Assessment of a Preoperational and a Concrete Operational Thinker

Assessment of a Preoperational and a Concrete Operational Thinker
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Assessment of a Preoperational and a Concrete Operational Thinker
Data collection
The conservation tasks were conducted on 14 Jun 2018 and 29 Jun 2018 respectively at XYZ Kindergarten. The reason I performed these tasks separately is Max, a 7 years old boy who attending the primary school, he is not from my kindergarten. So, I had to carry out these tasks during the school holiday. Whereas Noel is a 5 years old boy who attending the kindergarten. These conservation tasks were carried out on a small classroom desk in a classroom. More specifically, these conservation tasks were administered to an energetic and intelligent Sino-active boy and an outgoing and rambunctious Chinese boy. The location, items involved or the situation of the transformation, all questions and procedures were identical in each child’s case. No pre-test and post-test or training was administered prior to these tasks.
Conservation of Quantity
Ten separate identical buttons (yellow and red buttons) were used. In this task, I arranged and spaced evenly one row of 10 red buttons on the small table and a pile of matching series yellow buttons was placed in front of the child. Then I asked the child to make an identical yellow buttons row with the red buttons set, so there were 2 identical rows of different coloured buttons on the small table.
1 Can you tell me if the yellow buttons row has more or the red buttons row has more or they are the same number?”
Both children said the buttons were the same.
2 Why did you say they are the same number?
There was a difference in the justification of the answer. For a moment, Max hesitated before starting to count the yellow buttons first and continued to count the red ones too. I was to conclude that there are both 10 yellow and 10 red buttons, he interrupted by saying they are of the same amount. For Noel she just answered directly that there are 10 buttons in each row.
In the next step of this task, I rearranged the buttons by spreading the red buttons and placing them further apart from each other.
3 Now, can you tell me if the red buttons row has more or the yellow buttons row has more, or they have the same amount?
Here the answers differed. Max said they had the same amount while Noel claimed that the red row had more. To justify his answer, he said that the were the same amount of ten as they were in the beginning. On the other hand, Noel justified his answer by saying that the red one was longer.
Conservation of Liquid
In this task I presented Two identical short and fat glasses containing an equal amount of different coloured (blue and red) liquid to the children. I asked them whether the two glasses had the same amount of liquid. Then I adjusted the volume until the children confirmed that the two glasses contained equal amount of liquid. I proceeded to the next step by taking a taller and thinner glass and emptied the red liquid into it.
Results
1 Now, can you tell me do they have the same amount of liquid, or the red coloured liquid has more, or the blue coloured liquid has more?”
Both children said that both glasses had the sam...