Introduction
Jean
Piaget was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland on August 9, 1896. His
father, a historian, exemplified serious scholarship. His example
appears to have influenced the young Jean who was first published at
the age of 10 when he wrote a short piece on an albino sparrow. (29)
At
an early age the young Jean also showed intellectual independence. At
the insistence of his mother, Piaget took religious instruction; but
he found religious arguments to be foolish and rejected them. [2, 3)
Ultimately
Piaget
attended the University of Neuchatel and earned a Ph.D. in natural
sciences. Later, though, he was introduced to psychoanalysis while
working in psychological laboratories in Zurich, Switzerland. Then, at
the University of Paris, he studied abnormal psychology, logic and
epistemology (the theory of knowledge.) (29)
In
1920 he began working on standardized reasoning tests with Theodore
Simon in the Binet Laboratory. As he did so he was struck by the fact
that there were marked differences in the “mistakes” made by younger
students as opposed to those made by older students and adults. [1]
His curiosity about this pattern he discovered provided the underlying
foundation of what would eventually become his life’s work, a grand
theory of cognitive development. (29)
Over
the course of his career, Piaget published over sixty books and
hundreds of articles on topics ranging from biology and science, to
sociology, psychology, education, and genetic epistemology. He died at
the age of 84 on September 16, 1980. [1]
Although Piaget described himself as an epistemologist and
never had formal training in education, he still is credited as the
man, “… that championed a way of thinking about children that provided
the foundations for today’s education.” [1, 4]
Perhaps a quote out of Time Magazine attributed to Albert Einstein
best sums up Piaget work: “His work was so simple that only a genius
could have thought of it.” [5]
Theory of Value
What is Worth Knowing?
For Piaget, knowledge is not just pre-constructed information
that is dispensed from one individual to another. Knowledge, he
maintains, is necessarily self-constructed. (8] Everyone constructs
their own schemata, bits of knowledge, explanations, or pictures of
reality, according to their individual goals, previously existing
concepts, and new perceptions. [4]
For Piaget, then, knowledge exists differently for each of us
because it is situated in this highly individualistic learning
experience that is subject to variations of prior knowledge, genetics,
and perceptions.
[8]
It follows that what is worth knowing varies from individual to
individual.
More generally, what gives knowledge value is, in part, its
ability to help us think and learn even more. Plus there is a social
side to knowledge. Piaget stresses that education plays the vital role
of adapting the child to the social environment of the adult. [10] It
changes the “… psychobiological constitution of the child to function
in a society that stresses certain social, intellectual, and moral
values.” (10)
This stress on fitting in seems pretty conservative. However,
Piaget also writes, “the principle goal of education is to create men
who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other
generations have done.” Education “is to form minds which can be
critical, can verify, and do not accept everything they are offered.”
[11]
For Piaget, then, what is worth knowing is not only present
knowledge and values, but the new knowledge and values that one
arrives at by thinking independently. In addition, for Piaget, much
that is of value, and much that is worth knowing, has yet to be
discovered. Nevertheless, it is the existing social environment that
provides us with the firm footing we need to reach out for it.
Theory of Knowledge
What is knowledge?
How
is it different from belief? What is a mistake? What is a lie?
Piaget spent his life trying to
understand the nature of knowledge and how we come to know. [12] And
Piaget realized that better understanding of how a child’s mind develops could be a
pathway to a well-formulated understanding not only of how humans of
all ages acquire knowledge, but the very nature of knowledge itself.
[13]
Piaget began conducting his research on knowledge acquisition
in children by posing ingeniously simple questions to them?” [Piagetʼs famous experimental dialogue of “what makes the wind” showcases
this point:
Piaget:
What
makes the wind?
Julia:
The
trees.
Piaget:
How
do you know?
Julia:
I
saw them waving their arms.
Piaget:
How
does that make the wind?
Julia:
(Waving
her hand in from of her face): Like this. Only they are bigger. And
there are lots of trees.
Piaget:
What
makes the wind on the ocean?
Julia:
It
blows from the land. No, it’s the waves. (4]
From an adult point of view
Julia is incorrect; but her theory, that trees make the wind, given
her prior knowledge and ability to reason, is sound. [14] Julia has
structured the information she has acquired to date, and formulated a
theory. And this exactly
how Julia tests and builds her knowledge as she encounters the world
around her.
Piaget maintains that we should
not trivialize Julia’s reasoning as “childish.” The testing and
building of knowledge that children so naively engage in represents
the very foundations of knowledge itself.
So far as mistakes are
concerned, they are central to Piaget’s view of human learning.
Julia’s reasoning, for instance, could be classified as a simple
mistake. But Piaget emphasizes that the way we structure prior
knowledge and test our theories often leads to mistakes. But these
mistakes are transformative in that this is the way we ultimately
learn to modify and adapt our thinking to external realities. In sum,
for Piaget, knowledge is a consequence of actions and reactions
experienced in the world. (12 How our thinking is organized and
structured are of key importance in Piaget’s theory of “genetic
epistemology.” Epistemology is the study or theory of the nature,
sources, and limits of knowledge. [15]
Significantly, Piaget also maintains that learning is a social process
and that children often best develop their understandings of the world
in cooperative activity. [6]] Piaget saw knowledge as
developing in genetically defined stages.
From Piaget’s perspective,
then, differences of opinion are manifestations of the way different
people interpret and adapt information based on the internal cognitive
structures that they have erected over the years. This suggests that
changing minds is an arduous task.
From a Piagetian perspective
what counts as a lie depends on one’s stage of development. (These
stages are detailed in the next section;)
When
Piaget asked younger children what a lie is they replied that a lie
was “naughty words.” And when he asked them why they shouldn’t lie
they rarely said more than “because they are naughty words.” But when
older children were asked why they shouldn’t lie, they said “because
it isn’t right,” or “it isn’t true.” Still more mature children
indicated that lying was wrong because it involves deliberately
deception. 28)
Observations such as these led
Piaget to conclude that children begin their moral understanding by
adhering to rules because they are rules. But if development proceeds
normally, they eventually come to understand that morality is rooted
in empathy and adherence to something akin to the golden rule.
So far as beliefs are
concerned, we have already recounted how, even as a child, Piaget
rejected religious instruction. He was a man of science and provable
facts were his realm.
How, then, would he explain
beliefs? They are mental constructs, like any other. Like differences
of opinion, they are manifestations of the way people interpret and
adapt information based on the internal cognitive structures that they
have erected over the years. Of course, beliefs typically reflect
strong social influence.
Theory
of Human Nature
What
is a human being?
For Piaget human beings are distinctive because of our innate
ability to extract and organize more information from our environment
than any other animal. Human growth and development also is a more
continuous and complex process than with other species. Plus the
stages of development are not as discreet as say, the life cycle of an
insect or plant. [16]
Nevertheless, developmental
stages are central to Piaget’s conception of what it means to be
human. Through observation he arrived at a four stage model:
In the sensorimotor stage (0-2
yrs) knowledge takes the form of sensory perceptions and motor actions
— learning to look, grasp and listen, for example.
In the pre-operational stage
(3-7 yrs) knowledge becomes somewhat intuitive, but not yet logical.
Symbols assume major importance. But the child is utterly unable to
put itself in another’s place.
In the concrete operational
stage (8-11 yrs) knowledge can be logical but only concerning concrete
events. Individuals at this stage can also engage in inductive
reasoning, going from a discrete event to a generalization about such
events. They also understand reversability. That is, they can reverse
the order of relationships in mental constructs. For example, my pet
Puffy is a Persian, Persians are cats, and a cat is an animal.
Finally, in the formal
operations stage (12-15 yrs) one is able to think abstractly. At this
stage one can imagine possible consequence of hypothetical actions.
This facilitates planning and organizing to solve problems. (27)
How does an individual move from one stage to the next?
Piaget saw this as a process of physical development and “reflective
abstraction.” That is, coming to know the nature of one’s own actions
and the way that they harmonize one with the other and with the
external world.
As children move through these
four stages they use the processes of assimilation and accommodation.
With assimilation, the individual’s new experiences are stuffed into
their existing cognitive structures whether or not there is a good
fit. Accommodation, on the other hand involves the more involved
business of changing one’s cognitive structures to properly
accommodate new knowledge. Piaget called this transformative type of
knowledge “operative.”[14]
Operative knowledge represents
the deepest type of learning. [12]. Assimilation is more trivial. This
is not to say that operative knowledge needs be factually correct. One
can readily imagine a person whose cognitive structure has been
transformed by an encounter with one or another bogus cult, for
example.
For Piaget, this is how knowledge is
acquired, adapted, and built upon throughout one’s
life. Experiences are assimilated and accommodated based on the
individual’s experience [14] So, for Piaget, knowledge is about change
and adaptation, cognitive structures and developmental stages. (12)
Theory of Learning
What is learning?
As earlier noted, from birth onward, human being’s
intellectual competencies undergo continuous natural development in a
four stage model. Piaget
argues that this is so because the way we think often fails to match
the actual world we encounter. That sends our thoughts into
disequilibrium. But, Piaget argues, it is our nature to seek
equilibration (balance) in order to reduce that imbalance. This is the
underlying mechanism of knowledge acquisition and organization — in
other words, learning.
Human being’s ability to learn can be limited if it is
limited from developing by improper socialization, or possibly not
being exposed to a sufficiently broad variety of experiences. [16]
Piaget understood learning to be an active process in which
knowledge is built upon prior knowledge and experiences. [4] That
means intellectual development requires opportunities to try things
out, to see what happens, ask questions, formulate answers, and
compare their findings with others. [10]
Of course a child’s cognitive structure gets more complex with
development (age), moving from a few innate reflexes such as crying
and sucking to highly complex mental activities. During all
developmental stages, however, the child copes with his environment
using whatever mental maps he has constructed so far.
Sometimes the experience fits easily into the child’s
cognitive structure so that he or she maintains mental balance between
assimilation and accommodation, which Piaget referred to as equilibration.
This goes to the heart of learning. If the experience is
novel, the child loses cognitive equilibrium, and must alter their
mental structure to accommodate the new conditions. In this way the
child discovers more and more adequate cognitive structures. By means
of these discoveries, he or she is learning. As Piaget puts it, "To
understand is to discover, or reconstruct by rediscovery, and such
conditions must be complied with if in the future individuals are to
be formed who are capable of production and creativity and not simply
repetition." [17]
The implications for parents and teachers are clear. It is
hard to overemphasize the critical role that experiences and
interactions with the environment play in learning.
Theory of Transmission
How is knowledge transferred?
Jean Piaget dedicated himself to answering the question "How does
knowledge grow?" And he eventually came to hold that intelligence is a
general term for adaptation, assimilation, and accommodation.
He theorized that as children interact with their physical
and social environments, they organize information into groups of
interrelated ideas called "schemes". When children encounter something
new, they must either assimilate it into an existing scheme or create
an entirely new scheme to deal with it. [21] Knowledge is literally
constructed by the individual creating connections between prior
knowledge and new experiences.
This explains why Piaget did not think that knowledge could be
transferred neatly from one person to the next. But he did argue that
one could create conditions that would aid in the facilitation of
another’s learning. [4]
Before this can occur, an instructor first has to assess the
learner’s prior knowledge of a given topic as well as his or her
cognitive abilities. Then the instructor can create a learning
environment that “cannot be totally explained by the child’s existing
system of schemes.” [4] This requires the learner to make sense of the
newly presented entities through the processes of assimilation and
accommodation.
Of course, different learners have different prior knowledge.
So one individual’s understanding of a topic is going to inevitably be
at least a little different than another individual’s understanding.
Plus, each learner inevitably learns a little differently. This makes
knowledge transfer complex.
One way to overcome this complexity is to provide learners
with an ample supply of objects for investigation. Seymour Papert, a
student of Piaget’s, would later describe these as
“objects-to-think-with.” [7, 19] The central idea is that it is
through action on objects that the child constructs their knowledge of
the objects. [9]
Piaget’s social theory also speaks of an equilibrated social
exchange based on reciprocity and mutual respect. This can be
understood as a “system of co-operations.” [20] For Piaget this type
of cooperation is centrally important to knowledge transfer.
Without it everyone would be Robinson Crusoe on his own
desert island trying to figure out everything on our own.
It does not seem that Piaget had any established notions about
who should teach. While he was a learning theorist, he himself had no
formal training in the field of education. [15] Plus Piaget said that
learning in informal settings could be as valuable as that which took
place in formal settings. Indeed his own interest in the field of
cognitive development first began through observing his own children.
[1]
One can imagine, however, that Piaget would endorse the idea
that anyone who wasn’t well versed in how learning takes place should
not be leading a classroom. But if Piaget were still alive today, he
would probably be amused at the fact that some schools report having a
“Piagetian curriculum.” During his life, he never wrote of how his
theories of cognition should translate into curriculum. [15]
Theory of Society
What is society?
Jean Piaget’s wanted to know how the juvenile mind
works, and how children come to acquire information. He understood
that children need to be socialized to learn to empathize with the
needs of other children and to experience the different opinions or
points of view necessary for cognitive growth. [15]
Piaget also understood that different cultures
have different views of how a group of people, or society, should
interact with each other. Cultures such as China, for example, are
more concerned with educating children to contribute to the society as
a whole. In the United States we educate children with a great deal of
emphasis on their individuality. But whatever the goals of education
may be for various cultures, Piaget emphasizes that a child must first
be able to reason. Otherwise we cannot adapt to the society we live
in. [4, 15]
Piaget also maintains that, regardless of culture,
children universally accomplish certain mental tasks at approximately
the same ages. Significantly, he saw this as applying to moral and
social development as well. Piaget describes children as moving across
two stages of morality – from heteronomous morality to autonomous
morality. In other words, they move from being constrained by
the rules of adults to more of a “morality of cooperation” as the
influence of peers plays an ever more important role in their lives.
By continually interacting and cooperating with
other children, the child’s ideas about rules and, therefore, morality
change. Yjey begin to realize that rules can be amended and that they
should only exist as a result of “mutual consent.” [2] This is the
basis for society.
While societies vary a great deal in cultural
norms, and standards cognitively speaking, we are more alike than
different in terms of how we learn those norms, and this is where
Piaget’s interest lies. [27]
Within this context Piaget takes a relatively
non-judgmental stance concerning societies. One can surmise, however,
that he would favor societies where one is free to have a wide variety
of experiences and where the authorities are not trying to shape all
information and experiences in accordance with the teachings of Big
Brother. This type of totalitarian limits opportunities for learning
and thought —things Piaget would doubtless oppose.
Theory
of Opportunity
Who is to have the opportunity?
Piaget’s model of learning suggests that education
is unavoidable. Every time any human confronts a situation that is at
odds with their existing mental constructs the necessity of learning
presents itself. Consequently, we all have thousands of opportunities
to learn.
This applies very immediately to children. In
a New Republic article Robert Cole, quotes Piaget as saying:
“Children are master builders and constant activists.” Cole then
comments, “Piaget never felt it necessary to distinguish between
doing and learning.” [23] And that:
“boys and girls dealt with the same ideas about the world that
philosophers and scientists ponder every day”. [23] He goes on to
emphasize that Piaget refers to children as being “active explorers”
[23] and that much of what a “child learns is universal.” [23]
This sort of thing clarifies why we are saying that Piaget would argue
that education is unavoidable.
We are not treating schooling and education as
synonymous here. We want to make a distinction in order to answer “Who
is to have the opportunity?”
As the main protagonist of Developmental
Epistemology, Piaget considered teaching and “learning as highly
social activities.” [15] He maintained that social interaction was a
key mechanism in the process of learning and development. [15] In this
context, one could assume that Piaget viewed schooling as important to
the cognitive development of children.
But from a Piagetian perspective, modern factory
type schools generally fail to accommodate how children learn. That’s
because in this type of school students are expected to be passive
rather than active and listening rather than examining and probing.
Piaget maintains: “If a child is not allowed to explore and
investigate the environment or is exposed to one that is impoverished,
he is not likely to attain more complex levels of reasoning.” [4] Of course this applies to the home
as well as the school.
Which children are entitled to that sort of opportunity?
Piaget would say all of them are. So what about traditional factory
type schooling? Piaget would probably say that no one deserves such an
affliction.
Theory of Consensus
Consensus means a general agreement among the members of a
given group or community, each of whom have some freedom of choice in
decision making. But what are the implications of Piagetian thought to
consensus and its opposites — dissensus?
Earlier we noted that as individuals move into the formal
operational stage of development, they are able to engage in abstract
thought, reason logically, and apply these processes to hypothetical
situations. At the same chronological age, children are shifting into
the Piaget’s autonomous morality. Once a child reaches this stage he
or she is able to be respectful of others’ opinions and to understand
how their own opinions might affect others. They have gained empathy,
the ability to civilly disagree and to understand the necessity of
providing logical reasoning for their arguments. [6]
At this point consensus becomes relevant.
At this stage, an individual has the ability to view things
from another’s perspective and are capable of reciprocity. Now the
individual can understand that rules are amendable, through
discussion, and justice becomes more important than obedience. [25]
And for Piaget, because individuals constructs their own
knowledge, the schemas and connections that individuals make differ
from person to person. So
different people elaborate on a given topic in different ways. [4]
That is why it is so unlikely that everyone will have the same
understanding of a given topic. This, in turn, means that achieving deep consensus, that is,
detailed agreement, concerning all but the most trivial matters is
problematic.
Nevertheless, Piaget’s social theory speaks pf an equilibrated
social exchange based on reciprocity and mutual respect.
A “system of co-operations,” if you will. [20] Now, mutual
respect is the source of reciprocity; and this reciprocity is, in
turn, the source of autonomy. At
the final stage of development the individual begins to experience an
active desire to treat others as he would wish to be treated.
This awareness of the “golden rule” can, optimally, expand
beyond consensus into a universal morality of love. [26]
Citations
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The Jean Piaget Society, A
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[2]
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The Man and His Ideas. Translated by Eleanor Duckworth. New
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(updated August 2008)
[3]
New World Encyclopedia http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org
(updated August 2008)
[4]
Hamilton, R. J., & Ghatala, E. (1994). Learning
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[5]
Papert, Seymour. (1999) Time
Magazine: The Most Important
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www.time.com
[6]
No Nonsense Psychology, Morality
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[7]
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[8]
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[11]
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[16]
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[23] Cole,
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