Re: Piaget and asundry

[Maurice Barnhill <mvb@UDel.Edu>]

Rauber, Joel Phys wrote:
> [ ... ]
>
> Several days back, someone brought up the use of MAPLE (or was it
> MATHEMATICA) in the introductory class; and made the comment about how the
> use of this calculational technology would enable students much earlier in
> their careers to investigate more abstract and sophisticated material; I
> think even implying its use in lower grades than university ones.  There are
> limits to this, which I think Piaget addressed.
>
> Joel

    The interesting question here is which level the computer technology
will be pitched to.  A simulation of a process on the computer screen
might be expected to require thought processes at the concrete level. 
(Does anyone know of any research on this point?)  Then working from the
simulation to a graph and eventually to an algebraic representation
might facilitate the transfer to concrete operational and/or formal
stages.  If so, a well-designed computer demonstration might indeed be
able to teach abstract ideas earlier than other methods could.

    American college students are mostly concrete operational in science
thought; Piaget's own subjects made the transition to formal thought at
earlier ages.  Thus there should be potential for accelerate the
appearance of formal thought process in science.  

    [In case I don't remember the terminology correctly: by concrete
operational I mean the stage where students can relate concrete ideas to
each other or to abstract representations of the ideas.  Formal
processes involve the relationships of different formal representations
to each other.]

    In response to an earlier post, I think that one reason that Piaget
is no longer fashionable among Physics people is that Piagettian ideas
allowed us to understand and categorize some of our successes and
failures but never produced any systems that produced better
instruction.  At least, no systems were publicized that produced better
instruction without using up very large amounts of instructor time.  I
think that there is a lesson for contemporary efforts in there also.
-- 
Maurice Barnhill, mvb@udel.edu                
http://www.physics.udel.edu/~barnhill/          
Physics Dept., University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716