John Borland
TOH EEV LIU
Piagetian Module

Students often have difficulties with abstract concepts.  Often, rather than focusing on understanding a concept, they merely memorize the definition, assuming that will help them perform on a test or make a decent grade.  However, as we all know, when students merely memorize definitions, they are unlikely to be able to recognize examples of the concept, create their own example of the concept, or apply the concept in problem solving.  Based on your readings (and viewings) from this module and in particular, the work of Piaget and/or Vygotsky, what strategies might teachers use to help students understand difficult concepts?  And, how might teachers use technology to aid students in understanding difficult concepts.  Please refer specifically to the materials you studied in your answer to this question. In your response you should be sure to:

1. Specifically state several strategies that teachers might use to ensure students understand difficult concepts.
2. Provide specific ways that technology could be used to facilitate this process.
3. Support what you say in 1 and 2 by referring back (either paraphrasing or quoting directly) to some of the resources you read/viewed for this module

Some  Observations and Comments

A teacher may be well versed in teaching strategies and have all of the best materials available and be unsuccessful in reaching a majority of students in his class.  Teachers must be able to assess the level of cognitive development their pupils are at and know what type of abilities he/she needs in order to achieve a mastery level of understanding of the subject matter.
Piagets developmental stages should be consider when determining the scope and sequence of curriculum creation.   However I find that suggesting how science is taught in the primary grades to “describer thinking” rather than “explanatory thinking” as suggested by Peel (1964).  Learners can show elements of concrete and formal operational while classmates are exhibiting preoperational stage development.  My son who just turned five clearly exhibits development that would fall under the category of concrete operational development. Combinativity, reversibility and even elements of associativity are evident in his conversations and his strange math abilities which no one really taught him.  Piaget usually marks these at around an 11 year old development but rudimentary examples are common in some younger children.

Few tasks present more of a challenge than teaching grammar to seventh graders, many of whom have little prior knowledge of formal grammar lessons.  Creating a state of disequilibrium and/or “confronting” students with the illogic nature of his answers.  This may sound harsh on the surface but when assimilation fails disequilibrium ensues and the student will be forced to make accommodations in order to adapt. A recent classroom activity represents this to a certain degree.
After a recent weeks worth of lessons on nouns, and verbs I recently created a quiz in which students were to identify all of the nouns, pronouns and verbs in a sentence. The results were less than spectacular.  After returning their quizzes I revisited the parts of speech using PowerPoint presentations and inspiration documents that detailed how to identify the aforementioned parts of speech. 

I then used Quia.com to create a rather lengthy self-assessment tool. I created some pretty challenging grammar identification exercises that required careful consideration and a mastery level of understanding of the subject matter.  The students had access to notes, PowerPoint presentations, texts and the internet. 

The online quiz generator from Quia allows the teacher varying forms and degrees of feedback and therefore it can be used quite effectively as a way to create disequilibrium.

I created a quiz wherein the student once again had to identify nouns, pronouns or verbs respectively and type them in the order they appear in the sentence. Each question had multiple answers.  I chose only to provide students with a score but not with what they got wrong.  I allowed for an unlimited number of attempts over a two day period. 
I had the students take the quiz in class and then told them they could continue to take it at home until they received a grade they were satisfied with  Many students initial scores were poor and I watched as they struggled with the frustration of figuring out what they got wrong.  They began to ask questions and take out their text books to look up information, some of them searched for grammar tips on the internet all of which I deemed acceptable.

I am able to track when, how many times, and to what degree of success students completed the exam.  Over the course of a weekend some students took the quiz up to 15 times before receiving a perfect score.  It seems to me that in creating a state of disequilibrium allowing the computer to confront them with the error of their ways, motivation ensued.

It also allowed for a certain amount of experimentation and manipulation of materials using the internet, using texts, asking questions etc and re-inputting their answers, to gauge the results.  According to Duckworth (1964) Piaget states:
Good Pedagogy must involve presenting the child with situations in which he himself experiments…._ trying things out to see what happens, manipulating things, manipulating symbols, posing questions and seeking his own answers, reconciling what he finds one time with what he finds another, comparing his findings with those of other children. (p. 2)

The student scores on the final assessment for this unit were well above normal for former years.  I have begun to use this method as rule whenever applicable.