Jean Piaget is one of the names written in gold letters in psychology, his theory of cognitive learning in today’s children makes us know him as the father of modern pedagogy, discovered that the principles of our logic begin to settle before the acquisition of language, being generated by sensory and motor activity that interacts with the environment , especially with the sociocultural environment.
Psychic development, which begins at birth and ends in adulthood, is comparable to organic growth: like the latter, it consists essentially of a path to balance, just as the body evolves to a relatively stable level, characterized by the end of organ growth and maturity, mental life can also be conceived as if it were evolving into a form of final balance , represented by the adult.
- His influence on the psychology of learning is based on the consideration given through mental development.
- Through language.
- Play and understanding.
- For this purpose the first task of the educator is to generate interest as an instrument to understand and act with the student.
- Carried out almost forty years ago.
- Aim not only to know the child better and improve pedagogical or educational methods.
- But also to include the person.
Piaget’s main idea is that it is essential to understand the formation of the mental mechanisms of the child to understand its nature and functioning in the adult, its pedagogical theorization was based on the psychological, logical and biological approach, so it materializes in its definition of the action of thought, where part of pillars conditioned by genetics and is built through sociocultural stimuli.
This configures the information that the person receives, which is always learned actively, unconsciously and passively that seems to be the processing of information.
“The main goal of education in schools should be to train men and women capable of doing new things, not just to repeat what other generations have done; creative, inventive and discovering men and women who may be critical, control and not accept all that is offered to them?. – Jean Piaget-
According to Piaget’s theory of learning, learning is a process that only makes sense in changing situations, so learning is part of how to adapt to this news, this theory explains the dynamics of adaptation through the processes of assimilation and accommodation.
Assimilation refers to how an agency copes with an environmental stimulus based on its current organization, while accommodation implies a change in the current organization in response to environmental requirements. Through assimilation and accommodation, we cognitively restructure our learning throughout development (cognitive restructuring).
Accommodation or adjustment is the process by which the subject changes their patterns, their cognitive structures, in order to incorporate new objects into this structure, this can be achieved by creating a new oversight or modifying an existing pattern, so that the same stimulus and its natural and associated behavior can fit into it.
Assimilation and accommodation are two invariable processes of cognitive development. For Piaget, assimilation and accommodation interact with each other in a balancing process, which can be seen as a regulatory process, at a higher level, that directs the relationship between assimilation and accommodation.
John Lennon said that life is what happens while we do other projects, and often seems to be true, human beings need some security to live in peace, and that’s why we create the illusion of permanence, that everything is static and nothing changes. But that’s not how it works. Everything is constantly changing, including ourselves, but we don’t realize it, until change is so obvious that we have no choice but to face it.
“Intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do” – Jean Piaget-
In early childhood we witness a transformation of intelligence, from simple sensory and motor or practical, transforms into thought itself, under the dual influence of language and socialization.
Language, first of all, by allowing the subject to explain his actions, facilitates the reconstruction of the past and therefore allows him to evoke in his absence the objects to which previous behaviors were addressed; it also allows us to anticipate the future. actions that have not yet been performed, or sometimes replace them only with speech, without ever performing them. This is the starting point of thought as a cognitive process and Piaget’s own thinking.
Language itself brings together concepts and concepts that belong to all and reinforce individual thinking through an extensive system of collective thought. In this last thought, the child immerses himself virtually when he can master speech.
In this sense, with thought the same thing happens with a behavior considered globally, instead of fully adapting to the new realities that he gradually discovers and constructs, the subject must begin by carefully incorporating the data into his self and his activity, and this self. -Centered assimilation characterizes both the beginnings of the child’s thinking and those of his socialization.
“Good pedagogy should show children situations in which they live, in the broadest sense of the word. Does language help us anticipate these situations? -Jean Piaget-
In 1976, Piaget published a small book entitled “The Behavior, Engine of Evolution”, which presents a perspective on the function of behavior as a determining factor of evolutionary change, not as a mere product of it, which would be the result of independent mechanisms. of the action of agencies.
Piaget disputes, in particular, neo-Darwinian postures, as it considers that biological evolution is not only by natural selection, understood exclusively as the product of random genetic variability and differentiated survival and reproduction rates due to subsequently verified adaptive benefits.
From this perspective, it would be a process independent of the behavior of the organism, and could only be explained by the favorable or adverse consequences of phenotypic changes caused by absolutely unfortunate mutations and their transmission over generations.
For Piaget, behavior is a manifestation of the overall dynamics of the organism as an open system in constant interaction with the environment, it would also be a factor of evolutionary change and in an attempt to explain the mechanisms by which the behavior would fulfill this function. , uses the concept of epigenesis and its own explanatory model of adaptation in terms of assimilation and accommodation. Epigenesis means the reciprocal interaction between the genotype and the environment for the construction of the phenotype from experience.
Piaget argues that any behavior has the necessary intervention of internal factors, and notes that any animal behavior, including human behavior, implies adaptation to the conditions of fear, as well as its cognitive assimilation, understood as an integration with a previous behavioral structure. .
“When you teach a child something, you always steal the chance to find out for yourself. “-Jean Piaget-
Piaget’s contributions to education are considered of paramount importance, with Piaget being the founder of genetic psychology, which has greatly affected the theory and pedagogical practice generated around it, which have varied over time, leading to different formulations. developed from Piaget’s contributions.
Jean Piaget’s work consists of his discoveries of human thought from a biological, psychological and logical point of view. It is necessary to clarify that the concept of genetic psychology?It does not apply in a purely biological or physiological context, as it does not refer to or is based on genes; it is labeled as “genetic” that will develop in relation to genesis, the origin of the principle of human thought.
One of Piaget’s great contributions to today’s education is that he founded the idea that in the early years of a child’s education the goal is to achieve cognitive development, the first learning, for this purpose is fundamental and complementary to what the family has taught and encouraged in the child, allowing him to learn some rules and standards assimilated in school.
Another contribution of Piaget, which we can see reflected in today’s schools, is that the theory that develops in a classroom is not enough to say that the subject has been assimilated and learned, in this sense learning involves more methods of pedagogy, such as the application of knowledge, experimentation and demonstration.
The main goal of education is to create people who can innovate, not just repeat what other generations have done. Creative, inventive and uncovered people. The second objective of education is to form critical minds, capable of verifying, and not accepting, everything that is transmitted to them as valid or true.
A tour of Piaget’s theory would allow any teacher to discover how a student’s mind works. The central idea of his theory is that knowledge is not a copy of reality, but the product of a person’s interrelationship with his environment. individual, individual and special.
“The second objective of education is to form minds that can be critical, that can control and not accept everything that is offered to them. The great danger today is the motto, the collective opinion, the tendencies already formed in thought. able to individually oppose, to criticize, to distinguish what is correct and what is not? -Jean Piaget-