Exploring Ghanaian Children Conservation of Number

Abstract

The study was based on Piaget’s theory of Cognitive development and the main aim of the study was to find out if Piaget’s theory on children’s number conservation at the concrete stage holds for Ghanaian early children. Fifty-four (54) kindergarten and lower primary school children were randomly selected from three (3) public and two (3) private schools purposively selected from schools in the Winneba Municipality. The procedure used was mainly interview method using some of Piaget’s tasks to test for conservation of number. The 7-8 years old were identified to be conservers of number than the 3-6 years old. Generally, the results supported Piaget’s theory of cognitive development where the older children (7-8 years) performed better than the younger children (3-4 years; 5-6 years) at the number tasks. There was also no significant difference on how the public and private school children performed on the number task. In conclusion, the results of this study agree with Piaget’s theory of Cognitive development that the concrete operational stage marks the development of conservation and that the Ghanaian children tested were no different in their cognitive stage as with the Swiss children used by Piaget.