Number Length Liquid Mass Area Weight Volume students select 3 test to conduct with 2 children, one child 4 or 5 and another child 6 or 7. As a researcher, do not try to direct the responses, especially the younger child. The younger child will report what they see, the older child will report using logic, representing the stages of cognitive development. Example: Test # 1 liquid 1st child 2nd child Test # 2 Mass (area) Test # 3 Length 1st child 2nd child Students will use 2 children ages 4-7 and replicate Piaget’s experiment. This experiment requires water, beakers, plastic clear cups, glasses, clay (silly puddy), coins, tooth picks and or other objects that may be arranged according to the experiment. One child age 4 – 5 and 1 child age 6 – 7. Students may need to go to a public area, ask permission, identify yourself as a student doing a field exercise. The experiment may vary in time, 15-20 minutes is usual. Students need bring items to complete 3 of the four measurements, Volume, number, matter, length Submit a brief response paper, including the age of each child, the setting, your conclusion, include what is significant about this concept. Students may use the following video in place of face to face contact if no one is available. Conservation_of_Number.mov Conservation movie: EC-7.mov Conservation task – YouTube “The Conservation Experiments Show a child two short, fat beakers. Fill with colored or clear water as the child watches. The child is asked to say when the two beakers have the same amount of water in them. If necessary, the experimenter pours a bit of liquid from one to the other until the child agrees that the level of colored/clear water is the same in both beakers. Next take a tall, thin beaker and pours the water from one of the short, fat beakers into one of the tall, thin beakers. The child is asked to compare the tall thin beaker to the short fat one. The experimenter asks, ″Which contains more, or do they contain the same amount?″ Most children under the age of 6 will point to the tall beaker and say, ″This one has more in it.″ The child is swayed by the perceptual cue of height. Such a child lacks a conception of the quantity of a liquid. Not having this concept, the child has no way to realize that something stays the same when liquid is poured from one vessel to another. What stays the same? Adults call it liquid quantity. We know what liquid quantity is; we take it for granted. But a child does not yet have this concept or schema. Some students find it hard to believe that a child could be fooled so easily by appearances at the age of 4 or 5. They go home and try the experiment with a little brother or sister, only to verify Piaget′s basic finding. Little children are typically swayed by external appearances. Conservation of mass experiment, use a bit of clay (which Piaget called plasticene) is rolled into a ball. A second ball of clay the same size is shown to the child, who agrees that they are equal. Then one of the balls is rolled between the palms of the adult′s hands, forming a sausage shape. ″Now does one have more clay in it than the other, or do they still have the same amount of clay in them?″ The small child typically points to the sausage shape, which is longer, and claims that it has ″more clay in it.″ Conservation of area is tested by asking the child whether more ground is covered by the blocks that are spread out or the blocks that are close together. Non-conserving children tend to assume the blocks cover more area when spread out, even though this opens up areas between them. Placing coins such as pennies on a table tests conservation of number. Seven or eight coins are placed in a row, and a matching series of coins is placed directly below the first one. So there are two equal rows of coins on the table. Now the experimenter spreads out one of the rows so the coins are farther apart. The child is asked whether the two rows of coins still have the same number of coins in them. A small child who does not yet know how to count will typically claim that the spread-out row has more coins in it. All the conservation experiments are variations on a theme. The word conservation means preserving something in the face of change. To come up with the correct answer in a conservation experiment, the child must preserve something in his or her head. That ″something″ is an awareness of quantity, mass, number, area, or some other abstract characteristic of reality. That was Piaget′s point. He described himself as studying the construction of reality in the child, which was the subtitle of one of his books.
