Piaget Education Primer

Piaget & Education provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to the work of Jean Piaget. This valuable classroom work roots Piaget's work in its historical context, and then provides dozens of classroom-based examples of how that work helps teachers understand the lives of children. It is an excellent resource for practicing teachers and student teachers, as well as undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher education, curriculum, and philosophy of education.

'Do children have anything to teach teachers? Jean Piaget believes that they do. As a beginning teacher, I focused on elaborate preparation of explanations and demonstrations on content. To piaget and his co-workers I owe a special debt for their ingeneous methods of exploring children's thinking and their theory of intellectual development. A study of Piaget's work, together with direct observations of children, has been instrumental in my transition to another stage of development as a teacher.' -Ed Labinowicz

Using popular children's literature such as Alice in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh to illustrate key points, this accessible introduction to psychologist Jean Piaget's unique and groundbreaking ideas guides readers through the fascinating world of a growing child's mind and shows adults how to create an environment that will enhance and accelerate a child's intellectual development. Cartoon illustrations.

Jean Piaget's theories about the development of intelligence and their implications for educational practice are explored. Before Piaget began studying the intellectual processes of children, researchers regarded them as "little adults." He derived his early fame from his theory of the "cognitive stages" of childhood. He realized the remarks of children had meaning and revealed modes of reasoning and judgment different from those of adults. The development of the child's thinking is marked by progressive clarification of ideas from global to differentiated thought. It progresses from absolute to more relativistic thought. It also changes from static to dynamic thought as the child matures. Piaget believed thinking and intelligence were synonymous and stressed thinking as a general capacity. Learning and thinking involve the participation of the learner. He believed knowledge was not transmitted verbally, but that it must be constructed and reconstructed by the thinker/learner. Activity is indispensable to learning and thinking. The way the child moves through the stages of development may be clarified by the concepts of schemata, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium. The four stages of cognitive development defined by Piaget are sensory-motor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations. (DWH)

Finally, a primer to help new teachers to gain knowledge of how students learn and why some teaching methods are better than others. Are you considering a career in teaching but lack a formal education background? Or are you an experienced educator seeking to expand your knowledge and skills? Look no further than the Love of Teaching series. With a growing number of educators entering the field from outside of education, this series provides fundamental comprehension of teaching, from the why and how of the profession to critical insights into how students learn. Gain essential knowledge to excel in the classroom and make a positive impact on students’ lives. Whether you’re just starting out or seeking to enhance your skills, the Love of Teaching series offers a valuable resource for aspiring and experienced educators alike. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to advance your career and become the best teacher you can be.

Jean Piaget was one of the most significant contributors to our current understanding of how children think and learn, from birth through to adolescence. In this comprehensive and accessible new book, Ann Marie Halpenny and Jan Pettersen capture the key concepts and principles of Piaget’s fascinating work on children’s thinking, and explore how thinking evolves and develops from infancy through the early years and beyond. Areas covered in Introducing Piaget include: key milestones and achievements in children’s thinking; understanding the physical world through senses and movement in infancy; supporting the emergence of symbolic thought and language in the early years; understanding object permanence; implications of egocentric thinking in early childhood learning and development. Throughout the book, the consequences of these developments for children’s social, emotional and intellectual development are discussed. Updates on Piaget’s theory are also outlined with reference to more recent work on cognitive development in childhood. Each chapter provides a concise summary of material presented through a consideration of the implications for practice in working with children. A glossary of key Piagetian terms is also included. With a particular focus on how Piaget’s principles and concepts can be applied to children in early childhood, this exciting new book is an invaluable resource for teachers, practitioners and students with an interest in learning and development in the early years.

IRVING E. SIGEL This volume of essays is a broad-gauged effort directed at reflections on the applicability of Piagetian theory to education. Identification and de termination of the relevance of Piagetian theory to education is of course not new. The bibliographies in this volume do attest to that assertion. Then why the persistent interest and why still another volume? Rather than deal with the relevance of each article to these issues, let us deal with the basic question of why such continued interest in application of Piagetian theory to education, and further raise the problem of the feasi bility of such a task. Three questions come immediately to mind: Why the interest in applicability? What are some of the problems that arise in application? Is Piagetian theory applicable to education? Why the continued interest in application of Piagetian theory in education? The answer to this question resides in the sociological and educational issues that arose twenty years ago and still persist in American education-namely, the need to upgrade the quality of education by providing a coherent conceptual system with a developmental em phasis. People gravitated to Pia get because it was the only major system sufficiently comprehensive, as well as substantive. While learning theories abound, they do not tie together general cognitive development with specific relevant content areas, e. g. , development of such knowl edge domains as number, time, space, geometry, etc. Thus, Piaget offers a development framework within which content areas are embedded.