Re-programming Piaget: A Developmental Look at ICT

and 21st Century Learning

Society for Information Techonology & Teacher Education Conference 2006
Dr. John Cuthell MirandaNet UK
Mechelle De Craene MirandaNet USA

Abstract:
This paper examines ways in which children and other learners acquire the skills and concepts
of ICT. Progress is detailed in terms of motor skills leading to co-ordination of schemas;
familiarization with the Graphical User Interface, its symbols and semiotics; basic operator skills;
integration of skills and task needs; and, finally, subordination of the technology to the needs and
creativity of the user, so that, in the words of Clynes and Kline describing cyborgs, routine checks
and monitoring are undertaken automatically, so that the human would be free to create, think,
feel and explore (Clynes and Kline, 1960). The writers have matched detailed observation of
learners using ICT to developmental frameworks, and have produced a hypothesis-in-progress
based on Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory. It is provisionally entitled Cybernetic
Developmental Theory, a techno-topography of technology skills from a Piagetian developmental
perspective.

Proposal
The background of many teachers in the past thirty years has been based on the concept of
developmental stages in learning (Piaget, 1958). This posits three main stages through which
the learner must pass - sensori-motor, concrete and iconic - before anything of significance
can be produced. Bruner’s stages of learning assume a similar progression (Bruner, 1966;
1974). Much of the pedagogical culture of schools (and teacher ideology) is loosely based on a
conflation of these stages and ‘developmental readiness’. Teacher input, student practice and
application (or transfer) are often assumed to be the appropriate model for student learning. The
education system itself, with its primary - secondary - tertiary divides, and the ways in which
educational resources are allocated, provides the material base for this superstructure.

Learners with access to computers have established a different material base. The speed and
capability of machines, with their ‘Point and Click’ ostensiveness, templates and wizards, have
usurped their teachers’ paradigm. Learners practise the skills and concepts whilst applying them:
where input or explanation is necessary the task will be suspended. The Help facility, a magazine
article or a conversation with a friend should resolve the problem. Only rarely will the student
consult the user manual.
To the thesis of Stages of Learning there is now an antithesis: There Are No Mistakes. The
alterations in the task are part of the learning. Students use Edit: Undo; Edit: Clear or Exit: Don’t
Save. The process is auto-didactic.

The ‘developmental folk myth’ which informs many teachers’ praxis based upon the
popularisation of Piagetian theory, expects learners to pass through a series of stages, each
predicating its successor. This praxis contains two pillars of received wisdom: learner readiness,
and stage competence. What this means for students is that, first, they are not expected to
be able to cope with concepts and applications which have been determined to lie outside the
bounds of their developmental stage: second, that each stage needs to be consolidated by
practice.

Much of Piaget’s research took as its focus the growth of mathematical and scientific concepts.
Children’s ability to understand the tasks that they were set, and to explain them in appropriate
terms, was taken as a demonstration of their competence: the language encoded the ‘scientific’
expectations imposed on the children. The methodology and findings have been questioned by
a number of researchers (Donaldson, 1978; Gardner, 1983, 1993; Seigel and Brainerd, 1978) but
the original thesis still retains its power over pedagogy, teacher attitudes and the curriculum for
schools.

Twenty-first century contexts call for 21st Century concepts. These developmental models can
be adapted to fir the needs of 21st Century citizens and learners. It means that it’s time to update
our developmental models to fit the needs of the 21 Century learners by inviting Piaget into
our classrooms. Piaget himself once said that, “the current state of knowledge is a movement
in history, changing just as rapidly as the state of knowledge in the past has ever changed,
and in many instances, more rapidly.” Thus, the movement is here and our time to seize it.
Consequently, our developmental frameworks of today must evolve to embrace the technologies
of tomorrow.

Piaget observed his children to glean valuable information regarding development. The
researchers have similarly observed children, young people and other learners to examine
the ways in which they relate to technology. It is our contention that Piaget provides an ideal
framework to understand the ways in which individuals approach technology.

This hypothesis-in-progress is based on Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory (CDT). It has

provisionally been titled the Cybernetic Developmental Theory. It is a techno-topography, of sorts,
explaining how technology skills can be viewed from a developmental perspective, in this case a
Piagetian perspective. Albeit, unlike Piaget’s theory, we see CDT as levels related to exposure
to technology, rather than simply to the age of the individual. the approximate age ranges
vary in relation to the age at which the individual is exposed to technology, as well as to access
frequency. Thus, an older generation who was never exposed to technology may evolve through
the stages as well. Hence, age is not fixed within the stages of the CDT Model, which is trans-
generational. What we have developed is a working outline of CDT based on Piaget’s Stages of
Cognitive Development.

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