Jean Piaget

Dear Jean Piaget By: Andrea Barroso Wagner College

Jean Piaget Dear Jean Piaget, It was my fall semester of my senior year at Susquehanna University. I was a psychology major at the time and decided to take Educational Psychology as an elective course. I have always been interested in working with children, so I thought this would be a useful course to take. A few weeks into the course I started a practicum at the local middle school. My practicum experiences as well as your theories being applied to an educational setting helped me to discover what I wanted to be when I grow up a teacher. My first introduction to your theories started my sophomore year when I took Developmental Psychology as a requirement course. Your theories at the time made sense to me, and I was able to comprehend and apply everything that I had learned to research and projects conducted. At the same time, I still was not sure how to use my knowledge and apply it to a future career for myself. My Experiences I have always felt that you learn best in the constructivist way by doing. So I volunteered as much as I could, continue with any practicums long after I completed the required hours, and worked at day care centers. It was during these experiences where I saw your theories come to life.

One of your concepts that I saw in an educational setting was the basic tendencies of thinking (Woolfolk, 2004, p. 30). While working at a day care center, I was the head teacher in a two-year-old classroom. My classroom was set up to give my children the greatest opportunity possible to learn and explore their new world. We have been reading the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear over the week. I can see it in their faces

Jean Piaget that they were adapting to the new book; they were building schemes through direct interaction with their environment (Berk, 2000, p. 223). A few days later, a new toy

was brought in to the classroom, a purple care bear. One of my students saw the new toy, brought it to me and told me it was a brown bear. I corrected her and told her it was a purple bear. She looked at me in dismay as if she was telling me there was no way this bear is purple because the book said it was brown. I told her again that it was a purple bear and brought her over to our color wall and showed her brown and purple and put the different bears next to the corresponding colors. Her face lit up when she understood the difference and was able to tell the other children about the new purple bear. During that short interaction, I saw her use her current scheme of the brown bear to interpret the new purple bear. After correcting her and showing her the color wall, I was helping her to adjust that current scheme of the brown bear so that she can create a new scheme of a purple bear (Berk, 2000, p. 223). During my education I have come across children of all ages and in all four of your cognitive developmental stages. It was fascinating to see while interacting with these children how they display their reasoning and logic in their environment. My favorite story to tell is when I was working at a pre-school day care center. I was in a three-year-old classroom and some of the children were creating pictures. One child saw me come in to the classroom and held up his picture for me to see. He said, Look Miss Andrea, I made a picture! He held up the paper with the picture facing him, and assumed that because he can see it, I can too. I laughed at myself and sat with him while he told me about his picture of his family. I think this is the best example of how a child displays egocentrism. He only saw one point of view, which is his own. The classroom

Jean Piaget itself was set up to reinforce and encourage the fact that the children are in the middle of the preoperational stage of cognitive development. There were so many manipulatives and toys for them to experience creative play (Boeree, 2006). Applying Theories to Education

You believed that the main goal of education should be to help children learn how to learn, and that education should form not furnish the minds of students (as cited in Piaget, 1969, p.70). Even though you did not design programs of education based on your ideas, many other people have. For example, the National Association for the Education of Young Children has guidelines for developmentally appropriate education that incorporate your findings (as cited in Bredekamp & Copple, 1997). You have taught us that we can learn a great deal about how children think by listening carefully, by paying close attention to their ways of solving problems (Woolfolk, 2004, p. 40). If we understand childrens thinking, we will be better able to match teaching methods to childrens abilities. This letter was written to simply thank you. Thanks to you, I know I want to be a teacher, I want to help children, I want to let them grow and discover new things. With your theories, research, and findings, I know how children think, feel, and behave I can be a better teacher knowing all of this.

Thank you, Andrea

Jean Piaget References Beck, L. E. (2000). Cognitive Development: Piagetian and Vygotskian Perspectives. 5th ed., Child Development (221-269). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Boeree, C. G. (2006). Jean Piaget. Retrieved November 13, 2006, from http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/piaget.html Woolfolk, A. (2004). Cognitive Development and Language. 9th ed., Educational Psychology (23-63). Boston: Pearson.