FAMILIAR WITH THE TASK: HOW FAR CAN PROMOTE COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT?

• Autor(a) principal: Sica Szymanski, Maria Lidia
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Travessias (Cascavel. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://e-revista.unioeste.br/index.php/travessias/article/view/3380
• topic: Aprendizagem; Desenvolvimento cognitivo.

The professional education starts in infancy, since the basic school educationalready comprises some abilities and some knowledge required for the professional areas. Infact, school represents the main institution to mediate the transmission of systematizedknowledge, contributing to the development of the logical thinking. Piaget (1972) states thatthe subjects can develop the formal structures at the endogenous level, although they do not use these structures in the same way. It was thought that the individuals could think in ahypothetical-deductive way in their professions; however, since they are not attending formaleducation anymore, they apparently could not present a hypothetical-deductive thinkingwhen they are required to undertake the Piagetian tasks. For this reason, this study aimed tocarefully investigate this issues by comparing the results found by Szymanski (1983a) in thePiagetian tests, in which 90% of the subjects had been classified at the pre-operational orconcrete operational level, and the performance of the same subjects in the task “Filling outof the Graph Table” related to their activities – therefore, familiar tasks – which demand theformal operational level of thinking for their execution. It was still thought that the subjectscould be at the Formal Operational Stage, under the endogenous viewpoint, but their mentalstructures would be only used operationally, in this sense, in the everyday situations. Themajority of the subjects were classified as GOOD in their performance of the familiar task“Filling out of the Graph Table”, but it was found that low values in the table correspondedto low values in the final score obtained in the Piagetian tests, showing correlation betweenthese two variables (Kendall). In order to investigate this issue more carefully, the heads ofthe Nursing Department of the three biggest hospitals in town were interviewed, and theystated that not all students are skilled for the task “Filling out of the Graph Table” at the endof the course. However, with time and with the supervision of a more experienced attendant(Zone of Proximal Development), all employees can undertake the task successfully.