What is learning from a Piagetian perspective? Learning results from operations. In other words, a child discovers information by operating on something and transforming it. What can a teacher do to facilitate this development of learning? I guess the teacher can design curriculum that provides students with the opportunity to experiment and discover new principles.
I wonder if I'm fully understanding this theory. In my opinion, this perspective seems to promote the idea of some pretty stubborn children. It seemed to me as I was reading that he is arguing that if a child doesn't interpret these operations for him or herself, but is instead told what the operations mean, that the child won't internalize the information. I do not believe that was 100% true of me when I was a child. I know that I can remember working things out for myself many times, and it was meaningful when I did that, but I also remember having trusted adults teach me things and accepting that information and definitely remembering it.
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Well, it is not about stubbornness, according to Piaget it is about ability. He says that students at particular stages are only capable of seeing an issue a particular way. For example, when they are at preoperational they are only capable of seeing things from an egocentric perspective. That is, they cannot take the perspective of other people and think of how the latter would see an issue. So the implications for instruction are to make sure that as a teacher you put students into situations where they realize that their current way of thinking is not working.
ReplyDeleteBrian
I think its a difficult theory because we don't really remember the way we thought when we were children. Instead we just assume that the way we think now has to be the way we always thought. I feel the same way about my younger self, even though I know that can't possibly have been the case.
ReplyDeleteBut its obvious when I try to reason with my 2-year old that things that would work with me just aren't going to work with him. And, although the teenagers we work with seem to be adults, they really have a ways to go before they are cognitively similar to us. I know the 18 year-olds I teach still have difficulty with compassion and abstraction, and I need to be aware of this cognitive gap so that I can address it. Also so that I won't get so frustrated with them sometimes!