The validation of Piaget's conservation tasks on children coming from the school and orphanage environment

• Main Authors: Hilario, Nancy, Nocom, Jocelyn, Tan, Jane
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1993
• Subjects: Orphans and orphan-asylums; Children > Institutional care; School children > Psychology; Conservation (Psychology); Cognition in children; School environment
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/9454
• Institution: De La Salle University

The study aims to determine the conservation tasks that children from ages 7 - 13 could conserve and whether children exposed to school environment could perform better than those children exposed to orphanage environment. 70 children composing of 35 children in a private school (St. Stephen's High School) and 35 children in an orphanage (Hospicio de San Jose) with ages ranging from 7-13 (5 children at each age level) were used as subjects. Purposive sampling was used in choosing a private school and an orphanage. Procedure for administering the test was patterned after Piaget's activities in the Piaget Primer Thinking - Learning - Teaching Book. Testing was conducted on a one-on-one basis. No statistical analysis was employed. Responses were recorded in terms of simple frequencies. Correct answers were given one point and wrong answers were not given any credit. Based on the data gathered, the number of conservers generally increase with age. Of the seven tasks, only conservation of substance and conservation of weight (except for the 13 years old) among the children in school environment showed consistent results with Piaget's findings. In addition, findings indicated that children in school environment within the age range of 7, 9 and 10 performed better than children in orphanage environment. However, children from ages 8, 11 to 13 showed inconsistent results because orphans were found to perform better in some tasks, while on the other tasks, students were found to do better. In conclusion, the number of conservers increase with age. The inconsistent results of the present findings with Piaget's theory may be attributed to cultural differences. Furthermore, environmental factors such as the level of education, socio economic status, and people whom children interact with can have an effect on children's ability to conserve.