Piaget in Action : Critical Exploration in the University Classroom

This paper presents the results of a case study conducted in a university course at Harvard Graduate School of Education during Fall term 2009. The four credit course, "Teaching and Learning: 'The Having of Wonderful Ideas'," which was developed and conducted by professor Eleanor Duckworth, belongs to the core courses of the school's Learning and Teaching Ed.M. program. The course was designed to develop students' ability to engage different people's minds in thinking about subject matter and to learn how to make sense of how their learners are thinking about that material. Situations where teachers keep learners connected to the subject matter and listen while learners do the sense-making and explaining are continually enacted and explored.
The aim of the case study was to gain first-hand knowledge of how an expert instructor in the field of education designs a learning environment that engages education students in this type of experience and exploration. Duckworth's pedagogical approach is based on a Freirean commitment to valuing the learners' experiences and insights and is rooted in the studies of Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder and their clinical method. Duckworth often places her student teachers in the role of the student in the learning process. Rather than starting from pre-established meanings, students attempt to establish meanings that build upon their own understandings and so hold true for themselves. Sometimes this is an individual enterprise; often, it is a collective one. Duckworth believes that, in order to foster deep learning among an increasingly diverse student population, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects as well as the institutional context shaped by the socio-economic, technological and political environment need to be taken into account to design innovative and effective learning environments. Such a curriculum and pedagogy also allows for more democratic structures and processes that can mitigate socio-economic as well as cultural inequalities.
This paper outlines the curricular and pedagogical implications for the design of exploratory learning environments investigated through participant observation/videotaping, interviews with students and the instructor, and document analysis (syllabus, classroom materials, course evaluations)