An investigation into children's grasp of reality

This study aims to explore a heterogeneous group of pre-schoolers' conceptual understanding. Seven Piagetian type tasks, aimed slightly above pre-schoolers' perceived pre-operational level of development, are presented to the research subjects individually, on two separate occasions. The results indicate that unilingual subjects fare best, while subjects learning a second language at the preschool phase fare better than subjects who learn a second language at an earlier age. The results suggest that language alone is not predictive of task performance; higher parent education levels are associated with greater quantity and quality of mediated learning and with better task performances. The study concludes that task performance reflects the interaction between developmental level and learning opportunities, and the influence that factors such as age, language, class, parent education level and gender have on one this.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

School of Education

Year dc:date.issued

1999

Author dc:creator

• Hill, F K

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Craig, Anita

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9770

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/9770