Piaget, 1931
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Piaget was a Doctor of Science and Professor at the University of Geneva while being published in 1930. This Think-Aloud experimentation attempted to understand the relationship between prediction and the explanation of scientific phenomena with children. The two experiment included in our readings are about the displacement of the level of water by the immersion of a solid body and the ability to correctly explain the mechanisms of a bicycle. They wanted to have the children first predict what would happen verbally, and then asked them to compare their prediction with what acually took place.
In the first experiment, Piaget asked children to predict what will happen when water is displaced by pebbles, flowers, pieces of wood, and even quantities of aluminum to have the children predict, reflect, and respond to the actual events in light of their own prediction. The results were broken into three groups or stages in relation to how close they were to predicting and understanding the physical properties of mass and volume.
The first group of children predicted and explained that the water rose because of the weight of the object. These children thought that the object exerted a continuous pressure in the water which raised the water level. They didn't grasp the idea of volume, but explained the change in water level as a current that ran from the bottom upward like a wave. These children obviously confused weight and volume.
The second stage children were able to understand volume, but based all their predictions on this property. When these predictions proved unexplainable, they reverted to their theories of weight of the object to explain the displacement. Interestingly, to Piaget, is that these children were confronted with obvious contradictions in their prediction and explanations, and yet failed to notice.
In the third stage explanations and predictions were connected. The weight of the objects was not an issue anymore, and there was no talk of current on the water by the submerged object.
From these observations, Piaget concluded that, "...the child proceeds from dynamic to mechanical causality." (p.173)
The second experiment showed the syncronism of ages and the correct explaination of the mechanisms of a bycicle. The children were asked to draw and explain the various parts. A complete drawing was based on five degrees: 1st: the two wheels of the bycicle were correct 2nd: one of the cog-wheels was correctly placed 3rd: one cog-wheel was situated in the center of the back wheel 4th: there was a chain surrounding the two cog-wheels in the correct fashion 5th: the pedals were fixed to the large cog-wheel
They discovered four stages of explanation. The first stage explained the movement synthetically, with no relationship to the pedals or gears. In the second stage, the pieces of the bycicle were examined in detail, but each piece was, although necessary, completely isolated from the other parts. In the third stage, the action of the pieces is part of the conversation, but the correct explanation is not discovered. Finally, in the fourth stage, the pieces and explanation converge to provide the correct version of how the bycicle works. He found that the evolution of answers, "...show(ed) a gradual progression from irrational dynamism to ... intelligible dynamism to a genuinely mechanistic view of causality." (p.212)
