Piaget For Educators

This second edition of Piaget for Educators represents a happy balance of the theoretical & practical aspects of Piaget's theory.

Professor Furth enlarges on Piaget's proposal that the goal in education is to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover operative structures.

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.

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.

'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

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.