piaget posting

Piaget has been extremely influential on preschool and primary school planning as a result of the four successive learning stages he claimed to be fundamental to the way in which children learn.
His theory rests on an understanding of ‘intelligence’ (or adapting to the environment) as a process of assimilating or accommodating new information into ever more sophisticated skills (which he called ‘schemes’) following the conflict which arises when new information does not fit into a pre-existing idea. As a child develops new skills, old structures are replaced by new ones so which result in the qualitative nature of children’s answers changing gradually and being dependent on their age.
This is not an indication that younger children are less intelligent than older children but rather that they are not able to have particular thought patterns until they have learnt them, which means that learning needs to be age appropriate.

As a mother of two I have witnessed the development of my children and seen how they were able to understand new things at different stages. Particularly the egocentric nature of the child during the second period (Preoperational Thought) and the fact that this reappears in the fourth period (Formal Operations) I can understand well.

These stages are similar to the ideas that Rudolf Steiner put forward in his understanding of the human being and likewise he thought that the treatment of the child needed to be age- appropriate.

References:
Boeree, C. George Jean Piaget
Retrieved from
HYPERLINK "http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/piaget.html" http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/piaget.html
on 3 April 2007

Fetherston, Tony. Becoming an effective teacher. Thomson Melbourne 2007

Silverthorn, Pam. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Development
Retrieved from HYPERLINK "http://tonymcarthur.edublogs.org/files/2007/03/piaget.htm" http://tonymcarthur.edublogs.org/files/2007/03/piaget.htm on 7 March 2007

Piaget’s developmental theory
Retrieved from
HYPERLINK "http://www.learningandteachinginfo/learning/piaget.htm" http://www.learningandteachinginfo/learning/piaget.htm
on 3 April 2007