at lengthy citation acknowledging and describing this fact:
PiagetÆs research showed that the mind of the child is qualitatively different from that of older children and adults. This fact led him to argue that the aim of education should not be only to instruct, but to provide a formative milieu for the childÆs indissociable intellectual, moral and affective development û not just to furnish the mind, but to help form its reasoning powerà.
PiagetÆs research and theory on the role of action in development led him to emphasize the necessity for educators to develop methods appealing to childrenÆs spontaneous activity. The essential characteristics of active methods are that they inspire childrenÆs interest, play, experimentation, and co-operation (DeVries and Kohlberg, 1987, p. 41).
But while all modern constructivist teaching approaches rely heavily on the work of Piaget, he is in some ways not the beginning of the process of initiating the constructivist classroom. Not only did he in his own research rely on the work of others before him (as do all good researchers) but certain historical and cultural changes had to come about to shift some schools and teachers from a traditional to a constructivist approach.
This shift would lead educators down a path that was itself an old one, at least in the realm of philosophy if not of primary education û the idea of heuristics, or ôthe art of intellectual discoveryö (Kafai & Resnick, 1996, p. 11.) Another way that this word can be understood (and the authors rightly note that it is etymologically linked to ArchimedesÆs cry of ôEureka!ö, a paradigmatic example of the learner suddenly reaching out to the world to make it make sense) as teaching not numbers or thinking in school, but the science of learning, the science of problem-solving.
Historical Background to Constructivist Education
Constructivism begins in many ways with the attempt to apply scientific method t...