Module 2-Question 1: Piaget

Q1:  Piaget’s contributions to cognitive constructivist theory. 

Jean Piaget’s research in the fields of psychology, sociology, and education has greatly influenced the field of education.  After years of research in developmental psychology and genetic epistemology, Piaget came to believe that intelligence is a form of adaptations.  He claimed that the child adapts to his physical and social environment thought the processes of assimilation and adaptation (Wadsworth, p.13-14).  It is through the processes of assimilation and adaptation that a child constructs his own intellectual world.  He believed that a child’s development occurred in four distinct stages:  Sensory Motor (Birth to approximately 2 years), Preoperational (until ages 6 or 7), Concrete Operations (10-12 years) and then finally the Formal Operations stage.

When designing instruction it is important to consider the sequence in which the learning events occur.  Of course, the sequence is dependent upon the desired objectives; however, the goal of designing instruction is to select the most appropriate sequence for the given content.  In some cases, the sequence is determined by the objectives.  This is especially true when the objective is performance based.   Other topics, however, have a less obvious sequence.  In this case, sequencing instruction based on developmental stages of the learner, such as Piaget proposed, would be beneficial.  Further, by utilizing Piaget’s processes of adaptation, instruction can address learning events that contain experiential and real world content.  Instructional design of world related applications is also parallel to Piaget’s thoughts on schema.  Suppose you are designing instruction for a lower level Algebra 1 class on two variable linear equations.  There are several different ways to teach graphs of lines and their equations, some of which laborious and full of procedures.  However, the relationship between two variables can be explained easily by using real life examples.  By means of the real world application, a student can develop a schema under which instruction is developed.