1

Physical knowledge in preschool education:

implications of Piaget's theory

Literacy before Schooling. Authors:

Ferreiro, Emilia; Teberosky, Ana

he reflections and theses on preschool children's literacy development presented in this book are
the result of an experimental project carried out in Buenos Aires from 1974 to 1976. Chapter 1
discusses the educational situation in Latin America, traditional methods of reading instruction,
contemporary psycholinguistics, the pertinence of Piaget's theory, and general characteristics of
the research. Chapter 2 examines formal aspects of the graphic system and their interpretation,
and chapter 3, "Reading with Pictures," explores the relationship between print and picture.
Chapter 4 deals with reading without pictures and interpreting the parts of a text; chapter 5
discusses reading acts young children witness, including their understanding of oral and silent
reading; and chapter 6 considers the evolution of writing, from preschool writing to the writing
of school children. Chapter 7 deals with dialect variations, reading, and the ideological content of
typical basal readers. The final chapter discusses problems, precautions, pedagogical
consequences, historical solutions, and theoretical implications. (EL) Abstractor:

N/A Reference Count:

0
Note:
Original title: "Los Sistemas de escriture en el desarrollo del nino." Translated by Karen
Goodman Castro; Preface by Yetta Goodman. Identifiers:
Piagetian Theory

einemann Educational Books Inc., 70 Court St., Portsmouth, NH 03801 ($12.50). Publication Date:
1982-00-00

preschool education, education during the earliest phases of childhood, beginning in infancy
and ending upon entry into primary school at about five, six, or seven years of age (the age
varying from country to country).

The institutional arrangements for preschool education vary widely around the world, as do the
names applied to the institutions. The terms usually given to centres for the care of infants—
those in the first phase of childhood (about three months to three years of age)—are infant
school, day care, day nursery, and crèche—the term crèche being used not only in French-
speaking countries but also in such places as Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, Poland, Russia,
and Israel. For the second phase of early childhood, other institutional names and arrangements
 2

exist, the most common being the “maternal school” (école maternelle), or nursery school, and
the kindergarten. Typically, the maternal school (for ages three to four or five) precedes
kindergarten (for ages four or five to six), but in some countries—Italy, for instance—a child
goes from the maternal directly to the primary school. In Germany, in addition to the
Kindergarten, there is the Schulkindergarten (school kindergarten), which is for children of
school age who are not considered sufficiently mature and which therefore serves as a kind of
preparatory school for primary school. In the United States, kindergarten is considered a part of
primary education.

History

The name usually associated with the initiation of early childhood education in modern times is
Johann Friedrich Oberlin, an Alsatian Lutheran pastor in Waldersbach, who founded in 1767 the
first salle d’asile (literally, “hall of refuge”), or infant school, for the care and instruction of very
small children while their parents worked in the fields. Other educators began imitating his infant
school—in Lippe-Detmold, Berlin, Kaiserswerth, Paris, and elsewhere. In France, the salles
d’asile changed from private to state-supported institutions in 1833 when they were made part of
the national educational system. Later, their name was officially changed to écoles maternelles.

Seemingly independently of the infant-school movement on the European continent, the Scottish
reformer Robert Owen in 1816 founded in his model community New Lanark an Institute for the
Formation of Character. It served approximately 100 children of the workers in his cotton mills,
mostly from 18 months to 10 years of age; and there were separate infant classes for 2- to 5-year-
olds, who spent half their time in instruction and half in recreatio

LEADERSHIP THEORIES APPLICABLE TO EARLY CHILD EDUCATIONAL

SETTINGS
There are many theories of leadership applied in early childhood
educational settings , some more appropriate than others . This essay
outlines the transformational theory of leadership justifying why it is
appropriate to use in educational settings and discussing issues
including what impact the application of the transformational theory of
leadership will have on children and staff . The paper refers to
management and leadership and to recent peer-reviewed journal articles
and published research in order to discuss transformational leadership .
In ``Transformational Leadership (2000 ) Dr John Hinchcliff states that
the word transformation itself means to make a difference . He says that
this all means that our approach to dilemmas requires that we encourage
ourselves to learn to see things in different ways . We must learn new
ways of thinking to solve new problems . Einstein said "We will not use
the same thinking to solve the problem that we used to create the
problem " Therefore an outline of Transformational Leadership in
education is that leaders must make a difference , and that the current
problems in education can 't be solved by using age old methods - change
is required . Leaders recognize that organizations must continually
 3

adapt to meet changing needs and circumstance . The astute leader will
anticipate and see opportunities for change instead of sticking to a
situation that no longer works (Humphries and Senden , 2000 . This is
why it is the appropriate theory to use in educational settings ,
particularly in Australian education .
Australian Early Childhood Education Settings cater for children from
six weeks until eight years of age and encompass childcare centres ,
preschool and primary school environments . Leadership in educational
settings is a crowded and busy terrain (Gunter , 2001 . What effects
flow from quality leadership , such as staff retention , to quality child
care and what impacts do these have on children , parents , staff and the
wider community ?
The use of transformational leadership in the field of childcare would
greatly assist in the reduction of staff turnover . Turnover contributes
to poor-quality services for children and families , and can have serious
deleterious effects on children 's development and adjustment .
Hale-Jincks , Knopf and Kempl , 2006 , state this in their publication
``Tackling Teacher Turnover in Childcare : Understanding Causes and
Consequences , identifying solutions . The article likens the impact of
teacher turnover on children to that of divorce , and states that effects
on children are very detrimental .
Hale-Jincks , Knopf and Kempl go on to recommend the following or
leadership transformations : Enhance administrative support , effective
communication , match caregivers to desired teaching assignments , staff
rooms equipped with comfortable furniture and entertainment and
increasing caregiver compensation programs . Other interventions are
also appropriate .
Child care workers should have opportunities to move up the career
ladder and should have chance to increase training - leaders should
make this more accessible (Hale-Jincks , Knopf and Kempl , 2006 . The
transformational leader would make training easily accessible to his
staff , in the knowledge that the better trained the staff member is , the
better impact that staff member would have upon children and...

With Friedrich Froebel, the German founder of the kindergarten, there arose the first systematic
theory of early childhood pedagogy: instead of considering early schooling a form of babysitting
or social philanthropy or considering it merely a period of preparation for adult roles, Froebel
saw early childhood development as a special phase during which the child expresses himself
through play. Child’s play was a process of discovery and recognition that educated the child to
the unity, as well as the diversity, of things in nature. These educational premises guided
Froebel’s pedagogical institute at Keilhau (founded in 1816), but it was not until 1837 at nearby
Bad Blankenburg that he opened his first infant school, which he later called a Kindergarten, or
 4

“garden for children.” There he devised a collection of geometric playthings (or “gifts,” as he
called them) and various exercises or occupations, such as folding, cutting, and weaving, to make
the symbolic forms real or dynamic for the child. Froebel believed that the young child learned
best not through formal instruction but through play and imitation, “self-activity.” Within 25
years after Froebel’s death in 1852, kindergartens were founded in leading cities in Austria,
Belgium, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and
the United States. (See kindergarten.)

In 1892 in Italy, the Agazzi sisters, Rosa and Carolina, initiated a blending of Aporti’s infant
school and Froebel’s kindergarten and produced a prototypical Italian maternal school (scuola
materna). In the school the children were induced<script
src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/addyn/3.0/5308.1/1388669/0/170/ADTECH;target=_blank;gr
p=558;key=false;kvqsegs=;kvtopicid=475107;misc=1297494777277"></script> to become
collaborators in the search for the instruments of their own education—seeking realia (objects
from real life) as well as Froebelian symbolic objects to examine.

Similarly concerned with nurturing or favourably exploiting the young child’s natural impulses
—in a safeguarded, constructive way—was one of the most famous figures in preschool
education, Maria Montessori, who began her studies of educational problems with culturally
deprived and mentally deficient children in 1899, when she became director of the Orthophrenic
School, in Rome. Because her methods worked with defective children, she felt that they might
yield even better results with normal children. Thus, in 1907 she took under her care 60 children,
aged three to six, from the slums of the San Lorenzo quarter of Rome and thus inaugurated her
first Casa dei Bambini (Children’s House). Individual initiative and self-direction characterized
the Montessori philosophy, and thus the teacher was to withdraw to the background and merely
supervise the use of “didactic materials,” a large complex of educational tools that Montessori
herself developed—such as lacing frames, number rods to develop concepts of numbers, map
puzzles, and sandpaper letters that children were to trace with their fingers. Also, although
usually each child worked alone, group or social activity was not ignored, for there were group
gymnastics, games, and religious exercises; and social manners were taught in serving meals,
waiting on tables, and the like. The children learned to read, write, and count and to express
themselves artistically.

The name usually associated with the initiation of early childhood education in modern times is
Johann Friedrich Oberlin, an Alsatian Lutheran pastor in Waldersbach, who founded in 1767 the
first salle d’asile (literally, “hall of refuge”), or infant school, for the care and instruction of very
small children while their parents worked in the fields. Other educators began imitating his infant
school—in Lippe-Detmold, Berlin, Kaiserswerth, Paris, and elsewhere. In France, the salles
d’asile changed from private to state-supported institutions in 1833 when they were made part of
the national educational system. Later, their name was officially changed to écoles maternelles.

Seemingly independently of the infant-school movement on the European continent, the Scottish
reformer Robert Owen in 1816 founded in his model community New Lanark an Institute for the
Formation of Character. It served approximately 100 children of the workers in his cotton mills,
 5

mostly from 18 months to 10 years of age; and there were separate infant classes for 2- to 5-year-
olds, who spent half their time in instruction and half in recreation.

The success of the New Lanark school led<script

src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/addyn/3.0/5308.1/1388675/0/170/ADTECH;target=_blank;gr
p=214;key=false;kvqsegs=;kvtopicid=475107;misc=1297495208917"></script> to the
establishment of England’s first infant school in London in 1818. Set up by the man who had
directed Owen’s institute, James Buchanan, it cared for children aged one to six years.
According to contemporary accounts, Buchanan brought to London the methods that he had
evolved at New Lanark:

He began with simple gymnastic movements, arm exercises, clapping the hands, and counting
the movements. Viva voce lessons followed, arithmetical tables, etc. … Watt’s Divine and Moral
Songs and similar hymns soon followed, and the children never tired of singing them to the
accompaniment of his flute. He also gave the little people simple object lessons in which they
did most of the talking, and learned to observe and describe.

Buchanan’s school was imitated by others, notably by the British educator Samuel Wilderspin,
who wrote some of the earliest and most widely disseminated monographs on infant education.

In Italy a Roman Catholic father, Ferrante Aporti, read a translated work by Wilderspin and, as a
result, established Italy’s first infant school in Cremona in 1829 and devised an educational plan
that aimed at a harmonious combination of moral, intellectual, and physical education. Manual
work, at all educational ages, was to give education a certain concreteness and rationality,
making it a process of pupil involvement; the very young were to start off becoming accustomed
to discipline, friendly cooperation, and piety.

With Friedrich Froebel, the German founder of the kindergarten, there arose the first systematic
theory of early childhood pedagogy: instead of considering early schooling a form of babysitting
or social philanthropy or considering it merely a period of preparation for adult roles, Froebel
saw early childhood development as a special phase during which the child expresses himself
through play. Child’s play was a process of discovery and recognition that educated the child to
the unity, as well as the diversity, of things in nature. These educational premises guided
Froebel’s pedagogical institute at Keilhau (founded in 1816), but it was not until 1837 at nearby
Bad Blankenburg that he opened his first infant school, which he later called a Kindergarten, or
“garden for children.” There he devised a collection of geometric playthings (or “gifts,” as he
called them) and various exercises or occupations, such as folding, cutting, and weaving, to make
the symbolic forms real or dynamic for the child. Froebel believed that the young child learned
best not through formal instruction but through play and imitation, “self-activity.” Within 25
years after Froebel’s death in 1852, kindergartens were founded in leading cities in Austria,
Belgium, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and
the United States. (See kindergarten.)

In 1892 in Italy, the Agazzi sisters, Rosa and Carolina, initiated a blending of Aporti’s infant
school and Froebel’s kindergarten and produced a prototypical Italian maternal school (scuola
materna). In the school the children were induced<script
 6

src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/addyn/3.0/5308.1/1388669/0/170/ADTECH;target=_blank;gr
p=214;key=false;kvqsegs=;kvtopicid=475107;misc=1297495208928"></script> to become
collaborators in the search for the instruments of their own education—seeking realia (objects
from real life) as well as Froebelian symbolic objects to examine.

Similarly concerned with nurturing or favourably exploiting the young child’s natural impulses
—in a safeguarded, constructive way—was one of the most famous figures in preschool
education, Maria Montessori, who began her studies of educational problems with culturally
deprived and mentally deficient children in 1899, when she became director of the Orthophrenic
School, in Rome. Because her methods worked with defective children, she felt that they might
yield even better results with normal children. Thus, in 1907 she took under her care 60 children,
aged three to six, from the slums of the San Lorenzo quarter of Rome and thus inaugurated her
first Casa dei Bambini (Children’s House). Individual initiative and self-direction characterized
the Montessori philosophy, and thus the teacher was to withdraw to the background and merely
supervise the use of “didactic materials,” a large complex of educational tools that Montessori
herself developed—such as lacing frames, number rods to develop concepts of numbers, map
puzzles, and sandpaper letters that children were to trace with their fingers. Also, although
usually each child worked alone, group or social activity was not ignored, for there were group
gymnastics, games, and religious exercises; and social manners were taught in serving meals,
waiting on tables, and the like. The children learned to read, write, and count and to express
themselves artistically.

Across Europe, in Belgium, meanwhile, another doctor of medicine, Ovide Decroly, was
pioneering in the education of the very young, also proceeding from the psychological study of
abnormal or exceptional children. In 1907 he opened his École de l’Ermitage (School of the
Hermitage) near Brussels. Unlike Montessori’s children, however, Decroly’s children worked in
groups, and, like the Agazzis’ children, they worked with real things drawn from everyday life.
His educational system was based on three processes: observation, expression (oral, written,
manual, or artistic), and association of space and time. He felt the universal needs of the child to
be food, protection against danger, endurance for the frustrations of life, work, play, self-
evaluation, and self-discipline.

Across the channel in Great Britain were two pioneers in the movement to improve the health
and environment of the very young: Grace Owen and Margaret McMillan. Both saw the nursery
school as a place for fostering health and physical development (prerequisites to any other kind
of<script
src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/addyn/3.0/5308.1/1388671/0/170/ADTECH;target=_blank;gr
p=214;key=false;kvqsegs=;kvtopicid=475107;misc=1297495208941"></script> development)
and as a place that should be an extension of the home. Owen wanted every housing
development to have a nursery school, where children of various ages would constitute a group
resembling a large family and where play would facilitate socialization. McMillan outlined a
plan for a three-year course for training teachers for the nursery schools, maintaining that only
trained personnel should work with children from three to six years of age. Training centres at
Manchester (under Owen), at Deptford (under McMillan), and at London supplied nursery
teachers for the entire British Commonwealth as well as for the early nursery schools in the
United States.
 7

The first decade of the 20th century saw the start of what might be called “collective”
upbringing. In what was then Palestine the new settlers established kibbutzim, in which were
established separate homes for the children in order to free the mothers to work in the commune.
As the system has now evolved, all children of a kibbutz from birth to one year remain in an
“infant house,” cared for by a meṭapelet (upbringer) in charge of four or five babies. During the
nursing stage mothers feed their babies in the infant house. The “toddler house,” containing
about eight children one to three or four years old, emphasizes socialization. All children visit
home daily for a few hours. In the next stage, kindergarten, the child three or four to seven years
old is under the care of a teacher and her three assistants (meṭapelet). The aim of this period is
readiness for the first grade.

Another variety of collective preschool education is found in Russia, where crèches and
kindergartens (detskiye sady and yasli) were inaugurated about 1919, partly through the
persuasions of N.K. Krupskaya (Vladimir I. Lenin’s wife), who viewed preschool education as
the first step in creating a new Soviet citizen. Today, children are placed in the crèches
(voluntarily) from two months until three years of age; these crèches are under the jurisdiction of
the Ministry of Health. The kindergarten, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education,
accepts children three to seven years old. All teaching materials used are didactic. The
socialization process, respect for authority, and the subordination of individual needs to those of
the collective are stressed. Self-discipline and self-reliance are key teaching objectives.

Modern theories

The proliferation of nursery schools and other institutions of preschool education in the 20th
century can be traced<script
src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/addyn/3.0/5308.1/1371336/0/170/ADTECH;target=_blank;gr
p=214;key=false;kvqsegs=;kvtopicid=475107;kvchannel=HISTORY;misc=1297495192690"></
script> to a number of developments: (1) a new scientific interest in early childhood, resulting
from applications in the fields of psychology, medicine, psychiatry, and education; (2)
recognition of the importance of child guidance and parent education; and (3) the efforts of
individuals and agencies to improve the educational programs of day nurseries already
established for the care of children of working mothers. Because the nursery school movement
has sprung from such a variety of social forces, no one type of school may be described as
representative of the movement. Nevertheless, it is profitable to consider a few modern views of
early childhood education.

One major contribution has been the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget and his followers,
who are convinced that children advance through rather regular stages of intellectual
development. The first two periods—sensorimotor intelligence (from birth until age two) as well
as representative intelligence (from two to seven or eight)—relate to the field of early childhood.
In the first stage (sensorimotor) the child learns to use his muscles and senses to deal with
external objects and events while his language begins to form. He also begins to deal with and
know that things exist even if they are beyond his sight and touch. He also starts to “symbolize”
(represent things by word or gesture). In the second stage the child experiences the greatest
language growth; words and other symbols become a way to represent both the outside world
and inner feelings. At this stage the child’s adjustments depend on learning by trial and error, but
 8

he also manages things by intuition. He begins to integrate symbolization and elementary types
of relationships, such as logical and mathematical relationships (grouping, sizes, quantities, and
qualities) and spatial and temporal relationships. Piaget’s theory laid the groundwork for
recognizing the importance of cognitive learning processes and concept formation in the young
child. Piaget also stressed the importance of an environment conducive to learning the necessary
skills.

One of the major concerns of nursery schools and kindergartens is language development. Most
investigators agree that true speech starts when the child begins to develop meaningful
associations with the words he uses (an infant who imitates the word mama without
understanding its meaning is not engaging in true speech). For a child between two and six, oral
speech is a major task, involving both expression and comprehension. By about the age of four
he has mastered the fundamentals<script
src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/addyn/3.0/5308.1/1388674/0/170/ADTECH;target=_blank;gr
p=214;key=false;kvqsegs=;kvtopicid=475107;kvchannel=HISTORY;misc=1297495192700"></
script> of the systematic grammar of his language. By the age of six the average child has
increased his vocabulary to about 2,500 words or so—depending on the quality of his
environment, and particularly the willingness of adults to relate to the child. Many studies show
that the very young child in an impersonal institution, such as an orphanage, generally lags in
language development behind children of the same age in a normal family setting. One of the
many tasks of early childhood education is to provide training in elementary language skills for
all children, but especially for those who need compensatory work. To improve their
comprehension and speech, there are listening and language games. Educators who find
educational games a successful teaching device claim that they stimulate the child’s interest in
learning.

LINKS

Year in Review

About Theory of Art Related to Children

By Amie Comeau, eHow Contributor

Read more: About Theory of Art Related to Children | eHow.com

http://www.ehow.com/facts_5787105_theory-art-related-children.html#ixzz1DjBPcEbz

When teaching an arts education, the curriculum must adapt to meet the needs of students at any
stage of development. Theories of art education develop applied curriculum. An applied learning
of the arts promotes multicultural integration related to children.
 9

Student Engagement

1.

Learning environments have a strong affect on creative expression.

The Montessori method is a theory of art that allows the student to engage in
an activity based on her interest. Organic engagement is particularly
effective when working with children.

Arts Curriculum

2. The educator needs to provide a curriculum that evolves as children progress

into their own projects. The creative process has unlimited capacity for
engagement related to children.

Dynamic Application

3.

Building science models for presentation integrates art with science.

Art projects apply to other subject matters, such as teaching math through
music, history through drama and science through model-making.

Read more: About Theory of Art Related to Children | eHow.com

http://www.ehow.com/facts_5787105_theory-art-related-
children.html#ixzz1DjBXk4Di
 10

Child Development Theories

Major Theories of Child Development

By Kendra Cherry, About.com Guide

See More About:

• child development
• developmental psychology

Numerous theories of child development have been proposed by psychologists, including

cognitive, psychoanalytic, and behavioral theories.

Child development that occurs from birth to adulthood was largely ignored throughout
much of history. Children were often viewed simply as small versions of adults and little
attention was paid to the many advances in cognitive abilities, language usage, and physical
growth. Interest in the field of child development began early in the 20th-century and tended to
focus on abnormal behavior.

The following are just a few of the many child development theories that have been proposed by
theorists and researchers. More recent theories outline the developmental stages of children and
identify the typical ages at which these growth milestones occur.

Psychoanalytic Child Development Theories

Sigmund Freud

The theories proposed by Sigmund Freud stressed the importance of childhood events and
experiences, but almost exclusively focused on mental disorders rather that normal functioning.

According to Freud, child development is described as a series of 'psychosexual stages.' In

"Three Essays on Sexuality" (1915), Freud outlined these stages as oral, anal, phallic, latency
 11

and genital. Each stage involves the satisfaction of a libidinal desire and can later play a role in
adult personality. Learn more in this article on Freud’s stages of psychosexual development.

Erik Erikson

Theorist Erik Erikson also proposed a stage theory of development, but his theory encompassed
development throughout the human lifespan. Erikson believed that each stage of development
was focused on overcoming a conflict. Success or failure in dealing with conflicts can impact
overall functioning. Learn more about this theory in this article on Erikson’s stages of
psychosocial development.

Cognitive Child Development Theories

Theorist Jean Piaget suggested that children think differently than adults and proposed a stage
theory of cognitive development. He was the first to note that children play an active role in
gaining knowledge of the world. Learn more in this article on Piaget’s stages of cognitive
development.

Behavioral Child Development Theories

Behavioral theories of child development focus on how environmental interaction influences

behavior and are based upon the theories of theorists such as John B. Watson, Ivan Pavlov and B.
F. Skinner. These theories deal only with observable behaviors. Development is considered a
reaction to rewards, punishments, stimuli and reinforcement. Learn more about these behavioral
theories in these articles on classical conditioning and operant conditioning.

Social Child Development Theories

There is a great deal of research on the social development of children. John Bowbly proposed
one of the earliest theories of social development. Bowlby believed that early relationships with
caregivers play a major role in child development and continue to influence social relationships
throughout life. Learn more in this overview of attachment theory.