3.1 Theories of Learning and Famous Learning Theorists
3.1.3 Constructivism Learning Theory
3.1.3.1 Piaget (1971)
Jean Piaget (1971), recognised as one of the ‘fathers’ of the constructionist movement, focus on how individuals make sense of the communication between their practices and their thoughts.
He focused on the development of human beings in what is happening with a person as unique from the development guided by other persons. Piaget (1971), positions the constructivism camps on individual cognitive structures which centres on the reaction of a person, and his or her experience and the progress through which he or she understands the process. Cognitive constructivism emphasises the development of meaningful learning by focussing on the cognitive process that takes place within individuals. The proximal locus of cognitive development reflects that understanding is to invent (McLeod, 2018). For example, individual children construct knowledge through their actions in the world. In my study, graduates reported that during their internship, they manipulated objects/ideas (tools, equipment, and machines), inventing/reinventing knowledge through interaction with supervisors and other employees in a work environment. The supervisors provided an environment that encouraged interns to interact and ask probing questions. I regard the learner as dynamic and graduates in the ICT working on computers made available new learning opportunities. From a constructivist viewpoint, the training of supervisors represented a basic strategy in the restructuring of curricula on psycho- pedagogic training programmes. As a result, I perceive a greater professional effect of Piaget's (1952)’s theory on current practice focusing on active, hands-on learning. The constructivist theory holds that learners are active receivers of ability but are brighter in the procedure (Piaget,
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1952). They are more active in creating meaning and knowledge, and this directs to a student- centred approach in which the student guides his/her learning. Technologies (computers) helped shape knowledge theories, which engage the graduates further and make sure of important and flexible learning. Nanjappa and Grant (2003), find that graduates’ work as inventors. They use technology for interpreting and organising the know-how that they offer to other persons. Piaget's (1952)’s theory refers to constructivist influences on learning concepts and other educational approaches. There are mixed results from this theory with the above authors supporting these techniques while others were against the theory.
Piaget believes that intelligence is absent at birth, not hereditary for the individual because of the way children model and understand the world around them. The theory of cognitive development of Piaget (1936) draws on how experience shapes intelligence. Children have divergences between their previous knowledge and what they discover in their surroundings and then adapt to their thoughts (McLeod, 2015). Efforts in the fundamental interaction between the person and his or her natural world create intelligence (Kolb, 1984). Piaget (1936), in his studies, shows that action is the key for infants and adolescents as they applied this action to fulfil with their immediate concrete environment. They operate by abstract thinking, which is coherent, with the power to interpret symbols. As a result, growing up children, in their approach, knows how to transfer stages that are being identified (Singer-Freeman, 2006). The changes move from a stage, in which knowledge takes place, succeeds and form part of the experiences that caused it, to a symbolic level. At this phase, knowledge includes iconic mental representation (image). The images have a self-directed position from the experiences, and they form two phases of concrete experience and in accord with stable forms of operations (Kolb, 1984). Piaget's (1936)’s model of Learning and Cognitive Development makes up these essential developmental processes. The researcher will use this theory to understand the stages in which graduates gain learning experiences in the workshop during the internship.
I consider learners in adulthood as children. Many adults have understood the many constructs but could not carry them into real-world positions, hence impeding them from forming associations with other aims or ideas. Experiential learning furnishes an occasion for adults to
"learn through discovery." In my research, I provided graduates with the opportunity of engaging in complex problem-based learning when they took earlier cognition and formed links to the practice they were engaged in. They formed products that may not occur, the end product in a
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concluding answer, but gave them to practice and came up with fresh ideas and the capacity for rational thought.
Piaget’s cognitive theory comprises three essential units: ideas or schemas, the adaptation that changes the passage from one phase to another, and the steps of cognitive development. The essential part of learning originates in the frequent interaction of the mental operation of a change of ideas or an internal representation of the world to go through in the environment. It assimilates events or experiences from the environment, converting them into ideas or schemas which form the purest and most significant form of units of such knowledgeable examples. This allows us to build a presentation to the mind in the form of an idea or image of the environment. Piaget (1952:
7) defines a schema as “a repeatable action sequence, having unit actions that are interconnected and governed by a core meaning.” Piaget (1952) considers the schema as units of intelligent behaviour, a means of organising knowledge. The schema is in the cognitive stage of development and comprises objects, actions, and abstract ideas. An individual uses the schema, a set of mental representations of the world, to understand and to react to the combination of circumstances at a time. A person stores these mental images and applies them when needed, for example, a person who has a schema of having food in a restaurant. The schema is in the person’s mind kept as a pattern of behaviour, laid aside for future use. The pattern comprises selecting a plate from the menu list, ordering food, consuming it, and paying the bill. A “script” is the name given to a similar schema when the person recalls from memory and applies it when needed to a position.
Piaget (1936) suggests four stages of cognitive development. First, the sensorimotor stage (or on the sensory and motor coordination of an organism or the controlling nerves) starting from birth to age 2. Second, the pre-operational stage, in which children guess and discover words and pictures (language), from age 2 to 7 years. Third, the concrete operation stage (children imagine concrete results) from age 7 to age 11. Fourth, the formal operational stage (the teen or a young developed person from maturity onward considers in abstract terms and argue on the conjectural matter) from age 11 to adulthood. All children experience the stages in the same order but may advance through the stages at their own pace. Some children may never arrive at the later stages.
Critics of Piaget’s experiential learning include Dasen (1994) who argues that Piaget did not look at the effect of social settings and culture influencing cognitive development. Hughes (1975) considers that Piaget leaves something undone when he does not notice what a child is
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doing (competence) and what a child can show when given a specific task (performance). Other researchers have questioned the generalisability of Piaget’s data because his sample was a combination of his children and his colleagues’ children. The sample was not insignificant, but children coming from high socioeconomic status families in Europe framed it.
Piaget's (1936)'s theory of learning and cognitive development proposes a learning theory as a model, a unifying move towards education that covers the experience, opinion, understanding, and behaviour. Piaget’s theory involves the experience, idea, reflection, and action, which form the first continuous non-spatial whole for developing the graduates’ thoughts (Kolb, 1984).
Applying Piaget’s theory of learning, this study addresses the graduates' progress during the internship.