Constructivism V: The Verdict

The strongest argument against any theory is that it fails to explain the behavior it describes, or that its predictions are demonstrated to be mistaken.  This is the procedure of falsification that the philosopher Karl Popper is widely known for.

So let’s take another look at various Piagetian claims that have been refuted or more simply explained in empirical studies, many of which were designed to eliminate flaws in Piaget’s original work.

A brief digression, though, is in order.  Contemporary constructivists will often dispute empirical projects, claiming that they are founded on the mistaken belief that the data purport to describe the “real” world, when in fact they are products of a theory that inherently cannot describe the so-called real world (vG “Exposition” 3).  This despite the fact that Piaget himself considered his own research “empirical”:  his entire project is based on interpreting experiences of children performing specific acts in the course of solving some kind of problem.  He insisted he was doing science, after all.  Piaget’s associates and defenders acknowledge that the master’s claims were hypotheses, some of which he expected to be upheld, others not.

I will be referring to papers contained in books edited by Sohan and Celia Modgil on the one hand and Linda Siegel and Charles Brainerd on the other. 

Learning for Piaget is explained “genetically” by observing signs of cognitive development in infants and children.  He has detected—discovered?—that the behaviors are part of cognitive systems or structures that develop by age-dependent stages and permit the child to solve physical problems such as the disappearance of a toy (does it still exist?) or the conservation of liquid (does the amount change when poured into a differently shaped container?).  Knowledge that depends on the attainment of one stage cannot be learned until the previous stage has been attained and fully assimilated. 

Several experimenters have challenged Piaget’s assertions about stages, however, and they have found that Piaget’s verbal interaction with his subjects confounded his results (Siegel), that training, which Piaget claims is unnecessary and generally unworkable (Brainerd 82), in fact succeeds in significantly advancing children’s cognitive abilities (Brainerd), and that a child’s ability to perform in a Piagetian experiment depends often on local factors.   For specific documentation on the latter, I quote a longish paragraph from Joan Tamburrini of the Froebel Institute:

Over the past decade or so (the article was published in 1982), a number of studies have yielded results suggesting that a subject’s performance on a Piagetian-type of task is much more likely than we have hitherto supposed to depend on various situational factors.  At the sensorimotor stage of development differences have been found with respect to the concept of object permanence.  For example, Bower (1974), Kessen, Haith and Salatapek (1970), and Cornell (1978) have found that infants as young or younger than those who do not search for an object that has disappeared from view in the standard Piagetian tests do so in other specific situations.  In relation to concrete operational thinking various studies have purported to show that young children’s capabilities are greater than the results of standard Piagetian tests would lead one to suppose.  Studies by Borke (1971, 1973, 1975) and Hughes (1978) have reputedly shown that children much younger than seven or eight years of age are able to think non-egocentrically.  Bryant and Trabasso (1971) have claimed that under certain conditions children can solve transitive inference problems at an age when they would fail on the orthodox Piagetian test.  Donaldson (1978) has reported a study showing that in a modification of one of Piaget’s tests children conserved numerical quantity at a younger age than is usual in the standard version of the test.  By contrast, Watson and Johnson-Laird (1972) have reported studies which show that adult subjects of well above average intelligence who, it is therefore presumed, would succeed on one of Piaget’s tests for formal operational thought failed to solve problems which, though they differ in content from the standard Piagetian tests, required the same structures of through that Piaget calls “formal operations (312).

The philosopher Owen Flanagan acknowledges the weaknesses of Piaget’s theory of stages, but suggests that his basic structuralism can survive without it (148-149).  However, similar objections have challenged Piaget’s insistence that logical structures precede language (Moore and Harris find parallel development), that Piaget’s development process is universal (Buck-Morss), that Piaget’s understanding of children’s propositional logic is accurate (Ennis), that advanced structures can develop from more basic structures (Flanagan), that equilibration, Piaget’s primary mechanism for judging cognitive “adequacy,” is at root inadequate (Phillips). 

In our own experience we know that students learn from reading texts that are full of conclusions and persuasive interpretations.  Similarly, they learn from lectures, especially those well thought through and delivered.  These methods, centuries old, constructivists would consider a hijacking of the true learning process, in which students discover through their own inquiry, thereby “constructing” their own knowledge.  But we know, because we read books of history, literary criticism, sociology, biology, physics, and even Piagetian psychology, that conclusions by others are instructive for us as well as our students.  Learning does not need to begin by inventing the wheel.  In fact, constructivists do not do this either.  They read (and write) books like the rest of us.  They have listened to and even given lectures.  If they learn from books and their audiences learn from their lectures, then perhaps these illegitimate pedagogies aren’t so outdated or illegitimate after all.

I have to wonder, then, how constructivists can recover the explanatory power of a theory whose universe is so circumscribed.

References:

Brainerd, Charles J. “Learning Research and Piagetian Theory.” Alternatives to Piaget.  Ed. Linda S. Siegel and Charles J. Brainerd.  New York:  Academic, 1978. Print. 69-110.

Buck-Morss, Susan.  “Socio-economic Bias in Piaget’s Theory and its Implication for Cross Cultural Studies.” Jean Piaget: Consensus and Controversy.  Ed. Sohan Modgil and Celia Modgil.  New York:  Praegar, 1982. Print. 261-272.

Ennis, Robert H.  “Children's Ability to Handle Piaget's Propositional Logic:  A Conceptual Critique.” Jean Piaget: Consensus and Controversy.  Ed. Sohan Modgil and Celia Modgil.  New York:  Praegar, 1982. Print. 101-130.

Flanagan, Owen.  The Science of the Mind.  Second Edition.  Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1984.  Print.

Moore, Timothy E. and Adrienne E. Harris.  “Language and Thought in Piagetian Theory.” Alternatives to Piaget.  Ed. Linda S. Siegel and Charles J. Brainerd.  New York:  Academic, 1978. Print. 169-200.

Phillips, Denis.  “Perspectives on Piaget as Philosopher:  The Tough, Tender-minded Syndrome.” Jean Piaget: Consensus and Controversy.  Ed. Sohan Modgil and Celia Modgil.  New York:  Praegar, 1982. 13-30.

Popper, Karl R. "Conjectural Knowledge: My Solution to the Problem of Induction." Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford: Clarendon. 1-31. Print.

Siegel, Linda S. “The Relationship of Language and Thought in the Preoperational Child: A Reconsideration of Nonverbal Alternatives to Piagetian Tasks.” Alternatives to Piaget.  Ed. Linda S. Siegel and Charles J. Brainerd.  New York:  Academic, 1978. Print. 43-68.

Tamburrini, Joan. “Some Educational Implications of Piaget’s Theory.” Jean Piaget: Consensus and Controversy.  Ed. Sohan Modgil and Celia Modgil.  New York:  Praegar, 1982. Print. 309-325.