ABSTRACT
Case, like many neo-Piagetians, sought to illuminate the structure as well as the process of children’s thinking by combining some of the core concepts proposed in Piaget’s work with more current psychological paradigms such as the insights and methodologies offered by information processing and cognitive science. As mentioned in chapter 2, during the initial phase of his research activity he worked within the framework of Pascual-Leone’s theory of constructive operators (TCO; e.g., Case, 1974a; Case & Globerson, 1974), but subsequently he developed a theory that differs from the TCO in several important aspects. As his theorizing evolved, other perspectives were incorporated into the original framework, resulting in a general developmental theory of considerable range and explanatory power (Case, 1985, 1992c, 1998; Case & Okamoto, 1996). The purpose of this chapter is to provide an outline of the theory and an analysis of its current relevance.
