ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the work of Johann Pestalozzi and Friedrich Froebel form the foundation for revolutionary changes in education with object-teaching, thinking with the senses, cognitive perception, being connected to reality through manual dexterity actions. Cognitive perception and thinking with the senses increase the potential for perceptions, concepts and discovery in design and planning processes through manual or hands-on activities of symbolic objects. Object-teaching and object-learning represented a revolutionary change in European education in the late 1700s and early 1800s with the work of Swiss Pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Constructivism has a set of principles for instructors that mirror key principles in creative problem-solving. The chapter focuses on flexibility and provides an atmosphere suitable for creative experimentation and not simply competent resolutions. Play and play-skills provide a means of making sense of cultural identity, in the use of signs and symbolic objects to provide a way of mediating generalizations and patterns in cultural forces.
