Piaget and Education

There are three educational principles from Piaget’s theory that still majorly impact both teacher training and the practices of the classroom. This is especially during early childhood. His theories focused attention on the idea of developmentally appropriate education. They include materials, instruction, curriculum, and an environment that is suitable for a student in terms of their physical and cognitive abilities and also meets their social needs as well as their emotional needs (Slavin 2010). Theses educational principles are not a focus on the results but on the process of the child’s thinking (Slavin 2010).
The first principle is discovery learning in which the children are encouraged, through spontaneous interaction with their environment, to discover for themselves (Berk 2014). The teachers provide a variety of activities designed to promote exploration instead of presenting ready-made knowledge (Berk 2014). They include playing dress-up, playing with musical instruments, art, puzzles, measuring tools, and table games (Berk 2014).
The second principle is the sensitivity to children’s readiness to learn (Berk 2014). The activities introduced in this principle build on the child’s current thinking and challenges their incorrect ways of viewing the world (Berk 2014). But his view is that teaching new skills before the child is ready could be “worse that no teaching at all, because it leads to a superficial acceptance of adult formulas rather than true cognitive understanding”(Slavin 2010).
The last educational principle is acceptance of individual differences (Berk 2014). In this principle Piaget’s theory assumes that at different rates, all children go through the same sequence of development (Berk 2014). Therefore, teachers must make a special effort to plan small group and individual activities because individual differences