“The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.”
―
• Jean Piaget's theory and its applications in teaching mathematics
Piaget's theory of mental development is based on the belief that the mind performs two stages:
Reception -------> The mind's reception of new information.
Soothing --------> Rearranging the mind information in a new image.
Main features of Piaget's theory:
(1) The basis of learning lies in the child's self-activity.
(2) The child's mental activity is organized into structures.
(3) Mental activity begins through the processes of representation and alignment.
(4) Mental development is a social process that appears through the child's interaction with the environment.
(5) Piaget discovered that the child goes through four stages in his mental development, which are:
The stage of feeling and movement (from birth> 1.5 years):
It is the stage before speech and before the use of symbols, where the child learns that what he misses is not present.
Pre-Operations stage (from 2-7 years):
The child at this stage is subjective, that is, he looks at things personally, focuses on one factor, neglects the rest of the factors, and does not differentiate between truth and fiction, and sees things as he sees himself.
The physical operations stage (from 7-11 years old):
The child at this stage becomes more objective (maintains the rules of the game), plays group games, can arrange things according to height, weight and value, cannot formulate a definition while he can remember a definition, the logical thinking of the child at this stage is very weak.
• The formal or abstract process stage (from 11 years and over):
The child at this stage becomes able to practice scientific thinking and use mathematical logic. He can deal with symbols and relationships that depend on assumptions and axioms and perform standard inference operations.
Factors of mental development in Piaget:
- Maturity
- Experience
- Social interaction
- Balance
Applications of Piaget's theory:
(1) Planning the school curriculum in light of the stages that the student has gone through.
(2) Preparing the student for the new experience.
(3) Presenting the topics from concrete to abstract.
(4) Not to submit a mathematical proof until after the age of 12 years.
(5) The teaching method must be compatible with the way the child learns.