There is no one way that we learn. Constructivists, however, dispute this, and
promote inquiry as the only road to authentic learning (Cardellini 182). This stems from Piaget’s insistence that development
is the spontaneous “genesis” of cognitive structures. Learning happens as the child acts upon her
environment (Lawton & Hooper 171).
Knowledge is constructed and in turn constructs new knowledge (as in an
axiomatic system like arithmetic).
Specific constructions, such as number or length conservation, are only
possible once specific stages of cognitive development have been reached. Because development is natural, it should not
be interfered with, but any schooling needs to be consonant with natural
developmental processes. Charles Brainerd
summarizes Piaget’s position on schooling:
“…learning only occurs when two conditions are met. First, the training treatment incorporates
laws of spontaneous development. Second,
the to-be-trained subjects already possess the to-be-learned concept to some
measurable extent” (71).
If this sounds like a variation on John Dewey, you are
correct. The emphasis is on natural
processes that adults should not interfere with, merely “facilitate.” Not only may such interference be harmful, it
is likely superfluous: “As for teaching
children concepts that they have not attained in their spontaneous development,
it is completely useless” (qtd. in Brainerd 94).
It happens that a number of experiments have been done to
test how rigid Piagetian developmental stages are in children who have no
understanding of concepts like number conservation and class inclusion. Studies
examined the efficacy of teaching those concepts Piagetian theory suggests they
would be incapable of learning.
Self-discovery training had very little effect with subjects
who had no prior knowledge of the concepts at issue. “Moreover, unlike self-discovery procedures,
tutorial procedures have produced large learning effects in subjects with no
prior grasp of the to-be-trained concept” (Brainerd 91). For teachers used to providing scaffolding
before introducing new material, this is hardly surprising.
Brainerd’s summary of studies on number conservation are
also enlightening:
Since number is the first area in
which conservation appears, it should be especially difficult to train [because
of the newness of the structure—RM].
Subjects who fail number conservation pretests across the board should
show little or no evidence of learning.
There is considerable evidence to the contrary…Many of these subjects (e.g.,
more than 75% in Murray’s experiment) performed perfectly on the posttests.
Thus, the available data on training number conservation does not
suggest that this concept is either impossible or even especially difficult for
children to learn (99).
As I have argued in earlier posts, in principle learning is
learning, whether writing an essay, solving a problem, reading a book, or
listening to a lecture. Physically passive students are not necessarily
mentally passive. Physically active
students aren’t necessarily intellectually engaged, be it with a project or the
group or research or even writing a paper.
The indifferent work I’ve received is evidence enough of that. This should not be controversial, but it
contradicts the Romanticism of Dewey’s and Piaget’s orientation.
Inquiry lessons, which typically call for group projects and
discussion and presentations and movement are fun, and even educational when
goals are clear and responsibility is evenly—actively—shared among the group’s
members. But I know from personal
experience that I learn a lot from the books I read, and I had some terrific lecturers
when I was an undergrad.
Because Piaget generally studied children in isolation,
critics accuse him of discounting the power of conversation:
Piaget conceives of development as
the result of progressive decentrations, whereby the child comes to understand
that his point of view is not that of others…Piaget’s reference is the
individual child’s point of view and how it changes under the force of
contradictions resulting from encounters with the environment, this environment
including other children and adults. The
child does not change his point of view as a result of sharing his experiences
with other people, for his experiences are exclusively his own (Brainerd 301).
The privacy of experience is a common theme with
constructivists, but privacy is not absolute.
Otherwise, people wouldn’t bother to talk or write or sing or paint or
compose in order to communicate their experiences and argue for or wonder about
their significance. To write, as Piaget
does, as though children, even small ones, don’t speak to one another, argue, and
discuss, as though those activities have no bearing on learning or development
seems silly. It is a consequence of
ignoring experiences your theory doesn’t account for. In the case of Piaget’s orderly developmental
scheme, conversation is perhaps too open-ended and chaotic and social.
Conversation is the source of feedback from peers and
mentors that confirms or challenges our understanding and our arguments, and
has been critical in my own development (cf. Montaigne). It is one of the reasons I allocate 25% of my
class time to Paideia seminars every week (Paideia.org). For nearly four years I hosted a Socrates
Café (http://www.philosopher.org/Socrates_Cafe.html). When I was a junior in high school in the
late 1960s, I persuaded my principal, eventually, to allow an ad hoc group of us
to organize monthly Forums that would bring people from the community of
Westerville, Ohio, together with students and teachers to talk about what was
dividing us in that very divisive time.
A good conversation, much more so than a Mastercard, is priceless.
Conversation between parents and even very young children is
credited with building larger vocabularies (Lareau 107) and reading readiness
(Hirsch 24), seemingly obvious aids in personality and cognitive development
that Piaget largely ignores. Language
for him seems to be mainly of value as a representational system serving
logical structures (GE 45).
If the research, at best, is mixed on the efficacy of
“active learning,” as Boyle and Brainerd have asserted, then we need to
re-evaluate the push in college and K-12 schooling to use it exclusively. As I have argued, as one tool in the toolbox,
I see nothing wrong with the methods, and have and will continue to use them
when appropriate. But the theory is
flawed, and cannot justify its ideological pretensions.
References
Boyle, Derek. “Piaget and Education: A Negative Evaluation.” Jean
Piaget: Consensus and Controversy.
Ed. Sohan Modgil and Celia Modgil. New
York: Praeger, 1982. Print.
292-308.
Brainerd, Charles
J. “Learning Research and Piagetian Theory.”
Alternatives to Piaget: Critical Essays on the Theory. Ed. Linda S. Siegel and Charles J.
Brainerd. New York: Academic Press, 1978. Print. 69-109.
Cardellini,
Liberato. “The Foundations of Radical Constructivism: An Interview with Ernst von Glasersfeld.” Foundations
of Chemistry. Vol. 8, 2006.
Springer. Print. 177-187.
Hirsch, E. D. The Knowledge Deficit : Closing the Shocking
Education Gap for American Children. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Print.
Lareau,
Annette. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race,
and Family Life. 2nd Ed. Berkeley: University of California,
2011. Print.
Lawton, Joseph
T., Frank H. Hooper. “Piagetian Theory
and Early Childhood Education: A
Critical Analysis.” Alternatives to Piaget: Critical
Essays on the Theory. Ed. Linda S.
Siegel and Charles J. Brainerd. New
York: Academic Press, 1978. Print. 169-200.
Montaigne, Michel
de. “The Art of Conversation.” Essays.
Tran. J.M. Cohen. New York: Penguin. Print. 285-311.
Piaget,
Jean. Genetic Epistemology. New York:
Columbia UP, 1970.
No comments:
Post a Comment