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Developmental Learning

            Each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered for himself, that child is kept from inventing it and consequently from understanding it completely. -Piaget (in Miller, 1989)

            Jean Piaget was a developmental learning theorist who believed that individuals form their own understandings. Learning is a constructive process, and the ability to learn goes through developmental stage as the student matures. Developmental curriculum is different from the more widely-used structured curriculum as shown in the table below:

Revised and adapted from “Student Centered Teaching”, Journal of Education for Social Work, 1976.

  In 1956, Benjamin Bloom categorized cognitive thinking skills into a classification system called a taxonomy. The taxonomy is arranged in a hierarchy from less complex to more complex thinking skills. Developmental learning is based on the concept that all learning is progressive and progresses through each category of the taxonomy beginning with basic knowledge and ending with the ability to critique related information based on prior knowledge, values, and opinions. Some curriculum stops at the knowledge comprehension level and does not encourage the students to analyze and evaluate what they have learned. Developmental learning “trains” the students to synthesis and evaluate their learning.

An example of this progression is shown below using a sixth grade science unit on space.

Classical education

Reading and writing across the curriculum

Leveled assessments

Enrichments and interventions