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Piaget's theory and the teaching of arithmetic

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Conclusion

For centuries, education has been a folk art based on tradition and opinions called philosophies. With the advent of associationism and behaviourism, however, education began to enter a scientific era. Now that we have Piaget's constructivism—a more adequate scientific theory—it is time to change the way arithmetic is taught in elementary schools.

I hope educators and researchers in other countries will also experiment in classrooms to test the hypothesis that I tested. Because logico-mathematical knowledge is universal and the same in all cultures, I expect the same kinds of results in other countries.

Constructivist teaching is much harder than the teaching of algorithms and correcting of worksheets. However, in spite of this difficulty, an increasing number of teachers in the United States are becoming convinced of the truth of Piaget's constructivism. When these teachers encounter children's originality and intelligence that they have not observed before, they are truly overjoyed. Once they have seen the possibility that exists in each child, these teachers do not think of going back to their old ways of teaching.

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References

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  1. USA

    Constance Kamii

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  1. Constance Kamii
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Constance Kamii studied under Jean Piaget, Barbel Inhelder and Hermina Sinclair in the late 1960s and during the 1970s and subsequently developed a pre-school curriculum based on Piaget's theory. She later extended this work to mathematics education in the first three grades and is now working at the fourth and fifth grade level. She has taught at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the University of Geneva, and is now a professor of education at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, in the United States.

I am grateful to Janice K. Ewing for critically reading a draft of this paper and making helpful suggestions.

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Kamii, C. Piaget's theory and the teaching of arithmetic. Prospects 26, 99–111 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02195611

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