Concrete Operational Thought in Middle Childhood According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, middle childhood falls under the period of concrete operational thought, the third stage in his model. Concrete active thought is the primary stride from the earlier level of preoperational thought and ranges from ages 7 to 11. Concrete operational thought refers to the time during which the development of children’s thoughts allows them to perform operations with thoughts. However, their ability to reason abstractly or hypothetically is still low. Children in this stage can perform mental operations on concrete instances, for example, adding, subtracting, reversing, and classifying (Berger, 2022). A significant landmark would be their understanding of their conservation ability, where children can conceive that the quantity or amount of something is fixed no matter what kind of changes are done, whether of appearance or arrangement. For example, they can understand that pouring the water into a differently shaped container does not change its amount.
In moving from the pre-operational stage to the concrete operational stage of thought, children’s cognitive development is characterized by many new skills central to educational growth (Berger, 2022). One such ability is seriation, where the child can now put things into order along a quantitative dimension, such as length or volume. This new ability allows them to categorically order objects from the shortest to tallest or smallest to most significant, thus gaining a better grip on comparison concepts (Berger, 2022). Transitive inference is another crucial cognitive skill that develops (Berger, 2022). Understanding their relationships with a third object helps children distinguish between two objects. It is evident that transitive inference provides logical thought and, in consequence, gives the basis for other complex cognitive processes. In contrast, a concrete operational thinker can classify things based on what things have in common and demonstrate class inclusion. An example of how a concrete active thinker may demonstrate this ability is by being able to understand that one class of items falls into another class; that is, it understands class inclusion.
There is continued enhancement in the reasoning of space. Hence, a child goes further to understand the association of objects with space. Children start employing maps, models, and diagrams to model what is happening around them (Börnert-Ringleb & Wilbert, 2018). Furthermore, these skills will help the children to develop perspective-taking skills, where they will be able to view situations from other people’s perspectives, and thus, they will also create a more comprehensive and differentiated understanding of the world around them. The cognitive development of such children will help them aim for academic excellence and enhance their interaction with other people in the school setup (Börnert-Ringleb & Wilbert, 2018). Children can interact well with other children and even the teacher, reasoning and rationalizing through the subjects and different activities. Middle Childhood Educational Progression This is the time, while actively engaged in the context of education, that middle childhood is a stage of rapid learning.
The advent of concrete operational thought in children makes them deal with issues more systematically and logically. Teachers can capitalize on these cognitive developments by including hands-on activities, interactive discussions, and making real-world applications into the curriculum (Börnert-Ringleb & Wilbert, 2018). Through hands-on activities, such as science experiments and math manipulatives, children get to apply their newly discovered cognitive abilities to real-world examples. Interactive discussions evoke thought patterns of logic and ways to articulate the thought. In explication, the ability to relate real-life applications of the concept between the knowledge of the theoretical base and its practical meaning is illustrated. As the educational process continues to challenge and build upon cognitive skills in middle childhood, the process also further solidifies these abilities. More complex tasks of seriation, trans inference, classification, and spatial reasoning can be instrumental in leading a student from simple to complicated functions towards a conducive atmosphere for cognitive development.
In conclusion, middle childhood concretely operational thought features logical and systemic thought about concrete items and events. Developing cognitive skills in seriation, transitive inference, classification, and spatial reasoning accounts for academic and social success in schools and peer interaction, respectively. Middle childhood education capitalizes on these gains through hands-on experiences and progressive tasks.
References
Berger, K.S. (2022). Invitation to the life span (5th ed.). Worth Publishing.
Börnert-Ringleb, M., & Wilbert, J. (2018). The Association of Strategy Use and Concrete-Operational Thinking in Primary School. Frontiers in Education, 3(38). https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2018.00038
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