Cognitive Development and School Readiness

Many of those who remain committed to Jean Piaget's cognitive developmental theory see important implications for our conceptions of readiness for formal aspects of school learning. The general principle of strong correlations between measures of cognitive development and school achievement is complemented by Piaget's proposal of a hierarchical sequence of four cognitive developmental stages: sensori-motor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages. In many Western school systems, the timing of the movement of children from the informal learning settings of kindergarten and pre-school to the first year of formal curriculum-based learning in primary or grade school coincides with the transition from pre-operational to concrete operational modes of thinking. Furthermore, the change in curriculum demands of theoretical mathematics, language, and science learning (for example) in high schools or secondary schools often occurs as students' minds are claimed to be in transition from concrete operational to formal operational thinking. However, whereas the timing of the school transitions is remarkably age-determined, the corresponding cognitive developmental transitions are merely age-related.

Three particularly important and widely implemented pedagogical outcomes of the study of cognitive developmental theory have been the play-based nature of preschool learning experiences, the hands-on approach to mathematics learning in the grade school years, and a problem-solving approach to high school science curricula. For almost two decades, two key U.S. journals, the Journal for Research Into Science Teaching and Science Education, were dominated by reports on the relationships between high school science learning and formal operational thinking. Researchers such as Anton Lawson, Warren Wollman, and Robert Karplus were foremost among researchers of that era. Although many would observe that the Piagetian influence in science education is well past its zenith in the United States, that is not the case in the United Kingdom, and that is certainly not the case for preschool education. The remarkable success of the team of Michael Shayer in the United Kingdom in applications to high school science pedagogy, in particular, and education in general, shows the benefit of theoretically informed long-term commitment. Preservice education of early years teachers remains under the sway of the Piagetian oeuvre and the early influence of Constance Kamii has been continued by others, such as Rheta Devries and Betty Zan.