Notes on Jean Piaget & John Dewey

John Piaget and John Dewey were both construvtisit as they believe that children
comes to school with prior knowledge andour role as teachers is to expand the
existing knowledge by linking new information with existing knowledge.

John Dewey and Education

John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, on October 20, 1859. At the University of
Vermont, Dewey studied philosophy.He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1879. He then
began his teaching career. Dewey received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and spent
most of his early career there. In 1904, Dewey became a professor at Columbia University,
where he retired in 1930.

The Views of John Dewey

John Dewey is famous for his belief in what he called as the progressive education. Progressive
education is essentially a view of education that emphasizes the need to learn by doing. Dewey
believed that human beings learn through a 'hands-on' approach. Dewey is a pragmatist.
Pragmatists believe that education must be experienced. From Dewey's educational point of
view, this means that students must interact with their environment in order to adapt and learn.
Dewey felt the same idea was true for teachers . He felt strongly that teachers and students
must learn together. He saw classroom as having deeply rooted democratic ideals, which
promoted equal voice among all participants in the learning experience.
A child-centered approach in education gives emphasis to learning based on the needs and
interests of the child. In Dewey's view, children should be allowed to explore their environments.
He believed in an interdisciplinary curriculum, or a curriculum that focuses on connecting
multiple subjects, where students are allowed to freely move in and out of classrooms as they
pursue their interests and construct their own paths for acquiring and applying knowledge. The
role of the teacher in this setting would be to serve more as a facilitator than an instructor. In
Dewey's view, the teacher should observe the interest of the students, observe the directions
they naturally take, and then serve as someone who helps develop problem-solving skills.
Traditionally, a teacher would stand in front of a group of students who are all sitting in rows.
The teacher is usually the deliverer of information and the job of the students is usually to
receive this information and regurgitate it in some form of a written test.
In contrast, in a classroom based on the ideas of John Dewey, you may see a teacher deliver
background content information, but you would also likely see students working in groups, with
those groups exploring differing concepts within the content. You would see lots of
conversation and lots of collaboration. While you

The Views of John Piaget

Formalization of the theory of constructivism is generally attributed to Jean

Piaget. According to Jean Piaget knowledge is internalized by learners. He
suggested that through processes of accommodation and assimilation,
individuals construct new knowledge from their experiences. When individuals
assimilate, they incorporate new experiences into the already existing
framework without changing that framework. This may occur when individuals'
experiences are aligned with their internal representations of the world, but may
also occur as a failure to change dut to a faulty understanding; for example, they
may not notice events or may misunderstand input from others.

According to the theory, accommodation is the process of reframing one's mental

representation of the external world to fit new experiences. Accommodation can
be easily understood as the mechanism where we learn from our mistakes.
When we act understand that the world operates in one way and what we
experience is different , we often fail, but by accommodating this new experience
and reframing our model of the way the world works, we tend to learn from the
experience of our failure, or other people’s failure.

It is important to note that constructivism is not a particular pedagogy. In fact,

constructivism is a theory describing how learning happens, regardless of
whether learners are using their experiences to understand a lecture or
following the instructions for building a model airplane. In both cases, the theory
of constructivism suggests that learners construct knowledge out of their
experiences. However, constructivism is often associated with pedagogic
approaches that promote active learning, or learning by doing.

Note : You are encourage to read further on Constructivist theory by Jean Piaget
to have a deeper understanding on how assimilation and accomodation works.