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This article was downloaded by: [University of Strathclyde] On: 14 November 2014, At: 03:51 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK The Review of Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gred19 KNOWING ABOUT KNOWING AND KNOWING Ester S. Buchholz a & Carolyn I. Sarni a a New York University Published online: 09 Jul 2006. To cite this article: Ester S. Buchholz & Carolyn I. Sarni (1977) KNOWING ABOUT KNOWING AND KNOWING, The Review of Education, 3:5, 365-376, DOI: 10.1080/0098559770030508 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0098559770030508 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

KNOWING ABOUT KNOWING AND KNOWING

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Strathclyde]On: 14 November 2014, At: 03:51Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

The Review of EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gred19

KNOWING ABOUT KNOWING AND KNOWINGEster S. Buchholz a & Carolyn I. Sarni aa New York UniversityPublished online: 09 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Ester S. Buchholz & Carolyn I. Sarni (1977) KNOWING ABOUT KNOWING AND KNOWING, The Review ofEducation, 3:5, 365-376, DOI: 10.1080/0098559770030508

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0098559770030508

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: KNOWING ABOUT KNOWING AND KNOWING

KNOWING ABOUT KNOWINGAND KNOWING

Sarah F. Campbell, ed. The Piaget Sampler: An Introduction toJean Piaget Through His Own Words. New York: John Wiley &Sons, 1976. 154 + xiv pp. $9.95, paper $4.95.

Jean Piaget. The Grasp of Consciousness: Action and Conceptin the Young Child. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.vii + 360 pp. Index. $15.00.

J. W. Renner, D. G. Stafford, A. E. Lawson, J. W. McKinnon, F. E.Friot, D. H. Kellog. Research, Teaching, and Learning with thePiaget Model. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press,1976. xiii + 199 pp. Illustrations, figures, index. $9.95.

David Elkind. Child Development and Education: A Piagetian Pers-pective. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. xiii + 274 pp. Appen-dix, bibliography, index. $10.00, paper $4.00.

Ester S. Buchholz and Carolyn I. SarniNew York University

Piaget's focal concern is with how we construct our knowledge of theworld. Presumably the focal concern of education is also the constructionof knowledge, and yet, we find that large gaps exist in applying Piagetiantheory and research to educational problems, curricula, and methods. To a

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great extent, this relative lack of implementation is due to difficulty inunderstanding Hagetian concepts, which are derived from a philosophi-cal set of assumptions different from those commonly encountered inAmerican thinking. Furthermore, in the spirit of scientific inquiry,American educators have first concerned themselves with empirical re-plication and extensions of Piaget's studies before attempting to deriveeducational applications from Piagetian theory. Finally, it is the teacherwho ultimately mediates the educational process for each child, andany implementations in the classroom will be interpreted and applied asthe teacher sees fit.

Of the books under review here, two are original writings by Piaget,although one has been edited to represent a succinct composite of hisvarious ideas. The other two books are written for educators by Piagetianresearchers. The four together provide an interesting basis for studyingwhether Piagetian psychology-philosophy offers sufficient structure forteaching children, how aptly Piagetian thought is applied to educationalprinciples, and how well procedures are devised for integration of Piagetianideas into learning situations for children.

To obtain an understanding of the scope of Piaget's work, his thinking,and the philosophy behind his thinking, Campbell's Piaget Sampler is anexquisite book. After noting the numerous books geared toward summari-zing Piaget-including his and Inhelder's pithy publication, The Psychologyof the Child-none of which totally succeed in communicating a compre-hensive picture of the man or his ideas, one is impressed by the degree ofsynthesis achieved by Campbell in a brief 147 pages. She accomplishes hergoal to present a representative sample of Piaget by choosing excerpts, forthe most part, which are overviews of Piaget's essential theoretical formu-lations on development, learning, intelligence, and memory. Whether hercompendium is sufficiently self-explanatory, as she intends it to be, sothat teachers, parents, and "anyone who comes in contact with children"will now understand Piaget is doubtful. Piaget's theoretical statements re-main highly complex, in spite of Campbell's effort to edit the redundancies.

A compelling and easy to follow section of her compilation is synthe-sized from two separate autobiographicl sketches which together coverPiaget's life from 1896 to 1966. Our appreciation of the uniqueness ofPiaget's ideation and his methods is significantly enriched when they areviewed in the context of his early ties to zoology and philosophy.

The most difficult sections of The Piaget Sampler are those on Piaget'sconceptualization of memory function, which were originally containedin the introduction to Piaget and Inhelder's book Memory and Intelligence.The difficulty may be due to including the theory in The Piaget Sampler

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only in abbreviated form or simply because Piaget's formulation is intrin-sically complex. Piaget's depiction of the process reveals an orientationsomewhat different from that of neuropsychology and neurophysiology.He does not use the current mode of distinguishing between short-termmemory, which is not dependent on structural change, and long-term mem-ory functions which call for changes in basic protein structures. Ratherhe describes "memory in the strict sense" and "memory in the widersense." The former is commonly assessed in recall and recognition para-digms. For Piaget, the latter refers to reproduction of previous experiencewithout external prompting and which may very in degree of accuracy.With "memory in the wider sense" distortion in the memory of an eventoccurs when the person's development level is below that required to ac-curately comprehend the event. What is particularly stressed in Piaget'smemory theory is that something can be inaccurately taken in, yet be re-constructed at a later date without error. Unlike Pribram's "neurophysiol-ogy of memory" Piaget conceives of one continuous biological system link-ing the two memory functions rather than separate neurological processes.Like Pribram, Piaget sees memory of complex material being based uponmore complex internal structures. Piaget's theories, unlike Pribram's andother neurophysiologists', are tied to and evolve from children's behavior,so that one can more comfortably make the jump from them to variouslearning situations.

A situation in which a child's memory function seems to correspond toPiaget's theoretical model would be when a child has seemingly ignoredan event, only to later use the occurrence in an elaboration or recognitionof a current situation. Another example would be when a child in thepreoperational stage (when thinking is largely pre-logical and relatively in-flexible) fails to solve a concrete problem requiring the ability to mentally"shift gears." Yet perhaps six months later the child may remember theproblem and offer the correct solution. We might also point to instancesof pathology resulting from parents engaging in behavior which theymight otherwise suppress if they believed their child able to comprehendthe implications. The event might be stored only to be later reconstructedwhen the child has the ability to deal with his environment mentally.These examples suggest that, given Piaget's theory on memory, whichparallels his theory of intelligence and cognitive processes, the issue ineducation may not be whether children are able to learn when teacherspresent material too removed from their developmental position. More im-portant may be which materials children retain, even when insufficiently un-derstood, and how wasteful and fatiguing the educative process is whenchildren who are not developmentally ready are expending their total

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energies in attempts to understand for retention.Other interesting selections in The Piaget Sampler include excerpts on

adolescence, on the transition from egocentricity to reciprocity with im-plications for understanding chauvinism and racism, and on self-will, whichin theory implies a rational problem-solving approach for many types ofemotional conflicts. Here Piaget contends, and this is reminiscent of aPlatonic idea, that we would have little difficulty resolving inner strugglesover a choice between two strongly desirable activities if we kept in viewnot merely the present but the past and future as well. The feelings evokedby a beautiful sunny day and friends calling to walk with them would notbe strong enough to take us from our desk when a paper is due if we couldkeep in mind the greater pleasure we will feel in the future with the taskaccomplished. Feelings have a scale of values which help us to make deci-sions. Values are partially determined by proximity to us in time.-A feelingcloser to us in time may seem to have most value. Piaget says that, as wemature, our feelings consist not only of spontaneous feelings, but also ofmoral feelings—this is what he calls will. He does not believe the conceptsuperego accounts for will, for if in actuality conscience and will weresynonymous there would not be conflict or the need to "exact will." Think-ing similar to this is implicit in recent efforts to teach children how to dealwith interpersonal and emotional problems (Spivak, Platt and Shure).

Campbell is to be complimented for putting together these provocativewritings of Piaget. A professional question: since four of the ten pieceswere from the collaboration of Piaget with Inhelder should not the secondauthor get more direct recognition than footnotes?

Reading Piaget's The Grasp of Consciousness has its rewards and penal-ties. Certainly one wishes'that he edited his own work in a way that wouldallow us to succeed in accepting and integrating his major thesis with fewerpreliminaries. The redundancies, the verbatim, albeit allegedly abridged,presentations of lengthy dialogues with children and the slow, deliberate,and embellished theoretical constructions, call for a concentration hard tomaintain, even when the punch lines are stimulating and informative. Therewards in reading this book are the key theoretical ideas. Briefly, his form-ulations question Gestalt phenomenology's acceptance of sudden awarenessof insight (the "aha" reaction) by describing how the realization of one'sown actions is a gradual cognitive discovery depending, as does other cog-nitive development, on the progressive building of cognitive structures fromthe interactions and interrelationships between what is given and what is ex-perienced. Piaget theorizes on the ontogeny of consciousness, dispellingearlier psychological rationales and assumptions about the process. In-terestingly, recently Jaynes has independently developed a thesis about

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the evolution of consciousness which in ways corresponds with Piaget'sdescription of the process of consciousness. Traditionally, learning andreasoning are thought to be partially dependent upon conscious processes.To both Piaget and Jaynes learning and reasoning might precede con-sciousness. For Jaynes consciousness is a "learned cultural ability." ForPiaget an individual's consciousness depends upon reconstructions andnot just illumination. For both, conscious thought can be traced back toconcrete experiences.

Another rewarding feature is the selection of situations that Piaget andhis fourteen collaborators observed and reported upon. Their engagingsimplicity and applicability to the goals and relatedness to a child's worldlend not only a degree of authenticity, but also a charm to all his studies.For example, a deceptively simple task is having people walk on all foursand then describe how they "consciously" do it. Children, and even someadults, are able to accomplish this task often without accurately conceptual-izing what they do. As Jaynes points out, "consciousness is a much smallerpart of our mental life, than we are conscious of."

For all its virtues his method has its drawbacks as well. We do not con-sistently know the sample sizes in his investigations, and thus generaliza-bility may be somewhat limited. The graphic description of tasks in somecases are fully represented pictorially, in others only lines are used to rep-resent the flow of activity, and in others there are no drawings at all.Descriptions of experiments would be far more appealing were there pic-tures showing children doing the activity as well as a succinct clear sum-mary of the tasks. In fact, an accurate visualization of the experimentsdescribed almost requires that the reader have boxes, strings, balloons,etc., in hand. Generally, there is little regularity in presentation so thisadds to the reader's difficulty in making inter-task comparisons and ineasily following (and accepting) Piaget's argument. The main point thatcognizance (or awareness) follows, or at best keeps pace with, the abilityto solve problems is partly demonstrated by children never achieving totalawareness of what will bring them success before they actually successfullyaccomplish a task. Yet, due to the style of reporting, one is not certainwhether it is many of the same children repeatedly showing delay in cog-nizance or if the over 315 children reported are all different. Is the childPie (age 3 years, 7 months) who did not understand the use of the cata-pult the same person as Pie (age 7,5) who has difficulty understanding theimpact of one ball on another? In other words, are we looking at thesame child over a long period of time? Is Mar (age 7,6) who correctly re-lates how she walks on all fours the same Mar (age 7,4) who on the hooptest seems more able to clearly conceptualize the action of the hoop than

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her peers? This want of clarity prevents one from obtaining a full apprecia-tion of the connection between lack of cognitive structures and lack ofcognizance.

Another underlying theme is that our earliest attempts to accomplishan activity are governed by automatic sensory-motor regulations. At thisstage there is no awareness. By questioning children at different develop-mental stages Raget shows that with added mental ability the child's con-sciousness grows parallel to the ability to do increasingly complex tasksuntil a concrete object is no longer a prerequisite to problem-solving or toaccurate conscious descriptions of activities. According to Piaget, con-sciousness slowly develops through "reflexive abstractions," the term heuses to describe elementary or advanced coordinations between sensory-motor activities and unconscious mental inferences that lead to the con-struction of concepts. This is how we process information that comes fromthe accomplishment of tasks and which translates to awareness when thechild has reached a sufficient level of cognitive organization. Furthermore,it is only after one reaches the stage of formal operations (when all "limi-tations on reasoning are removed") that we begin to theorize and reason,using, among other abilities, our own cognizance. If this is true, Piaget doesnot satisfactorily explain why a "precocious" child at age seven accom-plished a more difficult task and then went on to solve successively morearduous problems. All of this suggests that the child was aware of what hewas doing, but we do not know precisely, because his responses are notgiven. We cannot, therefore, distinguish between whether Fum (age 7, 6)is generally advanced developmentally or whether he is representative ofan alternative pattern of development.

The above, although at times distracting, in no way lessens the brilli-ance of Piaget's discourse. In fact as one begins to incorporate his theoriesone is struck by how frequently they become substantiated by one's ownexperience and how one's experience becomes more comprehensible. Acase in point would be the observation that normal children and adultsoften distort their perceptions, sometimes in the face of direct contradic-tion. Piaget shows that people distort what they see in order to fit realityto their cognitive structures as part of the process of building concepts.Perception of external events has to be ignored or altered in order tomatch whatever internal structures are available. Before having the appro-priate structures, the individual is not capable of internalizing reality ac-curately or of making the unconscious conscious. Contradictions prevailuntil and unless educative experience provide a chance for "reconceptuali-zation."

As is apparent, Piaget, like Freud, views the bridges between the con-

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scious and the unconscious as active and dynamic. The Gestalt psycholo- 'gists used insight as the bridge to explain why artists, scientists, and phil-osophers received their best ideas in bed or bath without conscious effort.A hard concept to accept is that focused, purposeful thinking goes onwithout the aid of conscious processes. If American education could con-tain the idea of a dynamic, thinking, intelligent unconscious perhaps wecould once and for all do away with the necessity of continuous busy workin schools. Although others have suggested that daydreaming is time use-fully spent, now with Piaget's formulations on the connections betweenunconscious reflexive abstractions, cognitive processes, and awareness wehave one theory which describes the hard work that might be going'on whilethe child "dreams."

More directly related to the schooling of the child, Piaget's theoriescould explain why certain children easily lose what they have learned. Ifinternal structures are not formed, then the child's ability to consciouslyrepeat a previously learned task would be limited. The teachers andparents who say impatiently to children, "How can you do this, don't youknow what you're doing," may be accurate in their assessment. Yet,teachers or parents will now need to be informed that knowing what oneis doing does not automatically follow having been told. Rather, it is acomplex process which requires, depending upon each task, a particularlevel of maturation and experience which build the prerequisites to aware-ness. Piaget in this book affords us an opportunity to grasp the fact thatit takes much more than having our eyes open for us to see the world.

As we stated, teachers need to be informed about children—how theylearn, remember, and know. Piaget's Grasp of Consciousness is anotherstep towards understanding the construction of knowledge. Piaget's advo-cates have been particularly active for several years trying to generate aconcern for his concepts as a route for understanding how children couldbest function in the schools. Although individualized instruction, openschools, ungraded classes, and curriculum improvement studies are poten-tial openings in which Piaget's ideas could flourish, budget cuts, cookbookcurriculum, high teacher-student ration, and unmanageable classroomscounter any easy incorporation of his philosophy.

Piagetians no more give up their desire to reform schools than doesPieget relent in his quest for knowledge. Both Renner et al.'s Research,Teaching and Learning with the Piaget Model and Elkind's Child Develop-ment and Education: A Piagetian Perspective aim primarily at correctingelementary and secondary school education. In certain ways the books arealike in that each, although written for broader audiences, attempts to con-vince teachers to determine the child's level of cognitive development in

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order to provide appropriate learning experiences. Both use illustrations -of what takes place in the classroom as reason for change and Piagetiancognitive developmental theory as the model for reassessment and instruc-tion. Both are interesting to read, and both, unfortunately, are unlikely toinfluence a large body of teachers.

As alike as the books are in purpose, they are different in style andcontent. The book by Renner et al. seems least likely to reach its purportedaudience. The authors' breakdown of Piaget's theory reads like a mandatefrom a higher authority, to the point of nearly arousing guilt feelings ifPiaget's principles are not heeded. Furthermore, it tests the teacher'sknowledge after each major theme with questions. Contrast this to Furth'sopen letters to teachers where he converses informally yet knowledgeablyabout Piagetian theory, or to Saarni's summary of Piaget's developmentaltheory for application to teaching strategies and curriculum.

If teachers go beyond the opening chapter of Renner's book, they willthen note a change in style to journal-like reporting of research resultsfrom eight different projects. The research in and of itself is interesting.The results fundamentally back up Piaget's findings on levels of cognitivedevelopment from different perspectives, and in the discussion of the re-sults the authors attempt to answer such questions as how people vary intheir way of learning, and whether girls do better than boys in school.Nevertheless, the studies may be too removed from most teachers' every-day classroom problems for them to be sufficiently convinced by theevidence to switch method or philosophy. Nor are the conclusions or al-ternate systems of study dramatic enough to impress teachers with theurgency for educating children differently. The authors' particular pointis that if you teach children to think, you will have an easier time teachingthem to read. Whether or not this is so, they provide no substantialbridge between the thinking and reading process; they essentially assumethat the benevolence of the reader will lead to the acceptance of such alink. Another premise of this book, backed by research (theirs and others)is that most children and adults never achieve the most advanced forms oflogical thinking. They believe this is the fault of educational methods and,therefore, schools should focus extensively on developing formal logicalthought. One might question just how important formal thinking is forcarrying out everyday tasks and, therefore, whether people would neces-sarily employ formal thinking routinely. The authors also use the terms"formal" thinking and "logical" thinking interchangeably without notingthat some forms of logical thinking are concrete in their basis.

In contrast to Grasp of Consciousness the experiments are for the mostpart presented in an orderly, easy-to-follow fashion. Yet by focusing en-

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tirely on tasks to assess formal thinking, which are focused on non-verbal,spatial, mathematical, and scientific abilities, not only do they offer meth-ods for assessment that many teachers will not find easy to replicate in theirclassrooms, but they also may be inadvertently influencing results. For ex-ample, they show boys doing better on these tasks than girls and suggestthat they have discovered the possibility (although admittedly a controver-sial one) that boys mature intellectually faster than girls. They also sug-gest (this time without apology) that girls are thought by teachers to besmarter, because they conform more willingly to rules. There are severalstudies that demonstrate that spatial-mechanical skills seem to developmore effectively and earlier in boys while verbal skills may develop withgreater effectiveness and earlier in girls. (See Maccoby and Jacklin 1974.)Contrary to Renner's hypothesis, it could be that teachers in the earliergrades more easily interact with children using verbal skills rather thanvisual-spatial skills. This point is also a way to emphasize the usefulnessof employing verbal tasks for research and assessment as well as the typesemployed by the authors. It would be a pity if the overemphasis on the .importance of verbal skills which has figured substantially in unjust assess-ment of children would be followed by undue stress placed in the non-verbal area. While there are other problems in how the authors interprettheir results, the basic shortcoming of this book is that although the jacketcover suggests that it will be invaluable to teachers and teachers-in-training,we feel that it may only be a resource for educators of teachers, althougha valuable one. Some teachers, especially those who enjoy backing up theirbelief in Piaget with sophisticated statistical evidence may find it interesting.This will not be the book to change the hearts or minds of those teachersstill unfamiliar with or disinterested in Piagetian epistemology.

Elkind's book, also worthy of reading and studying, falls short, too, ofits goal to create an impetus for changing schools, but for very differentreasons. He presents a multi-pronged argument for Piaget's philosophybeing the foundation for education, citing as proof Piaget's credentials, histheory, his knowledge of children, and his imagination. The problems,nevertheless, are threefold. First, the book has so many focuses that themajor thrust is often lost. Second, Elkind does not, except in a most cursoryfashion, examine current curriculum and suggest changes therein; nor doeshe spell out any innovative ideas for schools in design or concept. Third, thechanges he proposes, even though he says he encourages small changes, arebeyond the scope of individual teachers; they really depend on someonein charge of a total school environment. He, with Piaget, sees a unity be-tween schools of education and child psychology, as do we. Still, as long asit is not mandatory for teachers to become experts in child development

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and child psychology and as long as schools of education emphasize meth-od rather than principles of how children learn, the ideas that Elkindwishes teachers to incorporate will be looked upon as accessories ratherthan fundamentals. A realistic example of how excellence in teaching isnot encouraged is that public schools that have the poorest track recordsin terms of teaching children to read are frequently rewarded with themost funding. (See Bard 1977.) In order for schools' philosophies tochange, those administrators who essentially influence the philosophy ofa school may need strong encouragement to produce successful students.

Elkind, as we said, has several formats in his one book. Besides writinga summary of Piaget's themes and work and an argument for change in thetraining of teachers and in the teaching of children, he has used Piaget'stheories as a starting point for some of his ideas as well as recording his per-sonal indebtedness to Piaget. For the most part he manages to synthesizehis many themes well, but the difficulty he has in controlling the struc-ture of the book is apparent in the many times and ways he expresses theregret that his book is not long enough to elaborate a particular idea. Infact, on at least one occasion when he mentions that an area deserves more"lengthy treatment" it would have been better had he not included hissketchy statements at all. When he briefly outlines how Piaget may havean impact on the field of social development he never touches on any ofthe current research such as that reviewed by Shantz.

Another overall flaw of this work is that Elkind does not give adequaterecognition to other theoreticians or researchers, except where they wereprecursors of Piaget's theories. In some instances where he presents eitherexamples from Piaget's themes or statements of his own formulations hedoes little to link the ideas with the field in general. In discussing the whysof learning, he conceptualizes various dynamisms or motivations forlearning. One such is the "attachment dynamism," In writing about thishe describes how attachment stimulates learning in children and howattachment is also important in adulthood. He stresses though that whilein childhood attachments lead to growth, in adults they can "lead to men-tal stultification and rigidity." Ignoring how his example of Freud and hisfollowers could also be reflecting a more personal concern, it seems thatElkind ignores some of Mahler's and Blos's work on separation-individua-tion and, thus, is overlooking the complexity of this major life dilemmafor child and adult—the delicate balance between dependency and auton-omy. For us all, at almost every stage (although during certain times morecritically than others) being close to someone and at the same time main-taining our own uniqueness and individuality is aprofound task. Thestruggle frequently is unconscious, especially in the young child (see Grasp

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of Consciousness) where the elements for the conflict would involve too •great an abstraction to contemplate. This may make the child's dilemmaless apparent to others as well, but not in reality a lesser conflict to over-come. The seeds for mental rigidity are often sown at very young ages.

In other places as well, he seems to shortcut various theoretical consider-ations. When discussing age dynamism, a provocative concept which maybe useful in helping to explain a child's rush to grow up, especially whenunhappy, he leaves out the concept of identification and other relevantpsychoanalytic theory which may be related to his concepts. He doesstimulate thought when he suggests that the radical and all-encompassingchange from concrete to formal thinking in adolescence may be part of thereason why adolescents get indignant when others do not become ascaught up in their ideas and frequently fall into despair.

Given that many of Elkind's thoughts are stimulating and worthy ofconsideration, he remains at his best when he makes his studied statementsof Piaget's philosophy, bringing them to a level of comprehensibility whichwould be easily translatable to school situations. Certainly he is among themost up-to«date and well-informed of Kaget's followers in this country.Thus it comes as a surprise when he does not list as one of his sources forthe biographical data Haget's own autobiographical summaries, especiallysince the biography and autobiography seem to overlap in many areas.We also wonder why in his biographical section he includes a descriptionof how Piaget behaves at dinner parties, which seems more a piece of gos-sip than a piece of information.

If Piaget's works are going to be productively, sensitively, and compre-hensively incorporated into the school systems throughout our country,we will need a group of people who in their ability to wrestle with currentrigidified institutional practices are equal to Piaget in his ability to wrestlewith ideas. Renner's and Elkind's works add to the list of titles availableconnecting Piaget's theory of cognitive development and educational ap-plication. Neither are distinctive in their contribution. Unfortunately, thefact that Piaget may be coming closer to knowing what we know, how weknow, and when we know may not be sufficient to ensure that those whoare exposed to his findings will know how to teach.

Further Reading:

Bard, B. Reading test is little help to kids: Education Board aide. New York Post,Wednesday, March 23, 1977, p. 26.

Furth, H. Piaget for teachers. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970.

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376 THE REVIEW OF EDUCATION September/October 1977

Jaynes, J. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977.

Maccoby, E. E., and C. N. Jacklin. The Psychology of Sex Differences. Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1974.

Piaget, J. "Jean Piaget" (autobiographical sketch). In E. G. Boring et al., eds. A Historyof Psychology in Autobiography (VoL 4). Worcester: Clark UniversityPress, 1952.

Piaget, J. Jean Piaget et les sciences sociales. Cahiers Vilfredo-Pareto, 1966, 10.Piaget, J., and B. Inhelder. The Psychobgy of the Child. New York: Basic Books,

1969.Piaget, J., and B. Inhelder. Memory and Intelligence. London: Routledge and

Kegan Paul, 1973.Plato. Republic New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.Pribram, K. H. The neurophysiology of remembering, in Progress in Psychobiology,

readings from Scientific American. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman andCo., 1976.

Saarni, C. I. Applications of Piaget's cognitive development theory. EducationalQuarterly, 1976, 7, 27-32.

Shantz, C. U. Development of social cognition. In. E. M. Hetherington, ed., Reviewof Child Development Research, 1975, 5, Chapter5.

Spivak, G., J.J. Platt, and M. B. Shure. The Problem Solving Approach to Adjust-ment. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1976.

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