ABSTRACT
There was an enthusiasm at that time founded on the belief that, at last, we had found the means to send thinking to school, to paraphrase the title of the Furth and Wachs’s (1975) book. Piagetian theory has been considered particularly appropriate to direct education in two important respects: (a) the development of new teaching methods that would capitalize on the exploratory and inventive activities of the child himself; (b) the strengthening of the teaching of specific school courses, particularly in science and mathematics, by cultivating and consolidating the basic thought structures of scientific and mathematical thinking.
