Yes, I literally just wrote about the prior notes and theory minutes ago!
I've always loved Piaget, even after all the critiques of the narrowness of his focus and of his research base. I rely on him all the time. Looking at the notes, I see immediately two things. One that I forgot, which is that part of what motivated Piaget was a desire to put epistemology on a scientific basis. He thought that exploring how we develop thinking would help clarify what thought actually is. The other thing I love is just how much careful observation there is. Even the sensory-motor stage, which seems like completely pre-cognitive, has so much going on and wiring up, so many building blocks being put actively into place by a baby. I loved reading the specifics of the phases within the phase. This is the first theory I learned that had really a disciplined cluster of observations at its center. I remember going for Thanksgiving break that year to visit Uncle Morris' and Aunt Bert's family and seeing a baby after learning this, and all of a sudden I could see not just a randomly moving blob but all of these specific things! Piaget considered them to be active efforts, not just predetermined maturations, even though we almost all do them.
Certainly it's been helpful to my own epistemology to be able to see the difference between concrete and abstract thinking in teens and preteens (and adults, truthfully), and not to confuse them just because it's all communicated eventually in words. I guess it's also distressing and hard for me that not everyone gets to that "formal operations" stage, which even Piaget values as the desired "good" end point.
I thought it was interesting that Piaget thought that despite the child-driven-ness of how development works, society's intentions or teaching make only a marginal impact on individuals' pace of development. At most opportunities for disequilibrium can be provided and if the child is capable of responding or needs to, they will. This showed up later as an issue in my senior thesis, about the role of teaching in child-centered educational theories.
Comments