Chapter 2 Analysis Questions

1. From the perspective of Piaget's theory, in which stage of cognitive development is Laura? Justify your response.
Preoperational Stage: I put Laura in this stage because she thinks that her idea is the only way to fix air pollution. When the teacher poses questions she is quick to have a solution so it works her way even if her logic is unreasonable. When she talks to her friends after class she states that her teacher is unreasonable which shows the lack of seeing it from another perspective. She fails to recognize the teacher has previous knowledge on the topic. She also has a hard time explaining properly how her answer could really affect air pollution.

2. How is Laura's reasoning affected by her knowledge base--that is, by what she does and doesn't know about pollution?
She understands that cars create pollutions, but doesn’t understand that it won’t fix the entire problem and there are other things that cause the pollution. She also doesn’t know how to really fix the problem logically. She hasn’t put into her schema of pollution other factors that affect our air.

3. By posing a series of questions, Mr. Marculescu continually challenges Laura to reconsider her thinking about the pollution problem. What are potential benefits of this strategy? Use terminology from Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories in your response.
Laura is in a state of equilibrium and posing questions can help her open her mind into a state of disequilibrium which will allow more information and knowledge to grow into her schema of population. Having a variety of questions from the teacher challenges Laura to learn new information and start the process of potential development with this content. In this scenario sociocultural perspective helps Laura’s knowledge to develop as well. Also through this Laura can start building more knowledge on top of her previous experience and knowledge. Having the teacher to guide the debate helps the topic develop in the right direction to help Laura create correct predictions and ideas about pollution and the affects thereof.

4. How does this scenario represent Piaget's and Vygotsky's conceptions of play?
By having Laura answer questions by herself in a role position allows her to really process and think about the reasons to a world problem. Also having the teacher ask questions helps Laura to continually be processing the information to expound on her knowledge and the problem. It helps her to explore more ideas rather than just focusing on one point to the problem. Having this role play helps her to start to see there are a variety of problems and there can be a variety of solutions to each problem. She now begins to think critically about the topic.