Artist Model: Laika Astronaut Dog by Owen Davey

Although at first it may appear quite abstract, Owen Davey portrays the story of Laika the astronaut dog in a fun and exciting new way. His images are filled with content, allowing children to unpack more information each time they view a page. His expressive style accentuates this, and his colour palette though slightly muted suits the mood and the setting of the story, which is based in Russia.

Research: Images of Space

Solar System

Earth (from Moon)

Moon (from Earth)

Stars (from Outer Space)

Research: Moon's size and Orbit

Let’s take a look at the diameter first. The diameter of the Moon is 3,474 km. Now, let’s compare this to the Earth. The diameter of the Earth is 12,742 km. This means that the Moon is approximately 27% the size of the Earth.

What about surface area? The surface area of the Moon is 37.9 million square kilometers.That sounds like a lot, but it’s actually smaller than the continent of Asia, which is only 44.4 million square km. The surface ares of the whole Earth is 510 million square km, so the area of the Moon compared to Earth is only 7.4%.

How about volume? The volume of the Moon is 21.9 billion cubic km. Again, that sounds like a huge number, but the volume of the Earth is more like 1 trillion cubic kilometers. So the volume of the Moon is only 2% compared to the volume of the Earth.

Finally, let’s take a look at mass. The mass of the Moon is 7.347 x 10²² kg. But the Earth is much more massive. The mass of the Earth is 5.97x 10²⁴ kg. This means that the mass of the Moon is only 1.2% of the mass of the Earth. You would need 81 objects with the mass of the Moon to match the mass of the Earth.

The Moon revolves around Earth in an elliptical orbit with a mean eccentricity of 0.0549. Thus, the Moon's center-to-center distance from Earth varies with mean values of 363,396 km at perigee to 405,504 km at apogee. The lunar orbital period with respect to the stars (sidereal month) is 27.32166 days (27d 07h 43m 12s). However, there are three other orbital periods or months that are crucial to the understanding and prediction of eclipses. These three cycles and the harmonics between them determine when, where, and how solar and lunar eclipses occur.

The mutual gravitational force between the Sun and Moon is over twice as large as between the Moon and Earth. For this reason, the Sun plays a dominant role in perturbing the Moon's motion. The ever changing distances and relative positions between the Sun, Moon, and Earth, the inclination of the Moon's orbit, the oblateness of Earth, and (to a lesser extent) the gravitational attraction of the other planets all act to throw the Moon's orbital parameters into a constant state of change. Although the Moon's position and velocity can be described by the classic Keplerian orbital elements, such osculating elements are only valid for a single instant in time (Chapront-Touze' and Chapront, 1991). Nevertheless, these instantaneous parameters are of value in understanding the Moon's complex motions particularly with respect to the three major orbital cycles that govern eclipses.

Research: Gravity on the Moon

Since the Moon is smaller, and has much less mass, it pulls with less gravity. In fact, if you could stand on the surface of the Moon, you would experience only 17% the force of gravity that you would experience on Earth. Gravity on the Moon is much less.

Just to give you an example, let’s say that you weighed 100 kg on Earth. If you stood on the Moon, and then onto your bathroom scale your weight would only be 17 kg. With gravity on the Moon so low, you would be able to jump much higher. If you can jump 30 cm on Earth, you would be able to jump almost 2 meters straight up into the air. And you would be able to fall much further on the Moon. If you jumped off the roof of your house, it would only feel like you jumped off a table. You would be able to throw a ball 6 times further, hit a golf ball 6 times further… you get the idea.

When the Apollo astronauts first walked on the surface of the Moon, they needed to learn how to walk differently in the Moon’s gravity. That’s why the astronauts do a funny hopping run as they move across the surface of the Moon. If they tried to take normal steps, they would fly up into the air to far and fall over – that did happen a few times.

Chosen Story

Earth  v  the Moon

Earth is large.

Earth is heavy.

The moon is smaller.

The moon is much, much, much,

much, much, much smaller than Earth. 

(Six moons equal Earth in size.)

The moon is lighter.

The moon is so much lighter than the earth.

Earth’s gravity is strong.

The moon’s gravity is so much, much, much,

much, much, much weaker.

Earth’s gravity holds the moon in space.
Earth’s gravity holds the moon in place.

(While it orbits Earth.)

By Kathleen Ferrier

Research: Characteristics of Concrete Operational Learning Stage

The concrete operational stage is the third of four stages from Piaget's theory of cognitive development. This stage, which follows the preoperational stage, occurs between the ages of seven and 11 years,^[18] and is characterized by the appropriate use of logic. During this stage, a child's thought processes become more mature and "adult like". They start solving problems in a more logical fashion. Abstract, hypothetical thinking has not yet developed, and children can only solve problems that apply to concrete events or objects. Piaget determined that children are able to incorporate inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning involves drawing inferences from observations in order to make a generalization. In contrast, children struggle with deductive reasoning, which involves using a generalized principle in order to try to predict the outcome of an event. Children in this stage commonly experience difficulties with figuring out logic in their heads. For example, a child will understand that "A is more than B" and "B is more than C". However, when asked "is A more than C?", the child might not be able to logically figure the question out in their heads.

Milestones of the concrete operational stage

The primary milestones of a child's concrete operational stage are:

·         Ability to distinguish between their own thoughts and the thoughts of others: children recognize that their thoughts and perceptions may be different from those around them.

·         Increased classification skills: children are able to classify objects by their number, mass, and weight.

·         Ability to think logically about objects and events.

·         Ability to fluently perform mathematical problems in both addition and subtraction.

Important processes

Important processes during the concrete operational stage include:

·         Classification: the ability to name and identify sets of objects according to appearance, size or other characteristic, including the idea that one set of objects can include another. Hierarchical classification refers to the ability to sort objects into classes and subclasses based on similarities and differences among groups.

·         Conservation: the understanding that, although an object’s appearance changes, it still stays the same in quantity. Redistributing an object does not affect its mass, number, or volume. For example, a child understands that when you pour a liquid into a different-shaped glass, the amount of liquid stays the same.

·         Decentering: the child now takes into account multiple aspects of a problem to solve it. For example, the child will no longer perceive an exceptionally wide but short cup to contain less than a normally wide, taller cup.

·         Reversibility: the child now understands that numbers or objects can be changed and then returned to their original state. For example, a child understands that his or her favorite ball that deflates is not gone and can be filled with air and put back into play again. Another example would be when the child realizes that a ball of clay, once flattened, can be made into a ball of clay again.

·         Seriation: the ability to sort objects in an order according to size, shape, or any other characteristic. For example, different-shaded objects may make a color gradient.

·         Transitivity: transitivity, which refers to the ability to mentally sort objects and recognize relationships among various things in a serial order. For example, when told to put away his books according to height, the child recognizes that he starts with placing the tallest one on one end of the bookshelf and the shortest at the other end.

Two other important processes in the concrete operational stage are the elimination of egocentrism and logic.

Egocentrism is the inability to consider or understand a perspective other than one's own. During this stage, the child acquires the ability to view things from another individual's perspective, even if they think that perspective is incorrect. For instance, show a child a comic in which Jane puts a doll under a box, leaves the room, and then Melissa moves the doll to a drawer, and Jane comes back. A child in the concrete operations stage will say that Jane will still think it's under the box even though the child knows it is in the drawer. (See also False-belief task.)

Children in this stage can, however, only solve problems that apply to actual (concrete) objects or events, and not abstract concepts or hypothetical tasks. Understanding and knowing how to use full common sense has not yet been completely adapted.

Piaget determined that children in the concrete operational stage were able to incorporate inductive logic. On the other hand, children at this age have difficulty using deductive logic, which involves using a general principle to predict the outcome of a specific event. This includes mental reversibility. An example of this is being able to reverse the order of relationships between mental categories. For example, a child might be able to recognize that his or her dog is a Labrador, that a Labrador is a dog, and that a dog is an animal, and draw conclusions from the information available, as well as apply all these processes to hypothetical situations.

The abstract quality of the adolescent's thought at the formal operational level is evident in the adolescent's verbal problem solving ability. The logical quality of the adolescent's thought is when children are more likely to solve problems in a trial-and-error fashion. Adolescents begin to think more as a scientist thinks, devising plans to solve problems and systematically test opinions. They use hypothetical-deductive reasoning, which means that they develop hypotheses or best guesses, and systematically deduce, or conclude, which is the best path to follow in solving the problem. During this stage the adolescent is able to understand such things as love, "shades of gray," logical proofs and values. During this stage the young person begins to entertain possibilities for the future and is fascinated with what they can be.

Adolescents also are changing cognitively by the way that they think about social matters. Adolescent egocentrism governs the way that adolescents think about social matters, and is the heightened self-consciousness in them as they are, which is reflected in their sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility. Adolescent egocentrism can be dissected into two types of social thinking, imaginary audience that involves attention-getting behavior, and personal fable, which involves an adolescent's sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility. These two types of social thinking begin to affect a child's egocentrism in the concrete stage. However, it carries over to the formal operational stage when they are then faced with abstract thought and fully logical thinking.

Testing for concrete operations

Piagetian tests are well known and practised to test for concrete operations. The most prevalent tests are those for conservation. There are some important aspects that the experimenter must take into account when performing experiments with these children.

One example of an experiment for testing conservation is an experimenter will have two glasses that are the same size, fill them to the same level with liquid, which the child will acknowledge is the same. Then, the experimenter will pour the liquid from one of the small glasses into a tall, thin glass. The experimenter will then ask the child if the taller glass has more liquid, less liquid, or the same amount of liquid. The child will then give his answer. The experimenter will ask the child why he gave his answer, or why he thinks that is.

·         Justification: After the child has answered the question being posed, the experimenter must ask why the child gave that answer. This is important because the answers they give can help the experimenter to assess the child's developmental age.

·         Number of times asking: Some argue that if a child is asked if the amount of liquid in the first set of glasses is equal then, after pouring the water into the taller glass, the experimenter asks again about the amount of liquid, the children will start to doubt their original answer. They may start to think that the original levels were not equal, which will influence their second answer.

·         Word Choice: The phrasing that the experimenter uses may affect how the child answers. If, in the liquid and glass example, the experimenter asks, "Which of these glasses has more liquid?", the child may think that his thoughts of them being the same is wrong because the adult is saying that one must have more. Alternatively, if the experimenter asks, "Are these equal?", then the child is more likely to say that they are, because the experimenter is implying that they are.

Research: Piaget's Model of Cognitive Development

Introduction

Jean Piaget's model of intellectual development continues to have a profound impact on how children, their thinking and development are viewed. Piagetian theory and concepts (via a mass of publcations and empirical data) transformed the developmental psychology field of the early twentieth century Behaviourist leanings. It is considered that Piaget played a role of the same ilk in that realm as Darwin played in the evolutionary arena (Thomas, 1996).

Background
Piaget's cognitive theory has its genesis in his background and the chronological timeframe of his academic world. He was born in Switzerland in 1896, and from an early age showed much promise with an abundance of precocity as a scholar with interests in biology. He had achieved a Ph.D. by the age of 22 years and experienced a period of directionless wandering around Europe,on the fringes of the embryonic psychological movement. It was at Binet's laboratory, administering standardized tests to young children, that Piaget ignited his lifelong interest in the thought processes of children. Piaget died in 1980 but is survived by a 'monumental' theoretical legacy in developmental psychology. (Flavell, 1996)

The 'Methode Clinique'
Piaget was the first theorist to recognise that children and adults had different cognitive processes. Miller (1993) contends (in Flavell, 1996:200) that Piaget altered the course of psychology with his unique observation and questioning techniques so that once "psychologists looked at development through Piaget's eyes, they never saw children in quite the same way." It is from this uniquely Piagetian mode of observing subjects in a 'father/experimenter' role in a semistructured interviewing approach that Piaget pioneered the 'methode clinique'. This significant contribution is still in use today, with most clinicians in this field utilizing variations in their research. For Piaget, it was important to probe the underlying understandings and knowledge bases in children's cognition, with repeated questionings and a focus on the reasonings behind their answers. Such novel insight was in contradiction to all previous understandings of this field. Flavell 1996:202 states that Piaget believed he could learn far more about child cognition "by noting and querying their incorrect answers than just by tallying their correct ones." It is from such 'clinical' intensity that provided the vast wealth of research data upon which Piaget based his cognition theory, much of which largely endures to the present day in some form. Piaget had the 'greenest thumb', in his rich empirical discoveries to reveal his model on the development of cognition. He "systematically ploughed his way through most of the principal modes of human experience and knowledge--- space, time, number, and the rest" (Flavell (1963) in Flavell, 1996:202).

Theoretical Orientation
Piaget's cognitive development approach became the springboard for all other intellectual theories. He was most concerned with the structures and growth of knowledge or 'genetic epistemology' and recognized that an excellent place to study such processes would be with young children. Piaget believed that cognitive development happens through the rich interplay of biological processes of maturation, neural development (Central Nervous System and memory) as well as language formation via the interaction of social learning experiences.A child's physical maturation in combination with sensory- motor development enables the active experiencing and discovery of the physical environment. Piaget believed that all thought begins with physical activity in the early stages of a child's development evolving in maturity with complex abilities to manipulate mental functions that are abstract/hyperthetical. Piaget's most famous metaphor to describe this endogenous or internally motivated process, is viewing the child as a 'little scientist' who experiments and explores his world. Social interaction as a source of learning was not emphasized by Piaget. When compared to the Russian cognitve theorist, Lev Vygotsky, Piaget's views are starkly contrasting. Vygotsky used he metaphor of the learning child as a 'little apprentice' with his teachers placed in the central role providing and supporting all possible learning situations. Such cognition is exogenous or externally motivated.

Basic Concepts of Piagetian Theory
Piaget was the first theorist to recognise the qualitative differences between child and adult intellectual abilities. He also believed that the child was very much the active learner in an age-stage process whereby the child progresses qualitatively through the stages of cognitive development in a two-pronged adaptive/interactive process which allows for new information to be fitted (assimilation)into already existing cognitive structures (accommodation).
Accommodation is defined by Lefrancois (1995) as the "modification of an activity or ability in the face of environmental demands." He defines its twin, assimilation, as the "act of incorporating objects or aspects of objects into learned activities" (pp.329-330).
The end product of this is called Equilibration which results in more effective ways of processing information from the environment. Lefrancois describes this process of equilibration as how "people maintain a balance between assimilation (using old learning) and accommodation (changing behavior; learning new things)" (p.335). This state of balance is pivotal in cognitive growth.It is necessary, according to Piagetian theory for children to progress through each stage in turn accommodating/assimilating towards the balances of equilibration and meeting the challenges of 'disequilibration' (cognitive conflict) through the child's life span to adulthood cognitive sophistication.
In this model,the phase termed 'Organization' stands alongside the Adaption level to describe the structures of human cognition. From this Piaget utilizes the concept 'Operation' to describe it as the "thought process... an action that has been internalised in the sense that it can be "thought" and is reversible in the sense that it can be "unthought" (Lefrancois,1995:342). Here Piaget proposes that the child develops through hierarchial quantitatively different stages, each building on the preceding one, towards an ever increasingly complex array of 'schemas'or knowledges of what is known about at a particular time. Lefrancois' explanation for a schema is simple; "a unit of cognitive structure...an activity together with whatever biology or neurology might underlie that activity... an idea or a concept" (p.345). An example of a schema's evolution is the innate ability of an infant to suck for sustenance at the breast eventually expanding the sucking schema to include similar behaviour with tiny fingers and hands, a bottle etc.

Piaget's Stages of Intelligence
Piaget contended that children developed their intelligence through a series of qualitatively differentiated stages and that their intelligence was radically different to that of adults. Such a notion was revolutionary for the times, where the prevailing belief was that children's cognition was the same as adults but less efficient in quantitative terms. Piaget maintained in his theory that children progressed through each of the stages in an 'invariance sequence'; that strictly in the same order(Sutherland,1992).
Many readings of Piaget's stage theory will notice that most academics acknowledge that he wrote about a four stage theory (Lefrancois, 1996). However, recently it has been mooted (by Flavell?) that there are really only three stages. This work will use the three stage framework.

The General Periods of Development
1. The sensorimotor stage; with six sub-stages, (birth to two years).
2. The stage of concrete operations, with two sub-stages- pre-operational thought (two to seven years) and concrete operations (seven to eleven years).
3. The stage of formal operations (eleven years through to adulthood).

Sensorimotor Intelligence (birth to two years)
This developmental period consists of six stages in which the infants organize reflex actions/schemas - like sucking, in order for them to exist in their environment. Sutherland (1992:9) states that the infant's "mental world is geared towards doing (rather than symbolic activity, such as language)." It is characterized by reflex activity, hand-mouth co-ordination, co-ordination of two schemes, object permanence and the beginnings of representation.

Sub-stage (i) Reflexive Actions: (O-1 month)
This stage is characterized by "mere mechanical responses to outside stimuli" according to Piaget (Sutherland,1992:9).

(ii) Primary Circular Reactions: (1-4 months)
The infant is capable of primitive intelligent responses to his environment termed 'circular' by Piaget, due to their repetitive nature. Circular reactions are actions (unlike reflexes) that are repeated by the baby himself because of their pleasantness; i.e.sucking a thumb. A pool of such actions is integral in accommodation processes as new activities become integrated by the domoinant mechanism of this stage - assimilation, an example of circular reactions. It is at this time that one canmark the origins of intent, and the capacity to repeat acts. Here begins "the dawning of memory" (Sutherland, 992:9).

(iii) Secondary Circular Reactions: (4-8 months)
The infant becomes increasingly more interested in his environment. Actions are now deliberately repeated; grabbing toys and putting them in his mouth. Actions are intended now to achieve goals in a secondary circular reaction allowing the baby to extend it's range of possible action thus building schemas. The baby is able to recognise objects - a rattle - as ones that he can shake. Piaget calls this Recognitory assimilation.

(iv) Co-ordination of Secondary Circular Reactions: (8-12 months)
At this stage the infant's behaviour assumes a more purposeful and deliberate, co-ordinated flavour as this time coincides with the onset of crawling and his whole world enlarges. He is not, however, capable of understanding and searching out hidden objects. Object permanence is embyronic, in that he is able to anticipate in play; i.e. the peckaboo game. Schemas are becoming more and more elaborate.

(v) Tertiary Circulary Reactions: (12-18 months)
Sutherland writes of Piaget's most famous experiment used to illustrate the enormous leap forward that the achievement of 'object permanence' brings to the child's cognitive development. In Piagetian terms, this liberates the understanding that a person or object will exist even when it is not able to be seen. Mental representations are a key concept in this theory and linked to'object constancy'. The baby explores its rich environment and actively interact with novel situations, objects and events using trial and error to solve problems.

(vi) Inventive Abilities via Mental Combinations: (18-24 months)
The baby is now able to mentally represent himself. He is able to invent his own play activity and play becomes the most important learning realm. With his toys, he uses symbolic representation to transform objects; i.e. animism or the tendancy to attribute life to inanimate objects. Cognition at this stage moves beyond mere sensorimotor towards preconceptual thought and the genesis of early language, transforming cognitive activity in what Piaget referred to as Post-sensorimotor representational intelligence. Here, the youngster is constructing and recording experiences from a language framework, rather than an action base (Sutherland, 1992).

Operational Intelligence.
It is characterized by pre-conceptual thinking, centration, language acquisition, animism and irreversibility at the pre-operational level. Concrete operations is characterized by reversibility, decentration, classification, ability to order, number seration - large to small and conservation abilities. The term 'operation' is a key concept for Piaget, and is defined as an internalized activity subjected to rules of logic (Lefrancois,1995).

(i) Pre-operational thought:(2-7 years)
The preoperational child is much more capable of understanding his world but markedly different to adults in terms of efficency. This stage is divided into two sub-phases;
Preconceptual thinking: 2-4 years.
This stage is characterized by a lack of ability to classify and regards similar objects as though they are identical in a type of muddled categorization; i.e. all men must be 'Daddy', all animals are 'doggies', all toys are his, one pile of green beads has more than another pile of non-green beads. The preconcepts child cannot hierarchially discriminate between oranges and apples for instance but has a hunger to constantly ask 'what is that?'.
Intuitive thinking: 4-7 years.
Thinking has become more logical and perception plays a striking role now. Piaget's experiments for Conservation indicate the child is able to be easily tricked by dominant and immediate perceptions. 'Egocentrism' or self-centred understanding dominates the thinking in the intuitive child who is unable to understand the point of view of others. Dominant question is 'why?'
(ii) Concrete Operations:(7-11/12 years)
This is the stage of operational thinking characterized by the child's ability to hold ideas in his head simultaneously as problem-solving is going on. Here, Lefrancois (1995:214) says the child begins the transition from "prelogical, egocentric, perception dominated kind of thinking to a more rule-regulated thinking." He learns the acquires the logic of conservation. This is illustrated by the tall and wide beaker experiment so famous in Piagetian theory (also the two pieces of different shaped plasticene).
Piaget terms the notion of Decalage to refer to the 'lag' within different tasks, at different ages of achieving full operations (horizontal). Vertical decalage refers to mastery at different stages of cognitive progress; i.e. sensorimotor etc.

Formal Operations:(11/12- Adulthood)
This stage is characterized by abstract and logical thinking, complex verbal and problem-solving abilities as well as hypothesis formation.
The formal operatioal thinker is a most effective abstract and symbolic thinker. This has implications in education with a wide range of subjects and difficult concepts able to be applied at this stage. Piaget called this hypothetico-deductive whereby the adolescent is able to conceive an idea and use deductive powers to draw conclusions. Sutherland (1992) states that thinking "is no longer limited to reality or personal experience" (p.19). The adolescent is now able to sift through a knowledge field in a process of combinational analysis (Lefrancois,1995).

Piaget's 'Methode Researche' and Theory Criticisms.
Much criticism has been aimed at the methodology and sampling on which Piaget based his empirical data and theoretical stances. He used his own children and those of his Genevian colleagues to develop his huge array of concepts about all childrens' cognition. This very small sample - of academic, high socio-economic status and cultural variables, make for the possiblity that his results/data may be unreliable and, at the very least, unrepresentative. Piaget generalized from a tiny sample base, ignored individual differences and prior learning. His experiments were difficult to replicate and artificial, considered too informal and unscientific.
As well, many have criticized Piaget's pessimistic questioning techniques and feel he tried to catch children out in his experiments; i.e. Donaldson in Sutherland, 1992. The use of more optimal language and help is required compared to the traditional teaching styles of Piaget's era. The same source states that he underestimated children's abilities whilst overestimating adult cognition. He is criticized by Hamlyn (1978) in Sutherland for ignoring the value of social learning - in the mother's arms or with teachers, but not as Piaget suggested, in a social vacuum.
Many critics have found fault with his notion of a lockstep progression through the various stages, commenting that more recent studies have discovered discrepancies in the cognitive abilities within any particular child,and between children. They would dispute Piaget's notion of cognitive 'homogeneity' (Sutherland, 1992).