Remembering the Basics
Many teachers claim to have hated Teacher’s College. I didn’t. In fact, I truly enjoyed it. I enjoyed the time to read and understand educational theory; I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss education with my peers and mentors. And yes, there was a lot of “reflecting” and assignments that appeared to be busy work, but that just seemed to be part of the process.
In any case, my wife is currently a teacher candidate at the Faculty of Education (OISE/UT). Again, I have enjoyed having conversations with her about her classes and the things they’ve been learning. This semester she started her Educational Psychology course and has been reading from a textbook on the subject. I happened to notice her starting a chapter called, “Cognitive Development: Piaget and Vygotsky” and the names immediately caught my attention. I knew the names and I remembered that they were important – but I couldn’t, for the life of me, recall why they were important. So, I picked up the book and started reading the chapter.
I would stop every few paragraphs and tell my wife, “you know, this is good stuff!” And it was!!
In many ways, the central tenets of Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories should be the starting place for every lesson we develop. Here is a summary of their key ideas:
Piaget
- Children are naturally curious about the world and eager to make sense of it.
- Learning is a “constructive process” in which children organize what they learn from their experiences into their background knowledge.
- Children assimilate new knowledge/experiences into their pre-existing schemes and accommodate the scheme if necessary.
- Interaction with people and the physical environment is critical.
Vygotsky
- Learning is primarily a social phenomenon.
- Through formal (school) and informal interactions, adults convey to children how to interpret the world.
- Support (scaffolding) by an adult allows children to perform ever more challenging tasks. These challenging tasks promote cognitive growth.
Of course there is a lot more in the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, and I have only highlighted some of the key ideas, but I think the basics are quite profound. These theories didn’t mean a lot to me when I was in teacher’s college. Now that I have more experience teaching I find their ideas pop off the page – reaffirming what I have come to understand through my daily experiences with students. Reading the chapter in the Educational Psychology textbook was a good reminder for me to keep reevaluating my lessons. I hope this blog was a good reminder for you too.
Photo Credits:
Seven Principles of Learning
dkuropatwa
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42743326@N03/galleries/72157622688064022#photo_3747623204
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