[Phys-L] Re: Piaget & Dewey: Down for the Count? - FORWARD from Kieran Egan

[clement at HAL-PC.ORG (John Clement)]

Predictably Egan's AERA-L post did not address the issues adequately,
especially (3).  He brought up the famous Harvard interviews which showed
that students had big holes in their knowledge, but that did not address the
issue of physics pedagogy which is based on Piaget.  He made fun of the
question, which is easy to do.  However, this does not refute the mountain
of evidence that students suffer from resistant common misconceptions.  The
misconception about where the material in tree came from is shared by
virtually all biology teachers I have talked to.  He showed absolutely no
knowledge of the careful research done by Shayer&Adey, McDermott, John J.
Clement, Minstrell, Hake, Hestenes ... and a host of others.

Then of course a number of Piaget's experiments have been replicated, so his
science was not all that bad.  It is quite predictable that his theories
might be modified or even rejected, but his data has actually stood up
fairly well.  Indeed the neo-Piagetians such as Lawson have actually
confirmed some of his observations, while showing that some aspects of his
theories do not stand up to scrutiny.  From what I can see he has not
considered this evidence, and that he is not even aware of it.  Incidentally
Lawson successfully applied Piagetian ideas in his teaching.

One of the most telling comments is "Fundamentally what is at issue, and
what I claim is "wrong" is the assumption that we have a "nature" that can
be studied as other natural phenomena."  This is patently false.  People in
general and individuals in particular do have a nature and psychologists
have been studying it closely.  This smacks of the same type of thinking
that goes into the anti-evolution arguments.  Human beings can and should be
studied just as the world around is studied.  This knowledge should be used
to improve teaching and learning.  It can also be used to influence
legislation and design of the human environment.

> From what I saw he is arguing that education is about cultural transmission
and that it should not be influenced by scientific insight.  While to a
large extent education is about cultural transmission, is this desirable?
Our schools are transmitting information from the elite to the deserving, by
the approved cultural methods.  But should this be the mission of schools?

Perhaps this is unfair judging from just a short post, but I think that I
can be sure that he does not have a clue about the careful research that is
ongoing in science and physics education.  Even some very conservative anti
Piagetian people on the math chat line have acknowledged that the PER
results are solid.

Now whether Piaget and Dewey were influenced by other prior thinkers is not
really a problem.  Western science has always acknowledged a debt to
Aristotle even when we have rejected many of his ideas.

Finally, the one thing that is consistently ignored about Piaget is that he
never prescribed methods of teaching because he was only interested in
studying learning.  All of the applications and misapplications have been
done by others.  Egan did acknowledge that most applications of Piaget
seemed to work about as well as conventional education.  He does not seem to
be aware of the well engineered applications.  IF he had been aware he would
not have said "Successful compared to what?".

As usual PER and cognitive enhancement methods seem to be invisible to the
public at large and most of the educational establishment.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


> HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
> I argue that the criticism of Piaget by Catherine Scott in a recent
> AERA-D post is problematic, and close with three questions:
>
> (1) Does Kieran Egan (2004) ("Getting it Wrong from the Beginning:
> Our  progressivist inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and
> Jean  Piaget") or anyone else give any solid evidence for such
> criticism?;
>
> (2) Would anyone, care to comment on Kieran Egan's opinion that both
> Dewey and Piaget were:
> (a) "wrong from the start," and
> (b) heavily influenced by Herbert Spencer?";
>
> (3) If Dewey was and is WRONG, why is Dewey-like pedagogy so
> seemingly successful in introductory physics education?
> HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
>
> Kieron Egan's provocative response to those questions is contained in
> a recent post on AERA-L "Piaget & Dewey: Down for the Count? -
> FORWARD from Kieran Egan," [Hake (2005b)] that can be accessed by
> clicking on <http://tinyurl.com/bsvfs>.