Socio-Cognitive Approach to a Child’s Intellectual Development Investigation

The article presents a new technique for education and cognitive development worked out by the Psychology and Education Institute of the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland) and psychologists of the Psychological Department of the University of Jerusalem. The technique is based on the Piaget’s theory and enriched through the integration of modern social psychology, developmental psychology and computer technologies achievements. The first part of the article is devoted to the origins of socio-cognitive approach to investigation of child’s development, – the key points of Mid’s Vygotsky’s, Piaget’s theories. Then we regard the concept of cognitive conflict, which was defined by B. Inelder and her colleagues, Piaget’s employees. Critic of this concept was made by the psychologists of Geneva school, representatives of social psychology – A V. Doisy, H. Mooney, A-N. Perret-Clermont, who introduced the concept of sociocognitive conflict" to the modern psychology " defined as a contradiction of different centrations (views) blocking the solution of cognitive tasks. As an example the article presents an experimental study of A-N. Perre-Clermont, aimed at teaching preschool children to understand the phenomenon of liquid preservation. Then the article illustrates how scientists in different countries (Switzerland, Israel, Portugal, Italy and others) are currently working on the problem of assisting a teacher in organizing the dialogue during the process of problem solving in mathematics, history, biology, geography, etc. The second part of the article presents the concept of Israeli psychologist B. Schwartz, who understands the reasoning as a mediating link between the internal and external dialogue, which serves to form a new collective knowledge, collective senses. Also, his special program (Kishurim) will be presented. The program is implemented since 1998 and is aimed at improving the process of schooling. Its main idea is visualization of the discussion, making it obvious (material), and that facilitates students’ reflection. For that purpose the graphic computer model “Digalo” is used. It represents a workshit where the child’s statements are presented in a visual form, and the connections between them are marked by arrows. The article presents the latest publications reflecting modern achievements of socio-psychological conception of children’ intellectual development.

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