I had a friend years ago who used to tell me, "No matter where you go, there you are." At the time I thought this was the dumbest statement I'd ever heard. He would say that and I would think, "Duh." Now I realize that I wasn't understanding what he was trying to say.
Many of us want to put the stages of human development into nice, neat age ranges and never think about those that may not fit into those ranges. We don't want to think that a high school student may be in the concrete stage or even in a pre-operational stage. The opposite is also true: we don't want to think that one of our students could be seven years old and fully in the formal operations with full abstract thought processes.
Yet for learning to happen, the student must be initially addressed in the stage where they are at; the idea that no matter where you go, there you are. As was mentioned in the reading, we don't teach calculus to pre-operational students because they don't have the capacity to understand.
Teachers should begin in the stage where the students are at; then they have the responsibility to help them move to the next stage of thinking. The difficulty comes in knowing the students well enough to do this. I know that I am frustrated with the inability to get to know my students until well into the year because of the numbers I have in my classroom. With 40 plus students per class, I am lucky to get all their names down by the end of 1st term.
Technology can help. The Jordan School District recently went to the Skyward system. We have the ability to look at the student's test scores on our own computer. Now I realize this isn't going to tell me what operational stage my student is in, but if I see consistent low test scores, I can watch for specific problems with that student. I need to assume that many of my students are in the concrete operations stage and help them to move to the formal operations stage.
I agree with Brian that something is lost in translation with the theories of Piaget. I truly understand his theories only when I read the examples he gives. Then I see the accuracy and the genius of his human development ideas.
