Piaget believes that development is a process in which the internal psychological structure of an individual is constantly changing in the constant interaction with the environment. All living things have a tendency to adapt and build. The adaptive function of biological organisms includes two processes: assimilation and adaptation. Assimilation refers to the integration of external elements into the structure that is being or has been formed, while adaptation refers to the adaptive change of the internal structure of the organism under the influence of assimilated elements. When an organism is faced with a new thorn scene, if the subject can use the existing schema to integrate * * * into his cognitive structure, this is assimilation, while when the organism cannot use the original schema to accept and explain the current thorn scene, its cognitive structure changes due to the influence of * * *, which is adaptation. Schema refers to the internal structure that people adapt to specific situations, and it is a concept that Piaget used to explain people's cognitive structure.
How to understand the two concepts of assimilation and adaptation in Piaget's cognitive development theory and how to realize the explanation, assimilation and adaptation in Piaget's theory in teaching? The cognitive imbalance between assimilation and adaptation is both antagonistic and interrelated. The specific analysis is as follows: (1) The opposition between the two ① Assimilation is that individuals bring objects (external things) into existing cognitive structures or behaviors in the process of reflecting and acting on the environment (that is, interacting with the environment). It is only a quantitative change, and it cannot cause schema change or innovation. (2) Adaptation refers to the process that an individual adjusts his original cognitive structure or behavior pattern to adapt to environmental changes when his original cognitive structure or behavior pattern can no longer assimilate new experiences. It is a qualitative change, which promotes the generation of new schema or the adjustment of original schema. (2) Their connection, assimilation and adaptation are two forms of adaptation. When the existing schema can't solve the problem situation, Piaget's unbalanced state arises. Individuals will naturally try to adjust this imbalance in various ways. Piaget believes that psychological development is a process in which individuals achieve balance through assimilation and adaptation to increasingly complex environment. It is in the alternation of balance and imbalance that individuals constantly construct and improve their cognitive structure and realize cognitive development.
10, on Piaget's cognitive development theory. Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, divides the cognitive development of infants into perceptual movement (0-2 years old), pre-operation (2-7 years old), concrete operation (7- 1 1 year old) and formal operation (1-15 years old). The cognitive development of children in the stage of perceptual movement is mainly the differentiation of feeling and action. Children in the pre-operation stage begin to internalize their various perceptual movement patterns into representations or image patterns, and they believe that everything outside is alive. All people have the same feelings, and everything is self-centered; Cognitive activities are more specific, and abstract operational thinking cannot be carried out; Thinking is irreversible. Children's cognitive structure in the specific operation stage has an abstract concept, and their thinking can be reversed for logical reasoning. The sign of this stage is that children have reached the conservation of length, volume, weight and area. In the formal operation stage, children's thinking is carried out in the form of propositions. At this stage, children can not only make logical reasoning by experience-induction, but also solve problems by hypothesis-deduction. At this stage, children can understand the meaning, metaphor and direct metaphor of symbols, and can make some generalizations, and their thinking development level is close to that of adults. Children at this stage not only have reverse reversible thinking, but also have compensatory reversible thinking. At this stage, children no longer stick to the rules, but often violate the rules because they do not conform to the facts.
Piaget's cognitive development theory and educational process theory are the most influential psychological theories in this century. The founder and main representative of this theory is J.Piajet, a famous Swiss child psychologist. After long-term clinical research, Piajet established a profound cognitive development theory with the theory of intellectual development stages as the core from the research of children's cognitive development fields such as language, thinking, logic, reasoning, concept formation and moral judgment. This theory not only has a great influence on the development of world psychology, but also becomes an important theoretical basis for educational reform in many countries. In recent years, European and American countries, especially developed countries such as the United States and Britain, have paid more and more attention to Piaget's theory, and have regarded cognitive development theory as the theoretical basis of school curriculum reform, and its influence has far exceeded the psychological circle. As American psychologist J Kagan said, Piaget should be the most influential cognitive development theorist in this century, if not unprecedented.
Piaget's cognitive development theory is centered on the theory of intellectual development, which involves the influencing factors, stage characteristics and essence of intelligence, and many of its specific contents become an important basis for designing courses and selecting course content.
Piaget's cognitive development theory holds that children are active and children's behavior is the result of the interaction between congenital genetic structure and external environment. It is on the basis of congenital genetic structure or schema that children gain physical experience and mathematical logic experience through constant assimilation, adaptation and balance, and constantly form new cognitive structure to promote the development of intelligence.
Piaget believes that there are four factors that affect children's intellectual development: maturity, experience, social interaction and balance. Maturity is gradually achieved on the basis of innate overcoming genetic factors, and its role in cognitive development is only a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition. Whether intelligence is developed or not depends on the role of acquired environmental factors. Experience includes physical experience and mathematical logic experience. Physical experience is relatively simple, which is obtained by children operating various things in the external environment. Only after assimilation can it enter children's cognitive structure and form new development. Mathematical logic experience is a concept that children acquire through internal activities, rather than knowledge acquired from the surface of objects. It transcends physical experience and is the basis for children's further development. Social communication generally refers to the influence of culture on children's cognitive development, mainly referring to social relations, education and language use. It distinguishes humans from other animals. Concepts such as honesty and fairness can only be mastered through social interaction. Balance is an internal self-regulating system, which is responsible for coordinating maturity, experience and social interaction. It is a state of mutual adjustment between individuals and the outside world, a method to solve contradictions and conflicts, and an inevitable process of cognitive development.
Piaget believes that cognitive development is a process of continuous organization and reorganization of cognitive structure, which is gradual and phased, and different stages of development have different characteristics. Piaget divided children's cognitive or intellectual development into four stages: sensory stage (0~2 years old), pre-operation stage (2~7 years old), specific operation stage (7~ 1 1 year old) and formal operation stage (1~1).
What is the content of Piaget's cognitive development theory? Piaget's cognitive development theory includes the following aspects:
1, the origin of cognition: the interaction between internal and external causes, while emphasizing that psychological changes continue to occur in this interaction.
2. Cognitive structure: schema, assimilation, adaptation and balance.
3. The stages of cognitive development:
(1) nastic movement stage (from birth to 2 years old), individuals know the world through feelings and actions;
(2) In the pre-operation stage (2 to 7 years old), individuals begin to think with simple language symbols, which have the ability of thinking in images, but lack reversibility;
(3) In the specific operation stage (7 to 1 1, 12 years old), there are scattered reversible operations and logical thinking, and generally only images or specific things can be operated;
(4) In the stage of formal operation (1 1, 12 to 14, 15 years old), you can separate the content from the form in your mind, so that you can think beyond the perceived specific things or images and carry out abstract logical thinking and propositional operation.
4. Factors affecting cognition: the balance process of maturity, social environment, physical environment and self-regulation.
Enlightenment of Piaget's cognitive development theory to education and teaching Piaget attributed the occurrence and development of cognition to two main aspects, namely, the psychological structure of cognitive formation and the mechanism of new knowledge formation in the process of cognitive development. He believes that every intellectual activity contains a certain cognitive structure, that is, schema. Schema is the basic mode for human beings to understand things. Assimilation means that the subject brings the object into his schema, which causes the change of schema quantity. Adaptation means that the subject transforms the existing schema to adapt to the new situation and causes the qualitative change of the schema. Balance refers to the relatively stable adaptation state between the subject structure and the object structure caused by the balance of assimilation and adaptation [1]. Assimilation and adaptation are two functions of adapting to the environment. When children encounter new things, they always try to assimilate with the original schema in the cognitive process. If they succeed, they will gain a temporary cognitive balance. On the contrary, children will adapt, adjust the original schema or create new schema to accept new things until they reach a new balance in understanding. In fact, the development of children's psychology is to constantly raise the schema from a lower level to a higher level, so that the psychological structure is constantly changing and innovating, forming different levels of development stages. Piaget also divided the construction process of children's cognition into perceptual movement stage (0 ~ 2 years old), pre-operation stage (2 ~ 6 years old and 7 years old), concrete operation stage (6,7 ~112 years old) and formal operation stage (1/kloc-) Each stage is an extension of the previous stage, and it is a reorganization of the previous stage at a new level, surpassing the previous stage in the degree of growth. There are qualitative differences in each stage. Although each stage may be advanced or postponed due to the difference of everyone's wisdom and social environment, the sequence of stages is unchanged, and everyone has to go through such stages. Piaget is an active advocate of "activity teaching method". He pointed out that the real foundation of children's learning is activity. Activities play a vital role in children's intellectual development, especially in their early years. Not only that, but also the development of intelligence can be carried out with the continuous improvement of the internalization level of action. Activities are the real foundation of children's learning and the real starting point of teaching, and activities should run through the whole teaching process. Piaget's theory is closely related to education, which has a considerable impact on modern western education and has important reference significance for China's current and future educational research and reform. (1) The goal of education should be to improve students' ability to understand knowledge. Piaget believes that new knowledge can only be absorbed if it is incorporated into the original knowledge structure. Therefore, the goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge, but to improve students' ability to understand knowledge. Give students enough time to absorb and assimilate what they have learned and let them understand. If knowledge is instilled in students just to complete teaching tasks and cope with exams, students will be forced to learn mainly by memory. Memories without understanding can only lead to neither learning knowledge nor promoting intellectual development. (2) Teaching content should adapt to children's cognitive development level. Piaget put forward four stages of intellectual development, and thought that each stage had its own unique cognitive structure. He believes that development is a process of continuous construction, and further development is possible only on the basis of the development in the previous stage. Therefore, the shaping of intelligence is conditional, and the curriculum must be designed according to the stage of intellectual development. Teaching can't surpass children's development stage, and teaching design can only accelerate the development of thinking on the basis of conforming to the characteristics of thinking development. To prepare children for learning, the structure and sequence of textbooks should adapt to the order of cognitive development, the difficulty of school curriculum textbooks should match the level of students' cognitive development, and the difficulty of courses should be designed, experimented and fully demonstrated. Only by knowing the students' learning preparation can we properly control the teaching materials, choose the best time to introduce new knowledge, decide the most successful presentation mode and determine the appropriate teaching speed. In short, students' physical and mental development is regular, and educational activities should be carried out according to these laws and characteristics. (3) Teaching activities should constantly break the existing balance of students and help them establish a new balance. Piaget emphasized that cognitive development is a process of constant balanced construction. Under the two functions of organism acting on environment (assimilation) and environment acting on organism (adaptation), intelligence can be continuously developed and enriched from low to high. Therefore, in the teaching process, teachers must constantly break the existing knowledge balance of students, help students establish a new balance, and thus promote the continuous development of students' cognition. Teachers' teaching, on the one hand, should provide content related to students' existing experience, on the other hand, it should provide content that contradicts existing experience. In this way, students can not only consolidate the original knowledge and experience, but also break the balance of the original knowledge, so that students can have the contradiction between knowing and not knowing, and then stimulate their interest in learning new knowledge and solving new contradictions, and finally get a new balance. Only in this way can students' cognition be developed and teaching activities be more effective. (4) Teaching should give full play to students' subjectivity. Piaget's "schema" theory or its constructivism essentially explains the process of students' knowledge formation and thinking development. As the main body of students, in the process of continuous interaction with the external environment (or educational environment), the development of knowledge and thinking has been enhanced. In this kind of interaction, students constitute the main aspect of contradictions and are the main body of activities. "Schema" theory fully embodies students' dominant position in education and teaching. Today, we want to carry out quality education, that is, to influence students and fully develop the potential of each student through the optimization and scientificity of education and teaching. We must attach importance to students' subjectivity and development. (5) Teaching should emphasize the importance of activities Piaget's "activity" theory has important guiding significance for our current education, especially for the reform and optimization of teaching methods. Piaget believes that activity is the bridge and intermediary between subject and object, and the formation of cognition is mainly an internalization of activity. In other words, only when children participate in various activities concretely and spontaneously can they form their own cognition. Just observing other people's activities, including teachers' activities, cannot form a new cognitive structure. Therefore, classroom teaching should put activities in the first place. Teachers should fully mobilize students' various senses and encourage students to talk more, move more and use their brains more. Children's education, in particular, should allow students to learn through activities and problem solving. Teachers should arrange scenes, provide materials, tools and devices, so that children can operate, fiddle, experiment, observe and think freely, know things by themselves, find problems and get answers. Education and teaching must attach importance to activities and research activities, and build a broad activity space for students. At the same time, the role of social interaction in children's cognitive development can not be underestimated. Social communication can help children get rid of egoism and promote intellectual and moral development. In the actual teaching process, teachers should adopt more methods such as activity teaching method, cooperative teaching method, heuristic teaching method, constructive teaching method and research teaching method to give full play to students' subjectivity and realize the goal of quality education. (6) Education should attach importance to the individual differences of students and adopt the method of teaching students in accordance with their aptitude. Piaget believes that the main factors affecting children's psychological development are maturity and experience, social experience and sense of balance. Children's maturity, experience and social interaction are different. Children will learn at their own pace and interest, which will make some children know faster and some children know slower. Therefore, the teaching contents and methods should take this difference into account. Teaching should attach importance to children's individual interests, understand the specific situation of children's cognitive development, and teach students in accordance with their aptitude, so that each student can receive education on the basis of their physical and mental development laws, develop at their own pace, and strengthen individual education. (7) Education should attach importance to the cultivation of students' self-regulation ability. Piaget emphasized that balance is the internal mechanism and motive force of children's cognition, and proved that cognition is the result of the subject's continuous development of initiative in the process of constantly seeking a balanced model. He discovered the role of self-regulation in balance and pointed out that children's cognitive activities are always inseparable from the active regulation of the subject. In the process of self-adjustment, the subject realizes the continuous renewal and spiral rise of cognitive structure. The spiritual essence of Piaget's teaching balance goal is to promote children to gradually build a self-regulation system with innovative functions and promote their active and effective learning. Therefore, in the modern education reform, we must attach importance to cultivating students' self-regulation ability and constantly improve the self-regulation system of students' cognitive structure; We must pay attention to the changes of teaching methods and teaching models, create various problem spaces, let students find and solve problems by themselves, strengthen the monitoring and adjustment of their own cognitive structure by solving problems, and improve students' self-adjustment ability, so as to constantly update and construct their own knowledge structure. Education is more important to teach students learning strategies and cultivate their ability to monitor and adjust their own knowledge acquisition process, that is, "teaching people to fish" rather than "teaching people to fish". Remember to adopt