations.

At this stage, thinking goes beyond the immediate present and attempts are made by them to establish as many vertical relationships as possible.

Notions, ideas and concepts are formal which belong to the present and future.

Educational Implications

The following important direct/indirect educational implications of Piaget’s approach to cognitive development are given below:

Piaget’s description of cognition (as a result of interaction of the individual with environment, accompanies by the process of assimilation and (accommodation) includes that cognitive development is a continuous process from birth to adulthood. This theory believes in gradual progression from one stage to another. Therefore, the teacher should try to determine the levels/ stages of development of learners and accordingly s/he should plan his instruction/teaching.

The relationship between the educational system and the child will be a unilateral and reciprocal one.

Childhood is accepted as a necessary and important phase in the development of logical thinking.

Science and mathematics are taught with actions and operations. Such instructions should begin in nursery school with concrete exercises.

Experimental procedures and free activity through training should be introduced for both liberal arts and science students.

Active methods that require the learners to rediscover or reconstruct the truths to be learned should be used. The teacher also provides counter examples to the learner that lead to reflection of their often hasty solutions.

Audio-visual aids can serve only as accessories in the learner’s personal investigations of truth.

Give-and-take can be developed in the group.

Spontaneous activity with small group of learners brought together by means of their mutual interest in a particular activity should be the major feature of classroom learning. The classroom should be a centre of real activities carried out in common so that logical intelligence may be elaborated through action and social change.

Learners must be permitted to make their own mistakes and to correct these errors themselves. Therefore, classroom instruction must be planned to facilitate the process of construction, assimilation and accommodation through which physical/empirical abstraction and reflective abstraction can occur.

The process of experimentation by learner at all ages is important. Only through experimentation the learner can acquire the skills that are necessary for formal operational thought. More importantly, experimentation often gives birth to new ideas. For young children, their first new ideas may not seem so original to adults. But such a practice in which children are encouraged to develop new ideas can lead to original discoveries. The more we can help children to have their own wonderful ideas and feel good about themselves for having them, the more likely it is that they will someday happen upon wonderful ideas that no one else happened upon before.

The cognitive activity that is generated by experimentation is essential. A child can be mentally active without physical manipulation just as s/he can be mentally passive while actually manipulating objects.

Many activities in pre-school curricula can provide opportunities for cognitive development. Block painting, finger painting, musical games, cooking, dramatic plays etc. engage the children in empirical and logical-mathematical abstraction. The classroom should provide situations to children in constructing their Approaches to Learning own knowledge so that the children can comprehend the world in new ways at different cognitive levels.

Classroom activities should maximize the child’s opportunities to construct and coordinate many relationships that he or she is capable of exercising.

At the pre-school level, the child is more interested in the observable effects or his or her actions than in relating the result to an organized cognitive structure.

The implications of educational practice are important. First, a variety of activities games and experiences should be provided to that the learner can exercise his or her developing subsystems. One suggestion is to use individualized mathematics laboratories that utilize a variety of materials for measurement and experimentation. Examples include blocks, dried peas, matchboxes, drinking straws, pipe cleaners and so on.

Games and activities that can provide experience with classification and serration are also needed. Classification games can be developed using blocks or pieces of plastic or felt that vary in two properties, such as colour and shape. Circles, squares and triangles in red, blue, yellow and green for example may be used in a variety of ways. Card games in which shapes and/or colours are to be matched is one example.

Drill and practice should be given in the classroom to make teaching learning effective.

Limitations of Piaget’s Approach

Piaget’s approach to learning has some limitations also. The important limitations are as follows:

Piaget does not seem to make his terminology very clear to his readers.

He is too preoccupied with numerous epistemological considerations.

Piaget’s entire work lacks scientific methodology as conventionally understood.

His emphasis is on concepts of relationships and he does not investigate,nominal concepts.

It’s lengthy and time consuming.

No direct teaching is involved.

Mathematics and Science cannot be applied in early childhood.

Tailoring narrow exercises for individual children is both impractical and unnecessary.

The child does not notice the contradictions in his or her own explanations.