In his studies of how children's thinking and reasoning change with age, Piaget conducted a variety of studies involving conservation of a substance or of a particular set of objects

Question

a. What did he mean by the term conservation?
b. Describe an example of a conservation task and the kinds of responses that children in Piaget's preoperational and concrete operations stages are likely to give.
c. Describe a specific way in which a child's ability to conserve is essential for learning in either mathematics or science.
What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Responses to various parts of the question are as follows:
a. Conservation is the recognition that if nothing is added or taken away, an amount stays the same regardless of alterations in shape or arrangement.
b. The student's response might describe conservation of liquid (e.g., the water glasses task depicted in Figure 6-2), conservation of weight (e.g., the balls of clay task depicted in Figure 6-3), conservation of number (e.g., the "fishy crackers" and M&Ms tasks depicted on Observation CD 1), or any other conservation task with which the student is familiar. Responses of preoperational children reflect a lack of conservation (e.g., "One has more than the other"), whereas those of concrete operational children reflect an awareness that amounts are still the same.
c. There are a number of possible responses to this question. Following are two examples:
- In mathematics, conservation of number is essential for an understanding of numbers. Children must realize that "4 is 4 is 4," no matter how the four items are arranged.
- In science, students studying the concept of weight must understand that weight stays the same regardless of physical transformations. For instance, gas that is heated expands but still weighs the same as it did before.