Piaget's genetic epistemology studies how the human mind moves from less sufficient to higher knowledge¶

Theory · All theories
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The book presents Piaget's genetic epistemology as the developmental backbone of constructivism: rather than justifying knowledge by timeless logic, it investigates how children build knowledge. Von Glasersfeld quotes Piaget's own formulation: "genetic epistemology deals with both the formation and the meaning of knowledge. We can formulate our problem in the following terms: by what means does the human mind go from a state of less sufficient knowledge to a state of higner knowledge?" The meaning or value of knowledge lies in its function, and adequacy is judged by logicians or domain specialists.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• A developmental approach that investigates how knowledge is built up in children rather than deriving it from timeless logic

Constraints¶

• The decision of what counts as higher knowledge has formal and normative aspects and is not for psychologists alone to determine

Target Learners¶

• children developing conceptual structures

Target Learning Objectives¶

• progression from less sufficient to higher, more adequate knowledge

Claims¶

Related Theories¶

• Constructivism
• Stages of Cognitive Development
• Piaget's model of a conceptual scaffolding of objects, space, time, and causality frames the construction of experiential reality
• Vico's principle that we can rationally know only what we ourselves have made as an early formulation of constructivism
• Trial constructivism as the root of constructivism (Piaget's personal constructivism)
• Constructivism learning theory: knowledge as assumption, learning as active construction, students as subjects, teachers as helpers
• Vygotsky's genetic method: studying higher psychological functions across four time scales

Examples¶

• Use conceptual-analysis methods to develop or modify the conceptual structures learners seem to have in their heads

Key Sources¶

• von Glasersfeld, E. (1995). Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning. Falmer Press. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED381352