A colleague at another school (there I go in the present tense again) recently sent me this link:
By the time I retired, “brain science” had become the big thing. Every one, visiting mavens and administrators alike do obeisance to “brain science,” although the latter, especially, seemed not to actually know a great deal about it beyond broad generalizations. But we certainly heard a lot about it.
One of the pioneers of educational psychology in the early 20th Century who has always made the most sense to me is good old Jean Piaget. And by so saying, I probably show my age. I don’t recall any mention of him in my undergraduate educational psychology in the early 60s (perhaps I wasn’t paying attention; the course I took was scarcely riveting). In my graduate work in the 70s, he was much more in vogue, but it was a colleague who got me to seriously reading him and about him.
But nowadays, he seems to have fallen into disrepute. First, behavioral psychology was all the rage, and more recently brain science has rendered him “obsolete.” After all, he didn’t carry out formal experiments in a laboratory but in the “field,” usually a room where outside distractions could be controlled, closely observing children’s, play with as little overt interference as possible, while he took copious and meticulous notes. The behaviorists and neurologists would say that ain’t real science His methods were not experimental, but merely observational, they would say, although he did indeed conduct “experiments” by manipulating the environment and the materials the children had available to play with. But that is its own story.
I have never seen any real conflict between Piaget and brain science. In fact, it looks to me like brain science actually validates Piaget’s theories by giving them a neurological basis. What makes possible the transformations from one stage to another? Neurological development is the mechanism, perhaps? Perhaps the immature brain is incapable of kinds of thought that come naturally later. Perhaps this is why transformations can’t be pushed earlier with any success. The brain is not ready to do them. What about previous learning? Important too, but in a different way. Piaget said that transformations can’t be accelerated, but they can be delayed. Moving from concrete to formal operations, for example, does not happen automatically according to the calendar. Previous learning plays an important, a necessary role. The brain itself may now be capable of new operations, but the transformation will not occur if there is nothing in the child’s environment to operate upon. Does this explain why the children of disadvantaged families, with fewer resources in the home, tend to struggle more in school and to lag behind unless given lots more attention? As the Sweet Prince said, “The readiness is all.”
Brain science. Piagetian structuralism. Hardware. Software. Unlike in a computer, the software and the data actually play a role in modifying the hardware itself. Perhaps someday someone will revisit Piaget and will research how the two actually inter react and come up with a “unified theory.”