It should be understood that I have emphasized the importance of Piaget’s cognitive developmental stages in a child’s intellectual progression for one simple reason: its four-stage progress and its ability to be measured by a child’s years. As to the effort of someone attempting to measure to what level of academic achievement that student has reached, teachers (as well as Departments of Education setting provincial examinations) relied upon a formula wherein the testing regimen provides queries to which some 40 per cent require simple, rote answers, a further 35 per cent seek an application of these defined terms or factors, and finally 25% require some measure of critical thinking skills existing or capacity to solve problems.
From a “testing” perspective, this ratio in the testing regimen can be considered as a “no-brainer”; however, there exists within the profession a group who believe that learning itself should proceed based upon the reasonably defined stages outlined by Piaget, and then, once into Phase 4, we can proceed to test in such a fashion. This ignores one basic fact of learning, namely that at every stage of learning, even with the young, there exists a potential to have the recently learned materials have application, which in turn leads to the potential of further learning.
Take, for instance, a child learning a new word by first spelling it out, then determining that word’s meaning: by taking out a dictionary and having the child find that word (reinforcing the progression of the alphabet and adding “placement” or “order” to the word), can now engage in a discussion having learned how to properly use it in spoken language, and establishes a relationship for synonyms or antonyms (a problem-solving technique) in future discussion where that word’s meaning may not exactly fit the descriptor utilized in the initial example.
In other words, Piaget’s process for cognitive development – all four stages – have the potential to be demonstrated at every level of learning, even within a lower level of development.
Virtually anyone who has studied Psychology understands that there are inherent limitations to any treatment theory, and Piaget is no exception. For instance, there are publications critical of “its underestimation of infant and child capabilities, its neglect of cultural and social influences on cognitive development,” not to mention “the rigid nature of its staged progression”, a process discussed in the previous paragraph.
Even Piaget had some concerns as to how his model worked, especially with children from ages 2 to almost 7 (the preoperational stage), whom he worriedly maintained were “inherently egocentric” and potentially incapable of understanding other’s points of view. Furthermore, when deprived of social interaction, other research has shown that such lack of stimuli only exacerbates this me-ism form of behaviour, eventually reaching the point where continued lack of exposure to a social environment makes one increasingly resistive to information provided by anyone that does NOT reinforce their own primitive beliefs, thus leading towards cultist-like behaviours in any individual so deprived.
These latter points should be of concern to not just teachers, but to the politicians who are attempting to revive our economic and social environments post-Covid 19 invasion. Our fixation upon social networking should have us wondering, for instance, that IF we were to WANT to post something of concern based upon reasonable scientific and/or historical reflection to counter the misinformation being spread by others, how many of us would have reservations about doing so, when there exists “out there” some flame-throwing yahoo that you know full well isn’t going to say a single word to counter what you’ve stated as fact, but will instead refer to you, the writer, as “having low IQ” and “no talent” (two of a clueless Donald Trump’s favourites), or threaten you in some fashion, often with a violence unworthy of the seemingly mild “slight” your comment might have inadvertently tweaked in its preparing.
Our problem as teachers, however, is that we’re attempting to feed knowledge to someone else’s children, and for parents who are willing to put such faith in us AND show up regularly for parent-teacher interviews and progress reports, I applaud their wisdom and approach in how to TRULY protect their children from harm.
It therefore bothers me that in certain provinces, most recently Nova Scotia, there are calls being made to transfer the duties and concerns of school boards to government employees that oversee the Board’s duties. Such happenings are only becoming concerns because there are now campaigns being waged in the contest for trustee seats to have someone elected to that position who believes the public school system should now be embracing some far-right principle, be it too many of our classics describing pornography or the necessity to now include only a specific form of religious teachings, or that too many teachers are spreading “woke” propaganda as knowledge, when in reality the word “woke” itself is defined as “having knowledge”.
As a teacher, I want the skills I have brought with me from my Methods classroom to be fully exploited and possibly even enhanced every time I step into a classroom. Yet in the past I have been called “dangerous” because I’m promoting “elitism” through a subject – mathematics – by demanding standards reflected within a curriculum having no concept as to the meaning of “normal”.
It’s made worse by the conditions that I continued to encounter over and over again in 35 years practicing this trade – things such as if I cannot attend class on any given day, I am to prepare a lesson plan with sample work activity related to that lesson, only to come in the following day to find my desk littered with Grade 4 multiplication and division questions because the substitute teacher had no idea as to how to teach the materials, and as a result not only were my efforts wasted, but my kids learned nothing while I was away.
In short, increasing student standards require reinforcing the elemental levels of teaching, include Educational Assistant instruction or improving Bachelor degree training to include second tier Methods class instruction, to create candidates for substitute duty from within the school’s existing stock of teachers.
That, then, will be the topic of next week’s column.
