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In his Phys-L post of 2 Sep 2005 titled "Piaget," Jack Uretsky (2005) wrote:
"For those who are inclined to label people according to the Piaget
'stages', I invite your attention to 'Piaget goes down for the Long
Count' at <http://www.youth.net/ysc/educnews/piaget.htm>."
Metzenberg (undated #2) wrote [bracketed by lines "MMMMMMMM. . . .";
my CAPS and references within square brackets]:
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The National Science Education Standards [NRC (1996)], Benchmarks for
Science Literacy [AAAS (1993)], and National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics Standards [NCTMS] are heavily laden with the philosophy
of Jean Piaget, the late psychologist who developed the idea that
young children go through a series of developmental stages that limit
their ability to reason and develop number sense. . . . This
principle of cognitive restraint has been pushed into higher grades
by science and math educators, who add that students cannot achieve
"true understanding" in traditional science or math courses that are
"overstuffed." Educational famine sharpens the mind, apparently. . .
. . A fascinating book by Stanislas Dehaene [1999] has now shed light
on young children's innate number sense, and PIAGET'S INANE RESEARCH
SENSE. . . . Parents need to develop some "street sense" of their
own. Their children are not being "overstuffed" by their educators,
they are being mentally starved. THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM IS NOT "A
MILE WIDE AND AN INCH DEEP," it is integrated and unfocused. THEIR
CHILDREN DO NOT NEED TO "CONSTRUCT THEIR OWN KNOWLEDGE," THEY NEED TO
HAVE A TEACHER WITH A BASE OF KNOWLEDGE THEY CAN TRUST.
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Joe Bellina (2005) responded to Uretsky in a Phys-L post of 2 Sep 2005:
"I am surprised that your are suckered by that old logical trick: if
one part is wrong the whole thing is wrong. Further, look at the
person's credentials . . . he is a biologist from some minor
California school . . . why are you so credulous?"
In my opinion, Bellina's warning that Metzenberg is:
(a) "from some minor California school" (California State University
at Northridge), and
(d) on record as a dogged opponent of hands-on guided-inquiry science
education in K-8 [Metzenberg (1998, undated #1), 1999)],
are not, *by themselves*, grounds for discounting his thesis that
*Piaget has gone down for the long count.*
Rather, it may be instructive to quote the comments of seven
modern-day experts regarding Piaget:
1. UK Educator Philip Adey:
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Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) is an innovative
teaching approach elaborated out of research into cognitive development
based largely on the work of Piaget and also incorporating fundamental tenets
of Vygotsky's theories of learning. The programme aims to improve children's
thinking processes by accelerating progress towards higher-order thinking
skills or what Piaget termed 'formal operations'. CASE focuses on enhancing
pupils' capabilities in understanding science concepts, science being an area
in the curriculum that has always presented particular difficulties
for the majority of pupils. Rather than being intended as an
alternative science curriculum, CASE is designed to be an
intervention programme in the existing curriculum, and originally
targeted pupils between the ages of 11 and 14 years."
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2. Cognitive scientist John Anderson (2000, p. 424):
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Developmental psychologists have tried to understand the intellectual
changes that occur as we grow from infancy to childhood. They have
been particularly influenced by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget,
who studied and theorized about child development for more than half
a century. Much of the recent information processing work in
cognitive development has been concerned with correcting and
restructuring Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Despite these
revisions, his research has organized a large set of qualitative
observations abut cognitive development spanning the period from
birth to adulthood. Therefore it is worth reviewing these to get a
picture of the general nature of cognitive development during
childhood.
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3. Cognitive scientist Howard Gardner (1991, p. 26-29):
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An extremely ingenious observer and experimenter, Piget bequeathed to
the emerging science of developmental psychology many, if not most,
of its classic demonstrations. . . . In the light of current
understandings of the human cognitive development, there are four
particularly problematic aspects of the Piagetian world view. .
.(paraphrasing):
(a) development consists of a series of qualitative shifts in
representation and
understanding]. . . .
(b) all major milestones yoked, with critical events across different domains
all locking into place at the same time]. . . .
(c) a great deal of Piaget's attention was directed at numerical competence]. .
(d) Piaget's contention that older children's more sophisticated ways
of knowing
eradicate their earlier forms of knowing the world. . . .[e.g., the
evidence discussed by Arons & Karplus (1976), Arons (1976), and
McKinnon & Renner (1971) suggests that many U.S. college students
have NOT attained the "formal operational level" claimed by Piaget to
occur between the ages of 11 and 15].
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4. Computers-in-education pioneer Alan Kay (2003) wrote (quoted by permission):
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My experience with children over the last 30 years or so seems to
show that Piaget was in the ballpark in several important areas, but
that much more is known now about what very young children can do.
An important 2nd order to Piaget is Jerome Bruner's
<http://its.law.nyu.edu/faculty/profiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=cv.main&personID=19807>
recharacterization of the "stages" as "multiple (and parallel) ways
of knowing" [c.f. various Bruner books, including "Toward A Theory of
Instruction" [Bruner (1974)], see also Bruner 1977, 1979, 1990,
1996)]. I have found Bruner's ideas to be extremely helpful over the
years, and much more so than Piaget's. Also, Vygotsky [1978] has been
very helpful, especially his careful study of how children form
concepts.
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5. Biologist Anton Lawson (1995, p.102) [see his book for the references]:
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"The potential for the development of what Piaget calls "formal
operational thought" develops between 11 and 15 years of age. For
Piaget, the stage of formal operations constitutes the highest level
in the development of thinking patterns. A person who has entered
that stage of formal thought 'is an individual who thinks beyond the
present and forms theories about everything, delighting especially in
that which is not' [Piaget (1966, p. 1480]. . . . .Piaget choose the
name "formal operational" for his highest state of thought
development because of his beliefs that the thinking patterns at this
stage are isomorphic with rules of formal propositional logic (Piaget
1957). This position is perhaps the most problematic in Piaget's
theory . . . . the terms "empirical-deductive" (EI) and
"hypothetical-deductive" (HD) seem to better capture the key
difference [between childlike and adultlike thinking.
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6. Cognitive scientist Robert Sternberg (1999, p. 443):
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One criticism questions Piaget's assumption that the changes in
children's cognition occur chiefly as an outcome of maturational
processes . . . . Evidence of environmental influences on Piagetian
tasks contradicts this premise . . . particular experiences,
training, or other environmental factors may alter performance on
Piagetian tasks.
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7. Philosopher Ernst von Glasersfeld (1997a):
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Development has to do with growth and childhood, and consequently,
when Piaget was first discovered in the United States - about 1940 -
he was classified as a child psychologist. Twenty years later, he was
discovered once more as the author of a theory that postulated four
stages in the development of intelligence. Finally, in the 1980s, he
was rediscovered for the third time, as the progenitor of
constructivism. Since then, constructivism has become fashionable,
especially in the educational domain. Many writers call themselves
constructivists, but few have fully understood the revolutionary
aspect of Piaget's theory. In what follows I shall present my
interpretation.
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Judging from all the above, it would appear that:
(a) Metzenberg's claim that Piaget's research sense was "inane" is
itself inane.
(b) Far from being "down for the long count," Piaget's work is still
justifiably influential among cognitive scientists and scholars in
several disciplines, e.g., biology, education, philosophy, and
physics.
The tenor of Metzenberg's essay "Piaget goes down for the Long Count"
is similar to that of previous output from Metzenberg (1998, undated
#1), 1999)] and the California Curriculum Commission, as criticized
in "Direct Science Instruction Suffers a Setback in California - Or
Does It?" [Hake (2004a) - see that article for the references]::
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The California Curriculum Commission (CCC) appears to inhabit a
"private universe" [Schneps & Sadler (1985)], seemingly oblivious of
the literature of cognitive science [see, e.g. Bransford et al.
(1999)] and three decades of science-education research showing the
superiority of hands- and minds-on
pedagogy to direct instruction in conceptually difficult areas [see
e.g., Karplus (1974, 1977, 1981); Arons (1960, 1972, 1974, 1983,
1985, 1997, 1998); Shymansky et. al. (1983, 1989, 1990); Halloun &
Hestenes (1985a,b); McDermott & Redish (1999); Hake (1998a,b;
2002a,b); Lopez & Schultz (2001); FOSS (2001); Pelligrino et al.
(2001); Crouch & Mazur (2001); Fagen et al. (2002); Fuller (2002)];
Redish (2003); and Belcher (2003).
Note that none of the above research concerns unguided "discovery
learning," an evident bugaboo of CCC's Stan Metzenberg and executive
director Thomas Adams (2004).
Still other references showing the superior effectiveness of hands-on
guided inquiry methods over direct instruction are Bredderman (1982,
1983, 1985), Kyle et al. (1988), Jorgenson & Vanosdall (2002), GLEF
(2001), and Anderson (2002). In addition, the eleven K-12
science-education studies listed in Table 1 of Lipsey & Wilson (1993)
(where the test group is characterized by reform
methods) yield a total N = 888 students and average effect size <d> =
0.36 [Cohen (1988)]. Most of these studies include grades 4 or 6 to
12 with the effect size control group being traditional direct
instruction and the measurement unit being "achievement" or
"learning" (presumably as measured by tests). Cohen's rule of thumb -
based on typical results in social science research - that d = 0.2,
0.5, 0.8 imply respectively "small," "medium," and "large" effects,
but Cohen cautions that the adjectives "are relative, not only to
each other, but to the area of behavioral science or even more
particularly to the specific content and research method being
employed in any given investigation." My own survey [Hake (1998a,b)]
yielded a much larger
effect size of d = 2.43 [Hake (2002a)] and such large differences in
the effectiveness of interactive engagement vs direct instruction
have been corroborated by many other physics education researchers as
discussed in Hake (2002a,b).
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My apologies to those who may recall reading material similar to the
above in prior posts Hake (2003a,b).
"To develop the genuine understanding of concepts and theories that
underlie [declarative] knowledge, the college student, no less than
the elementary school child, must engage in deductive and inductive
mental activity coupled with interpretation of personal observation
and experience. Unfortunately, such activity is rarely induced in
passive listeners, but it can be nurtured, developed, and enhanced in
the majority of students providing it is experientially rooted and
not too rapidly paced, and providing the mind of the learner is
actively engaged."
Arnold Arons (1983)