ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to present the elements of Piaget's Constructivist Theory of Learning that are most informative for early childhood educators, and is by no means exhaustive in its coverage of the breadth and depth of Piagetian theory as a whole. A constructivist classroom always has a healthy hum as teachers and children move about, interacting with each other and the materials provided. The core of Piaget's theory when addressing all types of development, social, moral, cognitive, or motor, is the notion of operations. In Piaget's words, operations are "active schemas constructed by the mind". One of the important implications of Piagetian theory is that logical operations cannot be memorized or taught in a direct way, but that is not to say that they are not learned. The ideas that Piaget proposed are actively evolving and adapting as researchers and practitioners discover more about the workings of the brain and its enormous capacity for creative, adaptive functioning.
