Jean Piaget Essay Example for Free

Jean Piaget Essay Jean Piaget is often quoted to have pioneered research in cognitive development (Hayes, 1998). The constructivist theory is a subset of the cognitivist theories. It is based on the learner –centred theories that emphases on the need to provide learners with responsibility for directing their own learning experiences. Schemata, assimilation and accommodation are some of the primary concepts in understanding the Constructivist theory of cognitive development. The other central features apart from three principles are the notions of equilibration and disequilibrium. This essay will briefly define the principles of schemata, assimilation and accommodation. It will also explain the importance of equilibration and disequilibrium in cognitive development. Schemata according to Dembo (1991) are cognitive structures that are formed through the obstruction of one’s earlier experience. It is stated that children are born with very f few innate schemata and that they keep on creating new ones as they interact with the environment. Hayes (1998) adds that schemata should be understood as â€Å"a theoretical construct which is generally understood as the being an internalized representation of the world, or at least some part of the world. † p. 473. Schemata therefore relate to specific bit of activity, and summarises the stored knowledge and experiences related to such an activity. All human thinking is centred on schemata that develop throughout an individual’s life through the process of adaptation. Adaptation involves organisms responding to the changes in their respective surroundings and situations. In essence, adaptation is achieved through assimilation and accommodation. The principle of assimilation refers to a process of making sense of the experiences and perceptions by fitting them into previously established cognitive structures. In other words, what is perceived by a person is altered so that it fits present cognitive schemata (Gage, 1998). Assimilation is said to have occurred when a person perceives a new event or object in terms of an n existing schemas. That is to say, person applies any mental structure that is available to assimilate a new object or event and actively seek to utilize this newly acquired mental structure. On the other hand, the theory of accommodation simply refers to the process of changing internal schemata to provide consistency with external reality. It happens when existing schemas are modified or new ones are created to account for a new experience. According to Borick and Tombari (1995) if a person succeeds in changing the existing schemata in order to understand a new event, object, information or experience is said to have undergone the process of accommodation. From it can therefore be inferred that accommodation influences assimilation in a certain way and vice versa. As a reality is assimilated, structures are accommodated. Cognitive development is a lifelong process that involves the creation and/or the development of schemata through the operation of principles explained above. The term that explains the operation of assimilation and accommodation, which can occur concurrently is called the process of Equilibration. Equilibration is defined as â€Å"the biological drive to produce an optimal state of equilibrium between people’s cognitive structures and their environment† (Duncan, 1995 as cited on http://www. coe. uga. edu/epiltt/pigeat. htm ) . It is an attempt to bring about a state of equilibrium between the other three factors and is very vital for cognitive development. It involves assimilation and accommodation (Russell, Jarvis Gorman, 2004). This process is very significant because it is through equilibration that people develop their cognitive structures. This occurs as people conduct themselves in logical internal mental structures that allow them to make sense of the various phenomena in their surrounding environment. When the external reality does not match with the logical internal schemas or say when disequilibrium occurs, equilibration is there to come forth so as an effort to bring balance between assimilation and accommodation. In this way, organisms develop sophisticated schemas. McLeod (2009) as cited on http://www. simplypsychology. org/piaget. html points out disequilibrium connotes an unpleasant state when new information cannot be fitted in the existing schemata. O’Donnel (2006) states that the theory of equilibration is important to the learning process. It suggests the need to stimulate conceptual change in someone by challenging students existing concepts in an effort to create cognitive disequilibrium. Students in turn strive to restore equilibrium there by acquiring new knowledge and skills for understanding the world or subject matter in a lesson. Teachers should be able to engage students into unfamiliar areas in order to for them to learn. It suggests that students do not require studying things that they already know but that they can also accommodate new information (Dembo, 1991). However teacher need not to let learners over assimilate because it turns out boring. They should also not over accommodate students beyond their cognitive growth. In this ca se, it can be understood that equilibration is vital to the development of a child’s cognition as well as to the teaching and learning process. Furthermore, the notion of equilibration is important because it indicates that learners are active thinkers who can understand the world on their own. Therefore teacher need to involve students in the learning processes and only act as facilitators in constructing knowledge. The understanding of the constructivist theory with the understanding of how equilibration works has led to emergence of teaching methods such as discovery methods. Teachers can create deliberate disequilibrium in students by asking questions about some illogical statements made by the Lerner. As the learner reconciles his or her disequilibrium, their cognitive capacity develops. In conclusion, this paper has defined schemata as cognitive or mental structures that relate s to specific bit of an activity such as schemata for an object like a tree or more abstract notion like democracy. Jean Piaget contended that all thinking is centred on schemata (Hayes, 1998) and the number of a person schema continues to be constructed throughout a person’s life through the principles of assimilation and accommodation. It has also been noted that the operation 0f these two principles constitutes the notion of equilibration. Equilibration is very important because it is the impetus for cognitive development that makes individuals acquires higher order thinking skills to adapt to the ever changing surrounding. It is through equilibration that people explore the environment and make mental representation of reality. This is so because equilibration improves the sophistication of schemas to create a mental representation of reality.

A Society Without Morals - The Great Gatsby Essay examples -- F. Scott

The streets are paved with gold has long been the allusion of the United States of America meaning that America is the land of opportunity and wealth for anyone. However what people fail to understand when they manage to get to America is that, although it is the land of opportunity, an individual is not able to magically go from dirt poor to filthy rich, they have to work for it. Even after working for it many people are disappointed not because they did not get more money, they just did not as much as the expected. In the 1920s this was because of all the illegal activity that was happening through out the country, mainly bootleggers such as Jay Gatsby. With illegal activity comes lack of moral conscience such as marrying for money or not staying faithful in a marriage like Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson. F. Scott Fitzgerald clearly expresses the failures of American society during the 1920s in his novel The Great Gatsby through the characters of Gatsby, Myrtle, Tom, and Daisy. The fact that Gatsby was so desperate money in order for him to be able marry Daisy that he broke the law to get it and was able to avoid punishment is an obvious example of the failures of society. Gatsby has been in love with Daisy for five years and she has loved him, but because of his lack of money and him going off to war, Daisy picked Tom Buchanan, a wealthy man, instead. Once he returned to war, he realized he would have to make a great deal of money to win Daisy back. To do this, he decided to start up ?drug-stores? where he became a bootlegger. The reader knows that Gatsby is a bootlegger because of Tom Buchanan, who finds out excatly what Gatsby?s ?drug stores? really were. This is evident when Tom says, He...bought u... ...n world at the same time. The Great Gatsby conveys the message to the reader the many faults in American society during the Roaring Twenties. These flaws are quite evident throughout the novel but most strong through the character of Gatsby, Myrtle, Tom, and Daisy. Those four characters easily display to the reader just how much lack of care there was in during the 1920s. Failure in marriage and bootlegging, although just isolated examples, are very prevalent in The Great Gatsby . Of course, money is the center of every flaw, money causes Gatsby to break the law it causes Daisy to marry into unhappiness, and causes Tom to have a wife that has never love him. Just because The Great Gatsby is centered in a 1920s society, no one can overlook its importance on today?s society. Works Cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Macmillan, 2008.

John Deere and Company Essay

Complex Parts, Inc. has been a supplier of specialized parts to Deere & Company for the past 10 years, with annual sales of $3. 5 million. Over the past year the supplier has fallen behind in its ability to satisfy the guidelines outlined in Deere’s Achieving Excellence Program (AEP), a supplier evaluation process that promotes communication, trust, cooperation, and continuous improvement. Due to this decline, one of Deere’s supplier evaluation teams, consisting of four employees, has to make a quick recommendation about the future relationship between Deere & Complex Parts. The Achieving Excellence Program (AEP) evaluates, on a yearly basis, key parts of how a supplier is performing. It focuses on five key areas: quality, delivery, cost management, wavelength and technical support. The program classifies each supplier, from best to worst, as either Partner, Key, Approved or Conditional. AEP effectively assesses the supplier’s commitment to its relationship with Deere in such areas as enhancing communication, lowering costs, and improving design. The biggest drawback to the AEP is that it does not consider the full history of the supplier’s relationship to the company. The evaluation only focuses on the past year and not the historical highs and lows of productivity. The program also does not take into account the current economic conditions and how the market is performing. It examines what the supplier is doing to increase profits for Deere, but does not explore what Deere could be doing to help the supplier, beyond training, plaques and honors. The Achieving Excellence Program is an ideal way to analyze how a supplier is functioning, but it would be beneficial to include an assessment of how or what Deere & Company could do to aid the supplier. Historical information of how the supplier has performed, its current financial situation and the current market state or trends should all be considered as part of the appraisal of a supplier. Using the AEP evaluation, it is difficult to determine how Complex Parts has performed over the past year. While the supplier has done extremely well, it has also done very poorly, resulting in an adequate performance. Overall, the supplier has performed well, achieving a quality rating of 666 and a delivery rating of 8650, both well below the ideal for a Partner classification. Unfortunately, the past quarter showed a sharp drop in Complex Parts’ performance, achieving a delivery rating of 155,000, higher than the ideal rating for a Conditional supplier. Looking closer at other areas of the AEP, Complex Parts received a tepid score with both positive and negative aspects in all categories. The supplier was great at following through on suggestions for quality improvement and was very proactive, but had little plans for cost reductions or how to eliminate problems resulting in late deliveries. The company took an active role in keeping up with required specification changes, but did not return phone calls to the customer service group and cost Deere tremendously with weekly expedited deliveries. Complex Parts excellently internalized the Deere Quality Plan elements, took a lead role in getting the elements implemented, and improved quality performance over the past year, but did fall behind in employing the plan in its new facility, now 5 months into operation. Finally, Complex Parts’ R&D department was very impressive with several suggestions resulting in new product programs, but the supplied parts did not meet cost targets which reduced Deere’s projected profits, and new parts quotes were not being received in a timely fashion. Using the information received from the AEP evaluation, Complex Parts should be classified as a Key supplier. While there are many troubling areas, the exceptional performance in most areas of the AEP cannot be ignored. The supplier should not retain its Partner status, but it should be recognized as an important supply chain member. There are two main courses of action that the evaluation team can consider in regards to Complex Parts. The supplier can be downgraded to a Key or an Approved supplier or it can retain its current classification as Partner with a re-evaluation in six-months. Due to the low aspects in every category within the AEP assessment, Complex Parts should be downgraded to a Key or an Approved supplier. The company was given a performance summary every quarter and should not be surprised that its classification has dropped. The best alternative course of action would be to allow the company to keep its Partner rank with the provision that it will be re-evaluated in six months to determine the future of the relationship. Included in each alternative should also be the appraisal of the other two possible suppliers. Each company should receive an in-depth evaluation and classification for comparison with Complex Parts. There are both short-term and long-term implications to these recommendations that should also be considered before making a decision. In the short-term, Complex Parts would be rewarded for its high performance, but would recognize the need for improvement. The supplier would either enhance its troubled areas or it would risk being downgraded or replaced. Deere & Company stands to lose revenues due to increased costs in the short-term if the supplier does not quickly improve its performance. In the long-term, Deere & Company would show that the AEP is taken seriously and that long-term supplier relationships are a true goal of the company. It would also prove how dedicated the company is to achieving excellence and how continued improvement is a vital part of the company’s goals. While Complex Parts is currently a Partner supplier to Deere & Company, its future rests in the hands of the supplier evaluation team. Complex Parts has performed adequately over the past year, but falling aspects indicate that the company may not be able to live up to expectations in the coming year. With an assessment of other possible suppliers and by allowing Complex Parts to retain their supplier classification with an interim evaluation in six months to determine their fate, they will either increase performance or risk demotion. Deere & Company strives to develop long-term relationships with its suppliers and a quick decision based on only a year’s worth of data, and more specifically a low-performing quarter, would be detrimental to the company’s goals. More information needs to be included in the evaluation in order to gain the full picture of how the supplier is operating. With this additional information, Deere & Company will be able to fulfill its goal of a better supplier relationship.

The Publication of the Pentagon Papers

The publication by the New York Times of a secret government history of the Vietnam War in 1971 was a significant milestone in the history of American journalism. The Pentagon Papers, as they became known, also set into motion of chain of events that would lead to the Watergate scandals which began the following year. The appearance of the Pentagon Papers on the front page of the newspaper on Sunday, June 13, 1971, infuriated President Richard Nixon. The newspaper possessed so much material leaked to it by a former government official, Daniel Ellsberg, that it intended to publish  a continuing series drawing upon the classified documents. Key Takeaways: The Pentagon Papers These leaked documents detailed many years of American involvement in Vietnam.Publication by the New York Times brought sharp reaction from the Nixon administration, which ultimately led to unlawful actions of the Watergate scandal.The New York Times won a landmark Supreme Court decision hailed as a victory for the First Amendment.Daniel Ellsberg, who provided the secret documents to the press, was targeted by the government but the prosecution fell apart due to government misconduct. At Nixons direction, the federal government, for the first time in history, went to court to prevent a newspaper from publishing material.   The court battle between one of the countrys great newspapers and the Nixon administration gripped the nation. And when the New York Times obeyed a temporary court order to cease publication of the Pentagon Papers, other newspapers, including the Washington Post, began publishing their own installments of the once-secret documents. Within weeks, the New York Times prevailed in a Supreme Court decision. The press victory was deeply resented by Nixon and his top staff, and they responded by beginning their own secret war against leakers in the government. Actions by a group of White House staffers calling themselves â€Å"The Plumbers† would lead to a series of covert actions that escalated into the Watergate scandals. What Was Leaked The Pentagon Papers represented an official and classified history of United States involvement in Southeast Asia. The project was initiated by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, in 1968. McNamara, who had masterminded Americas escalation  of the Vietnam War, had become deeply disillusioned. Out of an apparent sense of remorse, he commissioned a team of military officials and scholars to compile documents and analytical papers which would comprise the Pentagon Papers. And while the leaking and publication of the Pentagon Papers was viewed as a sensational event, the material itself was generally quite dry. Much of the material consisted of strategy memos circulated among government officials in the early years of American involvement in Southeast Asia. The publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, later quipped, Until I read the Pentagon Papers I did not know that it was possible to read and sleep at the same time. Daniel Ellsberg   The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, had gone through his own lengthy transformation over the Vietnam War. Born on April 7, 1931, he had been a brilliant student who attended Harvard on a scholarship. He later studied at Oxford, and interrupted his graduate studies to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1954. After serving three years as a Marine officer, Ellsberg returned to Harvard, where he received a doctorate in economics. In 1959 Ellsberg accepted a position at the Rand Corporation, a prestigious think tank which studied defense and national security issues.   For several years Ellsberg studied the Cold War, and in the early 1960s he began to focus on the emerging conflict in Vietnam. He visited Vietnam to help assess potential American military involvement, and in 1964 he accepted a post in the Johnson administration State Department. Ellsberg’s career became deeply intertwined with the American escalation in Vietnam. In the mid-1960s he visited the country frequently and even considered enlisting in the Marine Corps again so he could participate in combat operations. (By some accounts, he was dissuaded from seeking a combat role as his knowledge of classified material and high-level military strategy would have made him a security risk should he be captured by the enemy.) In 1966 Ellsberg returned to the Rand Corporation. While in that position, he was contacted by Pentagon officials to participate in the writing of the Vietnam War’s secret history. Ellsberg’s Decision to Leak Daniel Ellsberg was one of about three-dozen scholars and military officers who participated in creating the massive study of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia from 1945 to the mid-1960s. The entire project stretched into 43 volumes, containing 7,000 pages. And it was all considered highly classified. As Ellsberg held a high security clearance, he was able to read vast amounts of the study. He came to the conclusion that the American public had been seriously misled by the presidential administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson.   Ellsberg also came to believe that President Nixon, who had entered the White House in January 1969, was needlessly prolonging a pointless war. As Ellsberg became increasingly unsettled by the idea that many American lives were being lost because of what he considered deception, he became determined to leak parts of the secret Pentagon study. He began by taking pages out of his office at the Rand Corporation and copying them, using a Xerox machine at a friends business. Seeking a way to publicize what he had discovered, Ellsberg first began to approach staff members on Capitol Hill, hoping to interest members working for members of Congress in copies of the classified documents.   The efforts to leak to Congress led nowhere. Congressional staffers were either skeptical of what Ellsberg claimed to have, or were afraid of receiving classified material without authorization. Ellsberg, in February 1971, decided to go outside the government. He gave portions of the study to Neil Sheehan, a New York Times reporter who had been a war correspondent in Vietnam. Sheehan recognized the importance of the documents, and approached his editors at the newspaper. Publishing the Pentagon Papers The New York Times, sensing the significance  of the material Ellsberg had passed to Sheehan, took extraordinary action. The material would need  to be read and assessed for news value, so the newspaper assigned a team of editors to review the documents.   To prevent word of the project from getting out, the newspaper created what was essentially a secret newsroom in a Manhattan hotel suite several blocks from the newspaper’s headquarters building. Every day for ten weeks a team of editors hid away in the New York Hilton, reading the Pentagon’s secret history of the Vietnam War. The editors at the New York Times decided a substantial amount of  material should be published, and they planned to run the material as a continuing series. The first installment appeared on the top center of the front page of the large Sunday paper on June 13, 1971. The headline was understated: Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U.S. Involvement. Six pages of documents appeared inside the Sunday paper, headlined, â€Å"Key Texts From Pentagon’s Vietnam Study.† Among the documents reprinted in the newspaper were diplomatic cables, memos sent to Washington by American generals in Vietnam, and a report detailing covert actions which had preceded open U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. Before publication, some editors at the newspaper advised caution. The most recent documents being published would be several years old and posed no threat to American troops in Vietnam. Yet the material was classified and it was likely the government would take legal action.   Nixon’s Reaction On the day the first installment appeared, President Nixon was told about it by a national security aide, General Alexander Haig (who would later become Ronald Reagan’s first secretary of state). Nixon, with Haig’s encouragement, became increasingly agitated.   The revelations appearing in the pages of the New York Times did not directly implicate Nixon or his administration. In fact, the documents tended to portray politicians Nixon detested, specifically his predecessors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, in a bad light.   Yet Nixon had reason to be very concerned. The publication of so much secret government material offended many in the government, especially those working in national security or serving in the highest ranks of the military.   And the audacity of the leaking was very disturbing to Nixon and his closest staff members, as they were worried that some of their own secret activities might someday come to light. If the country’s most prominent newspaper could print page after page of classified government documents, where might that lead?   Nixon advised his attorney general, John Mitchell, to take action to stop the New York Times from publishing more material. On Monday morning, June 14, 1971, the second installment of the series appeared on the front page of the New York Times. That night, as the newspaper was preparing to publish the third installment for the Tuesday paper, a telegram from the U.S. Department of Justice arrived at the New York Times headquarters. It demanded that the newspaper stop publishing the material it had obtained.   The publisher of the newspaper responded by saying the  newspaper would obey a court order if one was issued. But short of that, it would continue publishing. The front page of Tuesdays newspaper carried a prominent headline, â€Å"Mitchell Seeks to Halt Series on Vietnam But Times Refuses.†Ã‚   The next day, Tuesday, June 15, 1971, the federal government went to court and secured an injunction which stopped the New York Times from proceeding with the publication of any more of the documents Ellsberg had leaked. With the series of articles in the Times halted, another major newspaper, the Washington Post, began publishing material from the secret study which had been leaked to it. And by the middle of the first week of the drama, Daniel Ellsberg was identified as the leaker. He found himself the subject of an F.B.I. manhunt. The Court Battle The New York Times went to federal court to fight against the injunction. The governments case contended that material in the Pentagon Papers endangered national security and the federal government had a right to prevent its publication. The team of lawyers representing the New York Times argued that the publics right to know was paramount, and that the material was of great historic value and did not pose any current threat to national security. The court case moved though the federal courts at surprising speed, and arguments were held at the Supreme Court on Saturday, June 26, 1971, only 13 days after the first installment of the Pentagon Papers appeared. The arguments at the Supreme Court lasted for two hours. A newspaper account published the following day on the front page of the New York Times noted a fascinating detail: Visible in public — at least in cardboard-clad bulk — for the first time were the 47 volumes of 7,000 pages of 2.5-million words of the Pentagons private history of the Vietnam War. It was a government set. The Supreme Court issued a decision affirming the right of newspapers to publish the Pentagon Papers on June 30, 1971. The following day, the New York Times featured a headline across the entire top of the front page: Supreme Court, 6-3, Upholds Newspapers On Publication of the Pentagon Report; Times Resumes Its Series, Halted 15 Days. The New York Times continued publishing excerpts of the Pentagon Papers. The newspaper featured front-age articles based on the secret documents through July 5, 1971, when it published its ninth and final installment. Documents  from the Pentagon Papers were also quickly published in a paperback book, and its publisher, Bantam, claimed to have one  million copies in print by mid-July 1971. Impact of the Pentagon Papers For newspapers, the Supreme Court decision was inspiring and emboldening. It affirmed that the government could not enforce  prior restraint to block publication of material it wanted kept from public view. However, inside the Nixon administration the resentment felt toward the press only deepened. Nixon and his top aides became fixated on Daniel Ellsberg. After he was identified as the leaker, he was charged with a number of crimes ranging from illegal possession of government documents to violating the Espionage Act. If convicted, Ellsberg could have faced more than 100 years in prison. In an effort to discredit Ellsberg (and other leakers) in the eyes of the public, White House aides formed a group they called The Plumbers. On September 3, 1971, less than three months after the Pentagon Papers began appearing in the press, burglars directed by White House aide E. Howard Hunt  broke into the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, a California psychiatrist. Daniel Ellsberg had been a patient of Dr. Fielding, and the Plumbers were hoping to find damaging material about Ellsberg in the doctors files. The break-in, which was disguised to look like a random burglary, produced no useful material for the Nixon administration to use against Ellsberg. But it indicated the lengths to which government officials would go to attack perceived enemies. And the White House Plumbers would later play major roles the following year in what became the Watergate scandals. Burglars connected to the White House Plumbers were arrested at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate office complex in June 1972. Daniel Ellsberg, incidentally, faced a federal trial. But when details of the illegal campaign against him, including the burglary at Dr. Fieldings office,  became known, a federal judge dismissed all charges against him.