Jean Piaget is best known for his theories of cognitive development.
Through his research, he illustrated that individuals learn
on a continuum. First you learn through hands-on activity
or concrete learning. Counting bears, counting on
your fingers, cutting pizzas into pieces that demonstrate
portions of the whole, learning countries’ geographic
locations before you understand how their proximity affects
their political alliances, are all ways to “see”
and build your understanding of an idea or concept.
When new
learning is introduced and you are at your most puzzled or
conflicted, you are in disequilibrium. This makes
sense since, as the word suggests, new learning may throw
a different light on what you already know and make you unclear
about what you actually do know. This is when you are the
most open to learning.
Piaget
believes that as you learn you build communities of information
that you store. How your storage system is arranged is called
the schema. Imagine it like a big coat rack in your head.
The big hooks are for the big topics or concepts that you
know. As you add more facts that can be categorized on one
hook or another you associate the new learning with what you
already know. Whole new ideas or concepts may mean that you
add another hook. The more you learn and store, the fuller
your hooks become. Sometimes you can see connections among
the facts stored on different hooks. The ability to recognize
relationships and think in terms of shared hooks gives you
the power to look beyond the facts to areas that require judgments
about things that are not clearly stated. This type of thinking
that is not strictly one way or the other but involves speculation
about “what if” is abstract thinking. Piaget believes
that when we are faced with a great deal of information we
can assimilate it, but for it to really become our own and
fitted to a hook it must be accommodated. This explains why
when we cram for a test or students are given too much work
at one time, they can store it for only a short time. If they
do not have the help or time to understand how it fits into
the schema, it will be forgotten or lost.
It is
important to understand where on the continuum of learning
each person is so that the lessons are appropriate for their
level of understanding. Learners must understand that they
must continue to struggle to understand a concept. Just because
they operate at a concrete level now does not mean that they
will always be concrete. With work, they will move up the
continuum. Learners should also know that just because you
have reached abstract in one area doe not mean that you cannot
be concrete in another area. We move in and out of concrete
and abstract reasoning depending on the area of expertise
and as Gardner would say the strength of the multiple intelligence
we are employing.
Summary
KEY COMPONENTS
OF THEORY:
- Intellect
and prior knowledge are what humans use to make sense of
their world. These allow them to adapt and interact with
the environment and its ever-present changes.
- The
four processes in organizing and adapting constructs are
schemes assimilation accommodation equilibration.
- People
are also influenced by the knowledge they construct themselves.
These are known as physical, logico-math, emotional, and
social-arbitrary.
IMPLICATIONS
FOR LEARNING:
- Students
can examine and study academic and social criteria through
experimentation and discovery. They can access prior knowledge
and experiences to increase their cognitive processes.
IMPLICATIONS
FOR TEACHING:
- Teachers
should provide a more stimulating and interactive classroom
that would encourage learners to fuse together prior knowledge
and new experiences to problem solve and develop cognitive
abilities.
