ED4134 Assessment 1

Piaget
Piaget stated that children learn in a different way to adults and that there are certain stages of development that children follow in their growth to adulthood. It is important to recognise these stages as children are not little adults and they do not learn in the same way as adults.
He labelled the stages as sensorimotor (birth to 2 years); preoperational (2-7) concrete operational (7-11) and formal operations ( adolescent to adult)
He believed that young children initially learn when they are actively engaged in movement. As they grow they are able to learn through their mental or thinking processes and are able to engage in formal operations when they are 16 years old. He called this constructivism as the child is contiually interacting with their environment and their own heredity and building or constructing their learning and learning environnment.

As a Steiner teacher I began teaching my class when they were 6 years old and turning seven and now they are turning 13. I have changed the way I teach as they have grown older. When they were young I taught them by encouraging all sorts of movement and hands on activities. For example, in maths they would physically engage with the numbers by jumping different number patterns but now at 13 jumping and movement is not appropriate as they are able to take in new concepts through the thinking process and reason on a more abstract level. This approach is used through our curriculum and greatly facilitates learning. I see how important it is to recognise the different types of learning appropriate for each age and how important it is to bring learning to the child in such a way that they are encouraged to make their own discoveries. When they make their own discoveries then it allows them to continually construct their own learning.
Piaget outlined the different ways that children construct their environment by assimilation, accomodation and equilibration. As it is a complex process I try to bring as many types of ways of learning to the child as possible.
There have been a number of criticisms of Piaget including the observation that children are able to move faster through these stages that Piaget indicated. Our experience in the Steiner system is that children can be pushed to learn before they are ready but this is to the detriment of the child in other ways. For example we delay the teaching of reading until the child is ready which is usually between 7 to 9. They can learn to read earlier but this may be to the detriment of their physical or mental health. When they read at an older age we find that their reading ability increases considerably and that they are reading at the same level or higher as their peers who started reading at an earlier age.

References:
http://www.coe.uga.edu/epitt/piaget.htm
chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/piaget.html