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Education
and the New Age - Part 6
Jean Piaget's Constructivist Theory
by
Margaret Seleme de Guevara
To read article 5 click
here
As announced in my last article, this month I will explore the
subject of Jean Piaget’s Constructivist Theory. Many educational theories
have been based on Mr. Piaget’s theory. In this series of articles dedicated
to the education of the new age we have seen different methods that are better
adapted to the new children, such as the Waldorf, Montessori, Freinet and the
High Scope methods. More new methods are constantly being developed, all of
which are trying to incorporate some elements that awaken and work with children’s
spirituality. But all the methods, even those that are now being developed,
contain some elements derived from the traditional methods, the ones that began
seeking change since the1920´s. Jean Piaget’s constructivist theory
is one of the most important components of many methods, so we will end this
series with a global vision of his theory.
Jean Piaget, one of the most celebrated psychologists of the 20th Century,
was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 1896. He died in Geneva in 1980.
He graduated and was granted a doctorate in biology in 1918 from the University
in his native city. Starting in 1919 he began his work in psychological institutions
in Zurich and Paris, where he developed his theory on the nature of knowledge.
He taught at the universities of Neuchatel, Geneva, Lausanne and the Sorbonne.
Piaget explored the thought processes, especially children’s’ attention
and intelligence, making use of the clinical method based on a careful and detailed
observation of each child’s behaviour. Constructivism, an educational
model derived from his epistemological theory, began to dominate the educational
thought around the 1950´s, in frank opposition to the then prevailing
Behaviorism. To explore the thought processes, especially the attention and
intelligence of children, Piaget resorted to the clinical method - that is,
in essence, a subjective method that demands an interpretation on the part of
the investigator, based on a careful and detailed observation of each child’s
behavior, using only in some cases the intervention of the investigator.
He developed his investigation on the stages of general development from birth
until maturity. These stages are: the sensory-motor, from 0 to 2 years, which
is the period of inconditional reflexes and of the indifferentiation of the self
and the objects surrounding it until a coherent organization of sensory-motor
actions is achieved. At this stage, thought is literally action, and perception
is not separate from action. The child develops initially acting on his immediately
perceived environment and later he begins to interiorize these actions. This
supposes simple adjustments, both, perceptual as well as motor. This stage ends
when the ability of the child to symbolize begins.
Next, from 2 to 7 years of age, the child enters the preoperational or pre-conceptual
stage, which is characterized by the child’s ability to represent reality
and to combine those representations inwardly in order to deduce the solution
to problems without experimenting them. At this stage, the child is already
able to imitate models which are not present in his perceptual field. Thought
is not yet perfect, it is limited and the child has a single point of view,
his own, which Piaget calls self-centeredness. This is due to the child’s
inability to embrace two aspects of the same situation at the same time, which
adds some other characteristics to the preoperational thought: its irreversibility
and intuitive character.
The third stage lasts from 7 to 11 years of age. This is the stage of concrete
operations which is characterized by the conceptual organization of the environment
that surrounds the child in cognitive structures called groupings, in which
the child already shows a conceptual, ordered and relatively stable structure
which he constantly uses in his exploration of the world of objects that surrounds
him. This thought is less egocentric, less flowing and more reversible. In this
stage Piaget describes the cognitive functioning in terms of logical –
mathematical structures.
Then, a fourth and final stage takes place, that of formal operations, from
11 to 15 years of age, during which the last reorganization takes place, and
during which the adolescent can, not only manage his own reality, but also the
realm of possibilities. The intellectual structures present during this stage
have all the characteristics of the adult thought.
The importance of these stages is that each one conditions the development
of the following one. This means that from 11-12 years of age, some children
may be on the level of the concrete operations, instead of the formal one, perhaps
due to a slower maturity process or to an absence of experiences that allow
the appropriate level of maturity to be reached.
The wisdom of any education system would consist, therefore, in not hindering
and rather facilitating the natural process of acquisition and consolidation
of intellectual operations on the part of children. Piaget doesn't really formulate
a theory of learning, but rather his theory approaches the way in which each
individual represents the world to himself and the way these representations
change until adolescence. In other words his is a theory of knowledge and not
one of learning or teaching.
As I explained before, Mr. Piaget’s theory has been used as the bases
for many pedagogical theories throughout the last century, and I believe it
would still be very valid to apply it in order to develop new theories in this
new millennium, when education must change in order to adapt to the new humanity;
always bearing in mind that said adaptation must be based on respect of each
person's individuality.
With this article, as I already mentioned above, I conclude the series of articles
on education during the new age. In the following articles I will continue to
write about education in general and on brain based learning.
A note about activities of the
Indigo Foundation in Bolivia
And now, I would like to inform you about the activities of the Indigo Foundation
in Bolivia. During the months of March and April I was very active. I organized
education workshops in La Paz in March and in Sucre (another city in Bolivia)
in May. I have also continued presenting the cycles of movies for the awakening
of consciousness in which we show movies such as : “What the Bleep Do
We Know”, “Down the Rabbit Hole”, “Masaru Emoto and
the Water Crystals”, “The Ninth Insight”, “The Secret”,
“Conversations With God”, “Indigo”, “Indigo Evolution”,
“The Peaceful Warrior”, “August Rush”, etc. All movies
that feed the soul, that help us awaken and finally help us to become better
people and better parents for our children. Everything is related. After the
movies, there is usually a debate forum, in which many topics are touched upon
and which help us expand our consciousness.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Seleme de Guevara is
President of the Indigo Foundation of Bolivia. She holds an architecture degree
from the University of Notre Dame and a Masters Degree in Education from Framingham
State College. She is now also a Kumon Instructor and has opened a Math and
Reading Centre in La Paz. In
addition to speaking five languages, Margaret possesses a vast holistic knowledge
and has traveled extensively throughout the world. She can be reached at margaretseleme@hotmail.com.
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