The Piaget Primer

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.

'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.

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)