![]() ![]() ![]() Moreover, having an opportunity to explore the world actively seems to have direct benefits on interactions and learning. Many years of research following on Piaget’s original insights confirm the active, self-directed nature of childhood cognition ( Bruner 1973 Gopnik & Meltzoff 1997 Wellman & Gelman 1998). Just as Plato’s Meno argued for an intuitive grasp of the principles of geometry in the absence of any mathematical instruction, so too Piaget’s compelling example illustrates the intuitive logic and structure of the child’s untutored mind, attempting to organize experience into a coherent system. This humble yet remarkable example illustrates the power of self-directed discovery and learning. He discovered here what is known in mathematics as commutativity, that is, the sum is independent of the order.”( Piaget 1970)īy reorganizing, counting, and exploring– all self-directed, all derived from his own actions-the child apparently discerned basic mathematical laws. And no matter how he put the pebbles down, when he counted them, the number came to ten. He went around the circle in the other way and got ten again. He put the pebbles in a circle and counted them, and once again there were ten. Then, just for fun, he counted them from right to left to see what number he would get, and was astonished that he got ten again. “e lined them up in a row, counted them from left to right, and got ten. In a classic passage, Jean Piaget described a young child playing with pebbles and in so doing, discovering principles of mathematics: ![]()
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