Piaget View on Learning

Introduction
Piaget views the development of thought as a staged cycle “from a concrete phenomenal view to an abstract constructionist view, from an active egocentric to a reflective internalized mode of knowing”(Piaget: 1970) the stages of thought development move from being two dimensional and simple to becoming able to perceive on a more abstract and complex plain. The development of thought is your process of learning, and in learning the concept of learning styles has been presented by Kolb in a manner that distinguishes four unique categories. The accommodator, diverger, converger and assimilator. (Nelson Mandela metropolitan university:2010) Each one having its own way of obtaining and processing newly acquired information and turning it into knowledge and skills.
Piagets theory
Piaget put forward the argument that development takes place before learning. His theory is that our mental schema works by taking what we perceive from interacting with our environment and applying that information into our perception. An example, take two children, one who enjoys playing with the pet dog and the other is afraid of dogs. Let the child who likes playing with the dog be Sam and the boy who dislikes dogs be Tom. Now when Sam sees a dog he associates it love and companionship. When Tom sees a dog he associates it with fear and aggression. What caused these two very different perceptions of the same animal is the mental schema the two have built around their witnesses and interactions with the animal. Sam’s first encounter was with a small furry puppy that would always want to play; Sam spent a lot of time with this puppy. Now Sam’s mental schema has filled the gaps regarding animals, he now thinks that all animals will react in the same way the dog behaved. Sam's view of animals for now is that they are harmless and just want to play. On the other hand Tim had a very different interaction, he never owned a pet and when his mother took him out for walk. Then a stray...