ABSTRACT
During the late 1960s and 1970s, there was considerable interest in the Piagetian model of stepwise cognitive development. Educationalists used it both to seek explanations for the difficulties encountered by students in learning and as a basis for the design of more effective instruction (e.g. Karplus 1978; Lawson, Blake and Nordland 1975; Renner et al. 1976; Shayer 1978). At the same time, academic psychologists were questioning the mechanisms of cognitive development and both the construct and the empirical validity of domain-general stages proposed by the Genevan school (Brainerd 1978; Brown and Desforges 1979). This is not the place to review whether the change in fashion against the Genevan model was justified. We merely note our opinion that the British version of the critical position (Brown and Desforges 1979) was shown to be selective in its use of the literature and empirically unjustified (see Shayer 1979, and the reply by Desforges and Brown 1979). Whatever one’s position is in this debate, it is
relevant to recognize that the work reported here grew out of results obtained at Chelsea College, London, in the 1970s based on a broadly Piagetian paradigm.
