Conservation of number, length, mass and seriation among Kikuyu pre-primary school children aged 4-6 years

Abstract

This thesis is based on a research carried out among Kikuyu pre-primary school children 4-6 years old living in "airobi and the surrounding areas.The research was based on Piaget's theory of cognitive development and the main aim of this study was to find out if this theory holds for a non-western society especially at the pre-primary school level. The procedure in this study was interview method using some of Piaget's tasks to test for conservation of number, length, mass and seriation. The effects of age, sex and the type of school attended on conservation were .investigated into by classifying the subjects into Three age groups, male versus female, and the high versus low cost schools. There were 90 boys and 90 girls whose age was closely matched. Each subject was categorized as attending either Low or high cost school.This research was carried out during The period mid-September to mid-October in 1979. The information was collected through interview method and the data obtained was analysed using t-tests and F-ratio for. differences between and among means respectively. Generally the results supported Piaget's theory of cognitive development whereby older children performed better than younger children at some of the tasks such as number and seriation tasks. Using Piaget's percentage comparison (75%) criterion, none of the conservation concepts in this study was developed. There were no significant differences in performance between boys and girls on umber,mass and seriation tasks. It was suggested that lack of significant difference in performance on the basis of sex is due to the upbringing of the children. At the time of this study, there has been considerable change in attitude and vaIues among Kikuyu parents and therefore children of either sex are encouraged to perform ~ell both at home and at school. With respect to the type of school attended, significant difference in performance was found for seriation task only. This was attributed to the differences in home experiences whereby children attending high cost schools had better opportunity of playing with structured toys such as those for constructing staircases while such playthings were not available to the children attending low cost schools. In conclusion, the resuIts of this study agree with Piagets theory of cognitive development.