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.
