Piaget’s learning theory is based on stages that children go through in order to learn. In each stage, the learning process is different and a little more complex. Piaget believed that children should play, experiment and reason in order to learn. He believed that humans couldn’t be given information that they immediately understand. Humans have to construct their own knowledge and they do this through experimentation. Experience enables children to create schemes, which are mental models and then the schemes may be altered through assimilation, accommodation and equilibrium.
“Assimilation is the process of taking in, of absorbing some event or experience to some scheme” (Bee 67). Accommodation is when one changes the scheme as a result of new information and equilibrium is when one strives for and reaches a balance of the information collected. As children experiment with new things, they are able to encode it into their brains by mentally categorizing it according to information they have previously processed. In a classroom, a teacher should base instructional delivery, classroom management and assessments on schemes that the students already know.
Based on the learning theory of Piaget, the instructional delivery in say a fifth grade classroom should be mostly kinesthetic. Children should be given assignments that are hands on, something that they can physically do and experiment with. Students should be able to see and touch the project at hand. A good example of this is a project that teaches density. Students will be given a glass of water and an egg. They will have to predict if the egg will float or not in order to determine which is denser.
By physically acting the experiment out, instead of just reading about it in a book, students will understand and process the information so that they retain it and learn from it. Student already have knowledge of water and what happens to it when something is placed inside it. It is this prior knowledge that they will use to hypothesize for their new experiment. Teachers need to address their classes with old information first, and then the new. Once the information is relayed to them, they need to assign a group project for the students in order to get them involved. Teachers’ instructional delivery needs to be creative and lively with little lecture and involving kinesthetic approaches.
Classroom Management
In order to have a classroom that supports a Piagetean theory, the teacher must understand the different developmental stages that children go through. At each stage, the child has attained something different, a new scheme. With this in mind, teachers need to gear their classroom environment appropriately. A preschool teacher cannot create and have the same environment as a middle school teacher. But there are things that a teacher can do to fall in line with this particular theory.
It would be helpful for the teacher to gear their grade to the age appropriate level in the Piaget theory of development. When the teacher understands that, he/she will have an easier time teaching the class. Teachers should not talk to the students, they should check in with the students for understanding. This can simply be done by asking three to four students “what we are doing right now?” “What are the steps to do this problem? Student A? Student B?” When a student has done something or answered a question right, they should be positively reinforced so they will want to do and succeed more. When they succeed, they must be praised to continue the will and want to do more. It is through these experiences that they will learn the right and wrong things, therefore reinforcing learning behavior.
Since children learn through their own personal experiences, having an environment reinforces that would be ideal. When teaching a lesson, the basics must be repeated and give the student ample time to learn it (Younge, 5). The task or lesson should be repeated many times to reinforce the concept to the student and in different ways to gain interest and hold the students attention. A child’s attention span is very short and increases as they develop throughout life. But until a child’s attention span is long enough, certain things must be done to hold his/her attention so they can learn the lesson. This may include hands on activities that reinforce the lesson, or mnemonic devices that children an recite, anything that will reinforce the lesson in a creative way.
References
Bee, H. L. (2002). Cognitive Development I: Structure and Process. In (Ed.), Child and Adolescent Development (9 ed., pp. 64-95). Pearson Education Company: Prentice
