week 3

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) www.piaget.org/biography/biog.html

• began writing by 1920’s, becomes popular in the US beginning in 1960’s

• dominant Piagetian theory in US: middle Piaget• Piaget himself in the 1970’s (late Piaget)

rejected much of middle Piaget• American Piagetians have ignored late Piaget• Piaget refused to make explicit educational

recommendations, thus allowing an industry of “translators” to develop.

• a great researcher and scholar

Donaldson on Piaget20 years after Children’s Minds

• The question is whether Piaget's epistemic subject is so shorn of the essentials of human functioning--even of human cognitive functioning--that the theory is quite inadequate. I have come to believe that this is so. (Donaldson, 1996, p. 326)

• Here is the heart of the matter: expressly, and at times, explicitly, Piaget chooses to ignore our ordinary, rich “lived experience” (Piaget, 1971, p. 68). He does not take this to be any part of his concern as a psychologist, and sometimes he treats with scorn the very idea of studying it. (Donaldson, 1996, p. 325-326)

3 Themes from Donaldson

• the need to consider the whole child when trying to discover what a child understands or is capable of

• the need to consider the situation from the child’s point of view

• the necessity and difficulty of formal education for young children

chapter 2

• who is egocentric, and when?• what is the difference between findings

and claims." (16)• what does it mean that something

"makes human sense"? (17)• cold-blooded and warm blooded?• "communicative strivings"? (23)• how are being "highly sensitive to the

listener's state" and being egocentric related? (24)

chapter 3

• historically and theoretically, how do the three theories of language development connect

• why would Chomsky’s LAD make sense to a Piagetian?

• explore what Macnamara means by "specifically because they have a relatively well-developed capacity for making sense of certain types of situations involving direct and immediate human interaction." (31)

• think about "formal system[s] [that] can be manipulated in a formal way"? (33)

externalizing

• recording the journey in its many and mysterious meanderings

• for both the group and the many individuals and sub-groups

• a place to keep memories and to take them with you on the next stage of the journey

• a way to make sense of experience