Dialectical inferences in the construction of social domain knowledge

HORN, AXEL; CASTORINA, JOSÉ ANTONIO; BARREIRO, ALICIA

Congreso; Jean Piaget Society 50th Annual Meeting ?Constructivism?; 2021

Jean Piaget Society

The theory of cognitive systems equilibration was elaborated by Piaget in the middle 1970s to explain the passage from states of lesser to greater knowledge. A few years later, the author enriched the theory by addressing its inferential aspect; however, his proposal of a dialectical inference process in the genesis of meanings had no impact on subsequent research. The aim of this work is to gather evidence on its potential to explain knowledge in a domain for which it was not originally proposed: social knowledge. Specifically, this presentation intends to analyze such potential to explain the development of the understanding of the right to privacy in the school context in a sample of 30 Argentine children from 7 to 12 years old, interviewed following the Piagetian clinical method. Analyzing the children's arguments, we conclude the relationship between the knowledge systems of 7 and 8 years old children that fail to recognize the existence of the right to privacy and focus on other aspects of the school context -such as the teachers' beneficent disposition-; and the knowledge systems of participants aged between 9 and 12 years old that recognize the right to privacy (however conditioned) -for example, by their expectations of a teachers' benefit- can be understood as differentiation and integration processes, in terms of Piagetian inferential dialectics.