Jean Piaget’s Theory of Learning

We review the key concepts of the Learning Theory of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget.

Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) was a renowned Swiss psychologist, biologist and epistemologist.

He developed his theses around the study of psychological development in childhood and the constructivist theory of the development of intelligence. This gave rise to what we know as the Piaget's Theory of Learning.

Piaget's Theory of Learning

Jean Piaget is one of the best known psychologists of the constructivist approach, a current that draws directly from the learning theories of authors such as Lev Vygotsky or David Ausubel.

What is the constructivist approach?

The constructivist approach, as a pedagogical current, is a certain way of understanding and explaining the ways in which we learn. Psychologists based on this approach emphasize the figure of the learner as the agent who is ultimately the engine of his or her own learning..

Parents, teachers and community members are, according to these authors, facilitators of the change that is taking place in the learner's mind, but not the main piece. This is so because, for constructivists, people do not interpret literally what comes to them from the environment, either through nature itself or through the explanations of teachers and tutors. The constructivist theory of knowledge speaks of a perception of one's own experiences that is always subject to the interpretation frameworks of the "learner".

That is to say: we are incapable of objectively analyzing the experiences we live at any given moment, because we will always interpret them in the light of our previous knowledge. Learning is not the simple assimilation of packets of information that come to us from outside, but is explained by a dynamic in which there is a fit between new information and our old structures of ideas. In this way, what we know is being permanently constructed..

Learning as reorganization

Why is Piaget said to be a constructivist? In general terms, because this author understands learning as a reorganization of the cognitive structures existing at each moment. structures existing at each moment. That is to say: for him, the changes in our knowledge, those qualitative leaps that lead us to internalize new knowledge based on our experience, are explained by a recombination that acts on the mental schemes we have at hand, as Piaget's Theory of Learning shows us.

Just as a building is not constructed by transforming a brick into a larger body, but is built on a structure (or, what is the same, a certain placement of some pieces with others), learning, understood as a process of change that is being built, makes us go through different stages not because our mind changes its nature spontaneously over time, but because certain mental schemes are changing in their relationships, are organized in a different way as we grow as we grow and interact with the environment. It is the relationships established between our ideas, and not their content, that transform our mind; in turn, the relationships established between our ideas change their content.

Let us take an example. Perhaps, for an 11-year-old child, the idea of family is equivalent to his mental representation of his father and mother. However, there comes a point when his parents divorce and after a while he finds himself living with his mother and another person he does not know. The fact that the components (father and mother of the child) have altered their relationships calls into question the more abstract idea to which they ascribe (family).

Over time, it is possible that this reorganization affects the content of the idea "family" and makes it an even more abstract concept than before in which the mother's new partner can have a place. Thus, thanks to an experience (the separation from the parents and the incorporation into everyday life of a new person) seen in the light of the available ideas and cognitive structures (the idea that the family is the Biological parents in interaction with many other schemes of thought) the "learner" has seen how his level of knowledge concerning personal relationships and the idea of family has taken a qualitative leap.

The concept of 'schema

The concept of schema is the term used by Piaget when referring to the type of cognitive organization existing between categories at a given moment. It is something like the way in which some ideas are ordered and put in relation to others.

Jean Piaget argues that a schema is a concrete mental structure that can be transported and systematized. A schema can be generated in many different degrees of abstraction. In the early stages of childhood, one of the first schemas is that of the 'permanent object'.permanent object' schemawhich allows the child to refer to objects that are not within his or her perceptual reach at the time. Some time later, the child reaches the schema of 'object types'.types of objects' schemaby means of which he is able to group different objects according to different 'classes', as well as to understand the relationship that these classes have with others.

The idea of "schema" in Piaget is quite similar to the traditional idea of "concept", except that the Swiss refers to cognitive structures and mental operations, and not to perceptual classifications.

In addition to understanding learning as a process of constant organization of schemata, Piaget believes that it is the result of the adaptation. According to Piaget's Theory of Learning, learning is a process that only makes sense in situations of change. Therefore, learning is in part knowing how to adapt to these novelties. This psychologist explains the dynamics of adaptation by means of two processes that we will see below: the assimilation and accommodation.

Learning as adaptation

One of the fundamental ideas for Piaget's Theory of Learning is the concept of human intelligence. human intelligence as a process of a biological nature biological nature. The Swiss holds that man is a living organism that presents itself to a physical environment already endowed with a biological and genetic biological and genetic inheritance that influences the processing of information coming from outside. Biological structures determine what we are able to perceive or understand, but at the same time they are what make our learning possible.

With a marked influence of ideas associated with Darwinism, Jean Piaget constructs, with his Theory of Learning, a model that would prove to be highly controversial. Thus, he describes the mind of human organisms as the result of two "stable functions": the organizationthe principles of which we have already seen, and adaptationwhich is the process of adjustment by which the individual's knowledge and the information coming from the environment adapt to each other. In turn, two processes operate within the dynamics of adaptation: assimilation and accommodation.

1. Assimilation

The assimilation refers to the way in which an organism faces an external stimulus on the basis of its present laws of organization. According to this principle of adaptation in learning, external stimuli, ideas or objects are always assimilated by some pre-existing mental schema in the individual.

In other words, assimilation causes an experience to be perceived in the light of a previously organized "mental structure". For example, a person with low self-esteem may attribute a compliment for his work as a way of expressing pity for him.

2. Accommodation

The accommodationAccommodation, on the other hand, involves a modification in the present organization in response to the demands of the environment. Wherever there are new stimuli that compromise too much the internal coherence of the schema, there is accommodation. It is a process opposed to assimilation.

3. Equilibration

It is in this way that, through assimilation and accommodation, we are able to cognitively restructure our learning our learning during each stage of development. These two invariant mechanisms interact with one another in what is known as the process of equilibration. Equilibration can be understood as a regulatory process that governs the relationship between assimilation and accommodation.

The balancing process

Although assimilation and accommodation are stable functions in that they occur throughout the evolutionary process of the human being, the relationship between them does vary. Thus, the cognitive and intellectual and intellectual evolution is closely linked to the evolution of the assimilation-accommodation relationship. assimilation-accommodation.

Piaget describes the balancing process between assimilation and accommodation as the result of three levels of increasing complexity:

However, with the concept of equilibration a new question is incorporated into the Piagetian Theory of Learning: what happens when the temporal equilibrium of any of these three levels is altered? That is, when there is a contradiction between one's own and external schemas, or between one's own schemas and those of others.

As Piaget points out in his Theory of Learning, in this case a cognitive conflict occurs. cognitive conflictand it is at this moment when the previous cognitive equilibrium is broken. The human being, who constantly pursues the achievement of a balance, tries to find answers, asking himself more and more questions and investigating on his own, until it reaches the point of knowledge that restores it..

• Balance is established between the person's own schemas.
• Balance becomes a hierarchical integration of different schemas.
Note from the author:
• • An article on the stages of development posited by Jean Piaget is now available to complement this article on the Piaget's Theory of Learning.