Using research in teaching: Piagetian research and the school mathematics program

Abstract

The tasks Piaget and his co-workers (the “Geneva group”) have devised for their investigations usually have a mathema tics or science basis. For this reason alone, the Piagetian research is of inter est to teachers of mathematics. Another reason for the growth in appeal of the work of the Geneva group is that their descriptions of the development of thinking in children explain so many of the sometimes curious answers children give to a question posed in a classroom. Experienced, observing teachers have often been puzzled by these answers. Piagetian theory helps to make sense out of them. For one of the keen observations of Piaget is that a child's logic is not the same as an adult's logic. The logic a child uses is not an immature form of adult logic. It is his own, and it develops as he acts on objects, explores them, and manipulates them.