tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post1096030806468247015..comments2024-02-16T08:32:46.618+00:00Comments on Donald Clark Plan B: Piaget – why teach this stuff?Donald Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-74694199919501080132013-02-23T11:44:32.887+00:002013-02-23T11:44:32.887+00:00I agree totally with you, Donald! After teaching 3...I agree totally with you, Donald! After teaching 3 year olds for two years and watching my two nieces grow up I came to the conclusion that Piaget's theories were the biggest load of bollocks I have ever read. He severely underestimated the cognitive ability of young children, and their ability to make sense of their environment. I am glad to hear the research agrees with this! Thanks a lot for your blog post. <br /><br />AndrewAndrewnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-12191682778771129812012-01-06T10:24:20.118+00:002012-01-06T10:24:20.118+00:00Interesting post. I Saw some references earlier. W...Interesting post. I Saw some references earlier. Where would one go for a solid book on learning theory? Thanks <br /><br />jamieAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-37266483845091244472011-03-31T23:58:49.805+00:002011-03-31T23:58:49.805+00:00the teachers are just to give the lacture deliver ...the teachers are just to give the lacture deliver there knowlage to us and then its on us that we follow him or not so if we positively don owe work so its help us to take the best opertunity in further lifeMagento themes<a href=”http://www.fmeextensions.com/magento-themes.html?mode=grid++%E2%80%9D%3EMagento+Theme%3C%2Fa%3Enoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-75743155601563035052010-12-15T23:10:35.696+00:002010-12-15T23:10:35.696+00:00@ Donald Clark, nice points, you can have your own...@ Donald Clark, nice points, you can have your own post about this comment. <br /><br />nice post thank for sharing.Jhon Davishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14032506731847867155noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-91379476076644200912010-12-15T22:58:12.392+00:002010-12-15T22:58:12.392+00:00Well Donald i am also sad to say that these theori...Well Donald i am also sad to say that these theories of Paiget's you mentioned arent good for person like me nor the many else.<br /> What i would like to suggest is to target only the people who have interest to these theories else the feed back you going to get isn't going to be positive. <br /><br />< a href="http://free-magentoextensions.com/magento-themes.html">Magento Themeshttp://free-magentoextensions.com/magento-themes.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-15907084919114148032010-01-04T20:51:46.271+00:002010-01-04T20:51:46.271+00:00Sadly, thousands of trainee teachers find themselv...Sadly, thousands of trainee teachers find themselves in the same position every year through the laziness of the academics running the courses.Donald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-71775553638106761722010-01-04T20:09:03.534+00:002010-01-04T20:09:03.534+00:00Donald,
Despite the fact I agree with you, I foun...Donald,<br /><br />Despite the fact I agree with you, I found this post becasue in my MAED I have to do a huge paper on cognitive theory or Piaget. I begged to do neo piagetian but was told no! I will not use this rubbish in my class room so why am I wasting so much time on it?Kathrynnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-46004408256295609122009-10-29T10:58:17.585+00:002009-10-29T10:58:17.585+00:00Bunchberry - couldn't agree more. A focus on t...Bunchberry - couldn't agree more. A focus on the workings of memory would be far more useful. I suspect it's an attempt to 'intellectualise' teaching, when it's really a bunch of skills delivered by someone with the disposition and personality to pull it off. I'd take it out of Universities altogether.Donald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-17084592540404579942009-10-27T10:33:14.397+00:002009-10-27T10:33:14.397+00:00Late-ish to this great post.
Naive question: why ...Late-ish to this great post.<br /><br />Naive question: why just Piaget?<br /><br />Most of the conversation in the comments is around Piaget and Vygotsky and whether they're right/wrong/interestingly wrong/wrong-but-historical-context-important - and who or what might replace them, given their wrongness.<br /><br />I literally don't see the sense in this.<br /><br />Let's take your earlier post, "10 facts about learning that are scientifically proven and interesting for teachers".<br /><br />Why doesn't teacher training focus purely on those? Why don't teachers focus on the skills they'll need to help people learn and plan their programmes - and return to look at the big picture stuff when they're ready to do a Masters degree?<br /><br />Teaching (and, even more so, training) is not an academic subject. Is it crucially important that nurses remember whose theories they are using when they treat patients? Are mathematicians accredited for their ability to recall details of the thought processes that went into coming up with earlier proofs?<br /><br />Even if Piaget had been right, what use would he have been to people in the classroom? Psychologists are as susceptible to cognitive bias as the rest of us. The GTD people are just as bad at remembering birthdays and wedding anniversaries.<br /><br />Hmmm. I'm probably violently agreeing with you.BunchberryFernhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15052412244423677714noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-89772546603336502912009-10-27T05:19:54.292+00:002009-10-27T05:19:54.292+00:00Its really interesting points.
- J.
Web Designing...Its really interesting points.<br /><br />- J.<br /><a href="http://www.cyberdesignz.com" rel="dofollow" title="Web Designing" rel="nofollow">Web Designing</a>Website Designinghttp://www.cyberdesignz.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-41592771328033950072009-10-25T20:19:53.673+00:002009-10-25T20:19:53.673+00:00Agree on Bandura himself, with his lab experiments...Agree on Bandura himself, with his lab experiments, but it led to naturalistic observation studies on groupthink, aggression, personal space, territoriality, stress and lots of other psychological phenomena, where observing real people in real social situations led to real progress in understanding these issues, and attempts to apply that knowledge in the real world.Donald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-28365799949502970562009-10-25T19:52:44.089+00:002009-10-25T19:52:44.089+00:00Thanks Donald. Interestingly, the example you give...Thanks Donald. Interestingly, the example you give of a good piece of learning research in a social context (Bandura) is actually an excellent example of the type of 'crappy' research that I am talking about: you show a child a video of the experimenter beating up an inflatable, then put him in a room with the inflatable and a hammer and sit back and watch. Tick, tock. What follows is less a demonstration of observational learning, more conclusive proof that you haven't got an incredibly stupid child in the room. Talk about expectation bias...shackletonjoneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-79459152787659085252009-10-25T17:37:37.240+00:002009-10-25T17:37:37.240+00:00Mark - can't really comment as I haven't r...Mark - can't really comment as I haven't read its 608 pages or forked out the £35. The press releases from the NUT etc. seem to suggest that all primary education is perfect, we simply need to hire more teachers and pay them more.....Donald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-32352131835943616912009-10-25T17:02:01.200+00:002009-10-25T17:02:01.200+00:00Hi Donald,
"If teachers focused on real cont...Hi Donald,<br /><br />"If teachers focused on real contemporary research, rather than old, outdated, faddish theory and personal hunches, we'd get somewhere fast."<br /><br />Do you mean real contemporary research, like the <a href="http://www.primaryreview.org.uk/" rel="nofollow">Cambridge Review</a>?<br /><br />Is there any point, when it's ignored by the government...? (No reference I'm afraid as it doesn't seem to be talked about on the DCSF website!)Mark Berthelemyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17812278774682999567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-29883293841250368282009-10-25T16:35:49.278+00:002009-10-25T16:35:49.278+00:00Hi Nick
Not sure that my view of science is 'o...Hi Nick<br />Not sure that my view of science is 'observational'. neither was Piaget's. He was roundly ridiculed for using interviewing techniques that corrected his child subjects towards his own conclusions. An excellent critique demolishing his 'liquid in the glass' experiment came from Rose and Blank. Using your own children, a lack of multiple observers etc is absolutely a sound criticism of Piaget, and one well covered in the literature.<br /><br />As for Kuhn, he did not reject science, only opened up the proposition that its progress is complicated. Falsification still lies at the heart of the scientific method (Popper),it is not a reason for giving up on science. On the contrary it's the very strength of the scientific method.<br /><br />I don't understand your comments on social context, as much of contemporary psychology uses naturalistic observation to test and quantify hypothesis. Not all psychology uses lab tests. Indeed Bandura and others see this as central to psychology itself.<br /><br />Neither do I agree that real-world research is crappy (let's scrap Darwin, Newton, Einstein?). It's astoundingly good, and getting better.<br /><br />If teachers focused on real contemporary research, rather than old, outdated, faddish theory and personal hunches, we'd get somewhere fast.Donald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-47155772697113410032009-10-25T16:16:45.954+00:002009-10-25T16:16:45.954+00:00I have mixed feelings about this post, Donald. As ...I have mixed feelings about this post, Donald. As you know I share your despite of the body of learning theory which a) is still taught on PGCEs etc, b) is largely unsubstantiated, c) lacks valuable application. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and my own experience has been that people with a sound background in programme-making will often produce better learning content than people with no end of 'instructional design' expertise. This alone implies that we are going profoundly wrong with the theory.<br /><br />Having said this, I think you have - or seem to have - a simplistic model of science. The basis of the hypothetico-deductive model is observation, so it is no criticism of Piaget that his model was based on observations of his children - if these 3 turned out to be representative of children as a whole. You don't have to read Kuhn to know that scientific research is often merely a way to validate quite unscientific hunches - and that all theories eventually turn out to be false. My own very practical problem is that much research around learning says nothing about learning in the real world, because precisely those variables that matter (such as the social context) are excluded from the experimental conditions. So if you look at the sound research you learn little about learning.<br /><br />Over the years we seem to have been able to distill those things which have valuable application and those which do not, and Piagetian concepts such as equilibrium, assimilation etc are amongst them (and are consistent with the work of later cognitive psychologists such as Schank).<br /><br />In short, what I am saying is that some predictions made by Piagetian theory seem to be validated in a real-world setting (and given the crappy quality of real-world research this is the best you're going to get). We know Newtonian mechanics to be wrong, but we still use it because at real-world scales it is a good approximation.shackletonjoneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03742707556911164797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-80799033312381206782009-10-25T12:55:30.332+00:002009-10-25T12:55:30.332+00:00Some references:
Books that take this well beyond...Some references:<br /><br />Books that take this well beyond Piaget’s simplifications:<br />Berger, K.S. (1988). The developing person through the life span (2nd ed.). New York: Worth Publishers Ltd.<br /><br />Papalia, D.E., Olds, S.W., & Feldman, R.D. (1998). Human development (7th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.<br />Papers:<br />Samuel, J. & Bryant, P. (1984) Asking only one question in the conservation experiment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 25, 315-18. http://www.holah.karoo.net/samuelstudy.htm<br />Rose, S. A., & Blank, M. (1974). “The potency of context in children’s cognition: An <br />illustration through conservation.” Child Development, 45, 199-502. <br />Bower, T. G. R., & Wishart, J. G. (1972). The effects of motor skill on object permanence. Cognition, 1, 165–172.<br /><br />Note that there’s literally dozens of books and papers that critique Piaget – Goggle search will do the rest.Donald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-84589727535554045732009-10-25T12:17:56.668+00:002009-10-25T12:17:56.668+00:00Rob - turns out you were right - Piaget had little...Rob - turns out you were right - Piaget had little contact with children other than his own, his friends and other educational professionals - this, among many other flaws, led to huge biases in his resultsDonald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-88393761219137266412009-10-25T12:16:06.820+00:002009-10-25T12:16:06.820+00:00Tony - spot on. I find these defences everywhere I...Tony - spot on. I find these defences everywhere I go in education. Namely it must be right, as:<br />1. We teach it, it's in the courses<br />2. It's been around for ages<br />3. We can't all be wrongDonald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-76547921553439597622009-10-25T12:14:22.368+00:002009-10-25T12:14:22.368+00:00Joe
Problem is - teachers are making odd judgement...Joe<br />Problem is - teachers are making odd judgements on what to teach and when based on a heady brew of historical, outdated science and guesswork. We had this in the UK with 'whole language' teaching in literacy - it's been a disaster for two generations of learners.Donald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-51939067346553375772009-10-25T12:10:24.604+00:002009-10-25T12:10:24.604+00:00Minh - I already have!
See my post Nov 02 2006 - V...Minh - I already have!<br />See my post Nov 02 2006 - Vykosky - the Lysenko of learning<br />http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/search?q=Vygotsky+-+the+LysenkoDonald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-53070681788820936132009-10-25T12:08:20.280+00:002009-10-25T12:08:20.280+00:00Todd - the Newton comparison is useful here. We do...Todd - the Newton comparison is useful here. We don't teach Newton's alchemy because it's flawed rubbish. We do teach Newton's mechanics and optics because it is still largely correct in the science of physics, as is calculus as a mathematical tool.<br />If you're an engineer, Newton's work is adequate in mechanics, as the special theory of relativity, as a refinement has a practical effect at other orders of magnitude. Newton was largely correct, within his theoretical and mathematical framework, Piaget was almost completely wrong within his.Donald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-61747507265461191182009-10-25T11:55:59.093+00:002009-10-25T11:55:59.093+00:00Karyn - That's more like it, some rational dis...Karyn - That's more like it, some rational discussion. I don't mind Piaget being used as an introduction to developmental psychology, as long as students get a full understanding of his poor scientific methods and flawed results. The problem is that poor teaching posits Piaget as some sort of final authority on all sorts of vague concepts, flawed findings and certainties that have been exposed as wrong. Given the limited time available, filling students minds up with the history of science seems like a waste of time. Fine in a fully fledges psychology course, but not in shorter, vocational courses.Donald Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00796341486328270474noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-64979848335026355782009-10-25T09:18:19.025+00:002009-10-25T09:18:19.025+00:00I'm mildly surprised she's doing any psych...I'm mildly surprised she's doing any psychology at all - the BA QTS courses I'm aware of (does BEd exist anymore?) seem to be mainly about implementing the latest strategy or initiative from govt.<br />Agree about Piaget - came across him 30+ years ago when training as a teacher, and remember thinking then "Has this man ever actually met a child?"Robhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11647405720597546140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21077063.post-2597892451964598482009-10-25T01:25:21.220+00:002009-10-25T01:25:21.220+00:00Besides a lack of lending credence to science, not...Besides a lack of lending credence to science, note also Judith's apparent adherence to the idea of "reality by democracy"--if a majority of people believe a thing, then it must be "more true". <br /><br />Sad to say, I find both beliefs prevalent among people in education...Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01822058935130938523noreply@blogger.com