Piaget: Developmental Growth
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to perform more complex mental operations. As before, they reconstruct the concepts developed in earlier stages into more abstract and complex levels. Coinciding with the years of elementary school, children in the concrete-operational stage exercise their reasoning skills and deal with clock and calendar time, map and geographical space, and experimental cause and effect.51 4. At the formal-operational period, from age 11 through early adulthood, individuals construct logical propositions and interpret space, historical time, and multiple cause-and-effect relationships. They use such multivariate thinking to construct possible plans of action.52 Now that adolescents understand cause-and-effect relationships, they can use the scientific method and can learn complex mathematical, linguistic, and mechanical processes.53
formal-operational period A stage of human development identified by Jean Piaget that occurs from age 11 through early adulthood, when individuals formulate abstract generalizations and learn how to perform complex problem-solving processes.
Piaget’s stage-learning theory of development has many important applications to education. Because children are constantly reconstructing their view of reality as they grow and develop, their conceptions of reality often differ from the kinds of curriculum and instruction adults tend to impose on them. Early-childhood and primary education should reflect on how children construct and learn to act on their own cognitive processes. As they move through the stages of development, children have their own readiness for new learning based on the cognitive level they have reached. This, in turn, determines their readiness for new and higher-order learning experiences.54 Although a rich environment can stimulate readiness, learning cannot be forced on children until they are developmentally ready for it.
constructivism A learning theory in
which learners actively create meaning by constructing and reconstructing their ideas about reality though their explorations of the environment.
FOCUS Were some of Piaget’s ideas such as learning through the senses, exploring the environment, and using objects similar to the concepts developed by other pioneers such as Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Dewey, and Montessori? How did Piaget attempt to reduce the gap between how children learned informally outside of and formally within the school? In your educational experience, were there teachers who used Piaget’s principles? Do you plan on incorporating Piaget’s ideas into your teaching?
4-10b Education and Schooling Piaget reconstructed the concept of the school to resemble the informal environment in which children learn on their own. Outside of school, children learn directly and informally from their explorations of their environment. The most effective classroom teaching replicates the informal learning children use in their everyday out-of-school lives.55 As they interact with their environment, children build knowledge of their world through a creative process known as constructivism.56 As they discover gaps between their existing concepts and the new situations they encounter when exploring their environment, children reconceptualize their existing knowledge with their new infor mation to construct more complete higher-order concepts.57 To stimulate children’s explorations, teachers can design their classrooms as learning centers stocked with materials that engage children’s curiosity.58 The following principles from Piaget can guide teachers’ preservice preparation and classroom practice:
1. Encourage children to explore and experiment. 2. Individualize instruction so children can learn at their own level of readiness. 3. Design the classroom as a learning center stocked with materials that children can touch, manipulate, and use.
Ibid. C. J. Brainerd, “Jean Piaget, Learning Research, and American Education,” in Barry J. Zimmerman and Dale H. Schunk, ed., Educational Psychology: A Century of Contributions (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003), p. 257; and Elkind, p. 1897. 53 Jean Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children, trans. Margaret Cook (New York: Norton, 1952), pp. 24–40; also see Ulrich Muller, Jeremy I. M. Carpendale, and Leslie Smith, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Piaget (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009); and Richard Kohler, Jean Piaget (Continuum Library of Educational Thought) (New York: Continuum, 2008). 54 Brainerd, p. 260. 55 Ibid., p. 284. 56 Susan Puss, Parallel Paths to Constructionism: Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky (Greenwich CT: Information Age Publishing, 2004). 57 Brainerd, p. 271. 58 Piaget, Origins of Intelligence, pp. 23–42. 51 52
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