Programs of Early Education: The Constructivist View

(Our purpose in this book is to present a perspective on early education that is informed by cognitive-developmental and constructivist theory. Through comparison of educational programs and approaches, we raise issues and questions about the relationship between psychological theories of mental development and educational practices.
EMPHASIS ON DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
Our effort to present a systematic philosophy of educational practice follows the work of John Dewey. Principally, however, our perspective leans on the epistemological and psychological theory of Jean Piaget because his is the most advanced scientific theory we have of mental development. This theory is our centerpiece because its acceptance in child psychology and educational psychology represents what Thomas Kuhn (1962), the historian and philosopher of science, calls a paradigm shift a fundamental change in a scientific community's way of thinking. It is a revolution usually due to an individual's breakthrough rather than the result of slow accumulations of knowledge. In child psychology, the work of Piaget's school represents a paradigm shift because it fundamentally altered our views of the child and the nature of mental development. The central theme of this paradigm is the view of the child as active in constructing not only knowledge but intelligence itself. This paradigm shift has occurred not only in the cognitive domain, but in the sociomoral domain as well. Our book summarizes efforts to extend this paradigm to the field of education, where it is no less revolutionary than in psychology)