Excerpts from Educational
Psychology: A Century of Contributions,
Chapter 11: Jean Piaget, Learning Research, and American Education
Basic research
on cognitive development is to educational psychology as physics is to
engineering; it is the source of fundamental laws of children's learning,
memory, and reasoning that supply the scientific foundation for curriculum
research and for best instructional practice. ~ C. J. Brainerd, "Jean
Piaget, Learning Research, and American Education"
University
departments of educational psychology that do not place the study of cognitive
development at the heart of graduate training are extremely limited. ~
C. J. Brainerd, "Jean Piaget, Learning Research, and American Education"
Cognitive
development is the science of educational psychology. ~ C. J.
Brainerd, "Jean Piaget, Learning Research, and American Education"
Because natural-learning-is-the-best-learning
is so intuitively appealing, it is important to remind ourselves that
intuitions can seriously mislead us when they are not confirmed by data.
~ C. J. Brainerd, "Jean Piaget, Learning Research, and American Education"
One might
say that the history of American educational research on learning is a
history of discovering how to improve on the biases, inaccuracies, and
inefficiencies of everyday experience. ~ C. J. Brainerd, "Jean Piaget,
Learning Research, and American Education"
A much more
limited conclusion follow from the research record, the conclusion being
that the particular developmental constraints that Piaget postulated (stages
of cognitive development) do not appear to seriously restrict children's
learning. ~ C. J. Brainerd, "Jean Piaget, Learning Research, and
American Education"
|
