Re: [Phys-l] Piaget (was: Centrifugal redux)

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Unfortunately most understanding of Piaget was stuck in the concrete.  His
later papers were not translated into English until long after he wrote
them, so most reading was done in the early works.  His ideas evolved and
changed considerably over time.  Constructivism is based on the idea that
the students have to construct their own understanding.  Unfortunately this
often was implemented by letting them play freely, or do experiments
randomly.

The standard lecture is based on the idea that you can communicate your
understanding to the students, but that really does not happen.  They
construct their understanding based on a whole range of experiences, and
passively listening to a lecture usually does not work well.  People think
it works well, but the research shows otherwise.  The idea that you
construct your own reality is hardly original with Piaget, but he is closely
associated with it.

Piaget, a biologist, considered children as being creatures that adapt to
various environments.  Now it is being recognized that the brain actually
grown new neurons even in old age.  It is designed to adapt, but to keep it
plastic one must have intellectual challenge and stimulation at all ages.
It is through mental and physical stimulation that one develops intelligence
and the ability to be mentally agile.  Low performing students have usually
had inadequate stimulation so their brains have not developed as well as
they could.  According to Feuerstein (a neo-Piagetian) they have been
deprived.

But my reference to Piaget was to the idea that you construct your own
reality, so whether centrifugal is a real force or an artifact of the math
depends on how you put it together, and how you define things.  From the
point of Newton's laws it is not a "real" force because it seems to violate
NTN3.  And force is a construct initially bound to NTN.  So the intro.
physics course must deny the "reality" of centrifugal force.  But if you
take a different point of view, you can believe or define it as being a
"real" force.  Reality depends on your point of view.  To Einstein, reality
was that "God does not play dice with the Universe".

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> I'm trying to remember my Piaget theory from college 40 years ago. Was
> it something about cement?