Case Study- Cognitive Development

1. Describe an episode in the case study that demonstrates disequilibrium. Justify your response.
When Amy says, "But...But... when my grandpa died last summer, he went away to heaven and didn't come back. Ringo's still here. If he's dead, he should be going to heaven." Amy wasn't able to connect the death of the fish with the fish's body still there. The new information didn't match up because she didn't have the prior knowledge to make that connection.

Describe an episode that demonstrates assimilation. Justify your response.
When Lucy says, "Do you have to eat in heaven?" Amy responds, "I suppose so, or else you'd be hungry all the time. Lucy then says, "Oh, that makes sense." Amy was able use prior knowledge to make the connection that when you don't eat, you're hungry. She continued the connection to another place-heaven. Lucy understands because of that same consequencial sequence of not eating and then becoming hungry. They were able to make sense of the events in the world, by relating something new to prior knowledge.

2. Identify a possible instance of preoperational egocentrism in the case. Justify your response.
Lucy asks, "Well, do you have to go to potty in heaven?" Amy rolls her eyes, indignantly puts her hands on her hips, and replies, "Of course not, silly! You know our mommies and Ms. Bowman make us go potty before we go anywhere!" Amy showed the inability to consider the world from a different perspective than her own. She assumed Lucy would share her same feelings, and Lucy added to her ego with her "Oh, yeah, I forgot" response.

3. How might a Vygotskian theorist suggest Ms. Bowman address the death of the class pet?
They might have suggested that Ms. Bowman ask Amy and Lucy questions about what they thought had happened and where the fish would go now instead of just assuming the role of telling them how it would be done with a 'proper burial'. A Vygotskian theorist may not have been impressed with the easy response given to Amy's question/thought by telling her that Ringo would go to heaven as soon as she wanted it to. Rather, a Vygotskian theorist would have tried ways in which to assert the social opportunity to create their own(the students) understandings of the world, schemas, and thinking processes. Mediation could have also been a good recommendation for how Ms. Bowman could have handled the situation.

4. How might taking care of pets in the classroom promote students' cognitive development?
They are given responsibility, new social experiences, opportunities to create new schemas, a greater understanding of action and consequence events, and providing a discovery-based learning activity where they combine all their knowledge about the fish as a class and find new discoveries about what they observe prior to any teacher instruction.