Developing Students' Adaptive Learning Skills

Within this framework, the role of the teacher becomes one of providing disequilibrating circumstances-ones that require students to adapt by assimilating abstract concepts as more than just representations, or words to be memorized. [...]understanding teaching/learning as adaptation and construction of meaning reminds us that our role is not to move (motivate) our students, but rather to create what Piaget calls "felt need." Functional assimilation requires little accommodation beyond picking the appropriate schemes to assimilate to (which is an unconscious process). [...]when we give students hands-on experiences, we are providing them with a situation in which they may make use of well-practiced sensory-motor schemesfor example, observing children in a child development class. First they observe each other sitting and studying, then infants (who "don't do much"), and finally preschool and school-aged children. [...]we must help our students make connections between academic subjects and their life.