The Psychology of Thinking and Learning
Outline Piaget's theory of cognitive development and discuss whether evidence supports this theory.
Written assignments should be submitted in hard copy (printed on A4 paper, font size 12, double spaced, single sided) together with an electronic copy. All submissions require a cover sheet (available from the Foundation Centre office) and should be placed in the submissions box by 10am on the deadline date.
You need to have a title, an introduction, a main body and a conclusion. The essay should be approximately 1500 words long (put the word count at the end of the essay) and contain a reference list and a bibliography (these are not included in the word count).
Tips for writing the essay:
• Write the essay title at the top of the first page. It will help you to focus on the demands of the assignment. Use the title I have given you; do not make up your own.
• Your introductory paragraph should demonstrate a clear understanding of what the essay requires, the ability to signpost the shape and key theme of the essay, and a basic ability to define key terms. In other words you need to introduce the topic of cognitive development and Piaget's theory, and say what your essay is going to cover.
• Your outline of Piaget's theory of cognitive development should include key features and be a cohesive overview.
• You need to find evidence to support or refute Piaget's theory. Do not evaluate Piaget based on your own opinion; evaluate his work against the research of others.
• In your conclusion you need to say whether the evidence supports Piaget's theory.
• Your essay should be argument/theme driven. You should state your argument/theme and support it with evidence, rather than presenting individual studies with evaluative comments. The argument/theme should be outlined in the introduction, discussed in the main body and summed up in the conclusion.
• When discussing the evidence, make sure that you structure your paragraphs around a single topic sentence, and each topic sentence has a sufficient number of supporting sentences to elucidate it. Do not go off on different tangents within the same paragraph.
• The sources you use for your evidence should be academically credible.
• You should include in your reference list all sources cited in your essay. Your bibliography should include other sources you have consulted.
• Your in-text citations, reference list and bibliography should be correctly formatted; please consult Cite Them Right .
• This essay is meant to be your work, therefore do not cut and paste from documents on the internet or use quotes.
• When citing other people's research you need to distinguish primary and secondary sources. If you are citing Bower and Wishart (1972) from the original article, then this is the source you include in your bibliography. However, if you are citing Bower and Wishart (1972) from the Pennington handout, then in the main body of the essay you would write Bower and Wishart (1972, as cited in Pennington, McLoughlin, Smithson, Robinson & Boswell, 2003) and include the Pennington reference in your reference list.
• Interrogate your essay before submission: Does it fulfil the demands of the task; contain an introduction and conclusion; signpost the essay's key arguments; have within and between paragraph cohesion; progress logically; have in-text citations and a correctly formatted reference list/ bibliography.
• Proof read your essay before handing it in. Do not rely on your computer to detect spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors.
• Request a one-to-one session to discuss your essay.