Teaching for understanding

Abstract

Through the 1950s and 1960s it was fairly commonplace to see practical equipment in nursery and infant classrooms. Equipment was much less in evidence in junior classrooms. In 1952, Caleb Gattegno made the first English translation of Piaget’s The Child’s Conception of Number. Piaget’s theories that learning takes place through interaction with the environment, led to some bizarre classroom practices, which continued for a while, and which Piaget himself might well have disowned. Gattegno had met George Cuisenaire in a Belgian school, encouraging him to publicise the use of the little coloured wooden rods that he had developed for his children, to support the study of number.Attention to the learning process led to the development of what we now know as constructivist theories of learning. Piaget’s biological perspective of the individual’s learning process was later challenged by the translation of Vygotsky’s work into English, the promotion of Vygotsky’s social constructivist ideas by Jerome Bruner and others and by important theoretical and observational research by Margaret Donaldson, Martin Hughes and others at Edinburgh University.