The Development of a Concept of Volume Conservation in Esn Children

Abstract

SUMMARY. This investigation showed that a concept of volume conservation can be taught to educationally subnormal children and that this understanding of conservation generalises to weight and substance situations. 104 ESN school children were pre-tested for conservation of substance, weight and volume. Then, using a varied teaching method which included three conservation of volume experiences, reasons, and situations, 30 of these children (nonconservers aged 9 to 15 with IQs between 46 and 75) were taught to recognise, generalise and give reasons for conservation. Post-testing after one and two weeks and again after five months revealed that their concept of conservation was durable as well as generalised. The teaching method used was found to be an eifective way, though not necessarily the only or the best way, of developing conservation in children regardless of their prior understanding of conservation.

The Development of Esn Children's Understanding of Conservation in a Range of Attribute Situations

“…The pre-test results also revealed the influence of specific task variables which, again, raises the question of what determines the difficulty of a problem. With volume, conservation is more easily recognised in some situations than others but, as the writer found previously (Lister, 1970), there was no evidence of a necessary interior-before-displacement-volume sequence such as reported by Piaget, Inhelder and Szeminska (1960). With area problems, children found it harder to recognise conservation with the houses-on-fields situation than with the plots-on-fields.…”

“…(1) Is appreciation of conservation systematically related to the attribute under consideration ? It has been found that almost without exception ESN children appreciate conservation of substance before weight before volume (Lister, 1970). Can this developmental sequence be replicated and extended to include the attributes of number, length, distance and area ?…”

“…Tms investigation followed previous work on ESN children's appreciation of conservation of quantity and its development by instruction (Lister, 1969(Lister, , 1970. The present study used an enlarged sample of pre-test problems, 14 in aU, in order to illumine four main questions.…”

The Importance of the Verbal Content in the Training of Piagetian Conservation Skills

“…Few studies have been conducted with mildly retarded children as subjects (Boersma & Wilton 1976;Brison & Bereiter 1967;Lancaster & McManis 1973;Lister 1970Lister , 1972, and fewer still have used a sufficiently stringent experimental technique to demonstrate any cognitive changes in their retarded subjects.…”

The Development of Cognitive Judgment in the Mentally Retarded: A Selective Review of Piagetian-Inspired Research

“…Lister (21) gave an individual teaching session to six out of 12 retarded children who failed the weight conservation task. Posttested after two Downloaded by [New York University] at 13:15 25 June 2015 weeks, and again after four weeks, all six showed conservation of weight.…”