The first highlighted critique was that Jean Piaget did not include the influence

of environment in his cognitive development stages. Based on my observation in

school based experience, I realised that it is true enough that the influence of

environment on child development is very high. After interviewing the class teachers

we got to know that peer pressure on students plays a vital role in the kids’

achievement. According to the counsellor, most problematic students are from

broken family. Their parents did not take any initiative to look after them, thus their

cognitive development is affected. Piaget did not take into account the individual

differences of children, or the differences caused by heredity, culture and education.

Second critique says that Piaget looked down on kids’ ability. According to

him, kids aged between 7 till 11 are able to only think logically to 1 certain level and

they can’t solve complex problems like “A is longer than B; B is shorter than C: which

is the shortest?” there are certain students who are able to answer it right with the

correct explanations. He also said that kids in this stage are not able to do abstract

thinking. The current syllabus highlights on abstract thinking through subjects like

science and maths even from standard one. By solving logical problems in science

and maths, their thinking skills will develop much faster than expected.Many

researches also proved that children posses many abilities before the age Piaget

predicted.

The other critique was on jean Piaget also did not discuss about the right side

of the brain. He did not include things such as art, music or any other activity got to

do with creativity. In my point of view, after discussing with few students and

teachers, we found out that creativity in classroom is very important. Most

pedagogical skills also stresses on creativity, even the teachers are constantly trying

new methods to help the kids to further understand what they are learning. With the

help of music, art and more kids get to understand things faster than expected. Jean

Piaget talked about cognitive development only based on chalk and talk method.

REFLECTION

After the 1 week of school based experience, i gained many new knowledge

based on child development and found out many critiques on Jean Piaget’s theory

were right. We conducted many activity based on the theory and collected data

based on the theory. We also interviewed as many teachers, students and workers

as possible to gain better information on the attitude of the students and their

development. All this helped us in gaining more experience.

From all the observation I found out that not all theories are fully applicable to

every individual. For example, Jean Piaget’s theory is applicable only for few

students in that school. The first class students have developed much more than

what is said for the student to have in concrete operational stage. If this theory were

to be applied to every student in the school it might slow down the process of

teaching and learning.

Factors effecting the development of a student are something that I should

know as a future teacher so that the teaching and learning process takes place

smoothly. Malaysian education system or the implication of KSSR on the students

has given a great impact on the cognitive development of students.