Neo‐Piagetian Systems Theory and the Education of Young Children

Abstract

Constructivism refers to the idea that persons create knowledge and meaning through an active process of structuring and restructuring their experience. From this view, knowledge is neither imposed onto the child by instruction, nor is it an innate property of the mind (Mascolo & Pollack, 1997). Currently, there is a debate among educators about the nature of the constructive processes by which learners develop their understanding of the world. On the one hand, Piagetians have argued for the primacy of the individual in the construction of universal stages of broad‐based competence. Alternatively, socio‐cultural theorists argue that knowledge arises from processes that occur between rather than within individuals. In this paper, we argue that there is a need to transcend the polarizing categories of this debate. In so doing, we first review constructivist and sociocultural approaches to development and early education. After a critique of these approaches, we outline a neo‐Piagetian systems approach to early learning and development. Unlike Piagetian theory which postulates universal stages of thought, developmental systems theorists have elaborated conceptual and methodological tools for making fine‐grained assessments of developmental changes in the dynamic structure of thinking and acting within particular intellectual domains and social contexts. Instead of viewing intellectual development in terms of either individual construction or the internalization of social relations, systems approaches examine development as the result of coactions between multiple levels of hierarchical individual‐environment systems. After elaborating upon this view, we discuss a neo‐Piagetian curriculum for teaching number sense to young children, and analyze the relevance of this new version of constructivism for education.