In this theoretical paper, I use an empirically based example to illustrate particular design features of the Learning Through Activity (LTA) design framework and examine the impact of particular design principles. The LTA design framework is based on our elaboration of Piaget's construct of reflective abstraction. The example discussed here,…

In this study, the authors investigate the ways in which young students demonstrate their critical mathematical thinking (CMT). Students aged 5-6 who are beginning their first formal year of education participated in the study. Data is presented from individual clinical interviews undertaken with 16 students. These interviews were analysed using…

Assessment is a topic of concern to all stakeholders in our educational system. Pattern Based Questions are an assessment tool which is an alternative to the standardized assessment tool, and they are based on generative learning pedagogy, which shows promise in engaging all learners and usefulness in teaching and learning but validity has not yet…

As mathematics educators, we teach and research a particular form of knowledge. However, in reacting to Platonic views of mathematics, we often overlook its unique characteristics. This paper presents a Kantian and Piagetian perspective that defines mathematics as a product of psychology. This perspective, based in human activity, unites…

In formal education, the teaching of natural sciences begins when children are about 12 years old. Teachers justify this with the difficulty and abstraction of concepts in these sciences, and they refer to the theory of child development by Piaget. However, numerous examples from everyday life, from non-formal education, analysis of the…

This paper describes an exploratory study observing the use of "Minecraft" (a popular sandbox style online video game environment) in a high school English literature classroom. We use Piaget and Inhelder's (1969) constructivist theories about the formal operational stage of development to interpret the concepts of plot and…

This paper presents a model which can automatically detect a variety of student speech acts as students collaborate within a computer supported collaborative learning environment. In addition, an analysis is presented which gives substantial insight as to how students' learning is associated with students' speech acts, knowledge that will…

Investigators influenced by Anglo-American epistemology have frequently misinterpreted Piaget's genetic constructivism as an empirical psychology, seeing knowledge acquisition as a process in which representations of the world come into increasingly close correspondence with an ontologically unproblematic external reality. Both this interpretation…

This brief paper argues that structural analysis--an extended form of cognitive task analysis--demonstrates that both domain dependent and domain independent knowledge can be derived from specific content domains. It is noted that the major difference between the two is that lower order rules (specific knowledge) are derived directly from specific…

This paper outlines a constructivist theory of learning with a more concrete and specific approach to the types of problems addressed in Piaget's equilibration theory. Knowledge, in this constructivist view, results from the subject's transformational activity on the world and his/her real efforts to organize that activity. The first section…

When Piaget ascribed the origin of knowledge to action, he distanced his theory from most other theories of the origins of mind. As a result, Piaget's conception of mental action has been quite controversial. Piaget's recent, functionalist revisions emphasize procedures and their role in the development of structures. In the new view, structures…

This study examined the relationship between knowledge of sequence relations and the process of mental rotation in four-year-olds. Subjects were 12 preschool children who were tested individually. They were given a State Comparison Task (SCT) in which they were shown pairs of animal pictures, half identical and half mirror images of one another,…

The persistence of the constructivist agenda within learning and developmental theory suggests that underneath the seemingly disparate views of Piagetian, socioculturalist, and ecological perspectives lie some unifying concepts that find their mutual expression in constructivism. The paper contends that semiotics provides the conceptual means to…

Piaget's theory of the cognitive development of the child is related to the recently developed non-linear "chaos" model. The term "chaos" refers to the tendency of dynamical, non-linear systems toward irregular, sometimes unpredictable, deterministic behavior. Piaget identified this same pattern in his model of cognitive…

Jean Piaget is credited with such topics as the synthesis of philosophy and the life sciences through a description of progressive stage by stage development, and a genetic epistemology founded on the principle of knowledge through processes of cognitive assimilation and accommodation. In actuality, these themes were originally postulated by James…