Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson and Bloom

Learning theory and development stages, at M.Ed. reference depth.

Where candidates lose marks on this — Pedagogy I: Thinkers & Learning

1. Treating negative reinforcement as punishment. Both positive and negative reinforcement increase behaviour; both forms of punishment decrease it. "Negative" refers to removal of a stimulus, not to a bad effect.
2. Mixing classical and operant conditioning. Classical: the key stimulus comes before the response, which is elicited and involuntary (Pavlov, Watson). Operant: the key event (consequence) comes after the emitted, voluntary response (Skinner). Ask "does the crucial event precede or follow the behaviour?"
3. Giving insight learning to a behaviourist. Insight (sudden restructuring, "aha") belongs to Gestalt psychology — Köhler — not to Skinner or Thorndike; it was in fact a refutation of pure trial and error.
4. Attaching ZPD to Piaget. The Zone of Proximal Development, scaffolding and the MKO are Vygotsky. Piaget owns schema, assimilation, accommodation, equilibration.
5. Crediting Nai Talim to Tagore. Craft-centred Basic Education, Wardha 1937, is Gandhi; Tagore's names are Santiniketan (1901) and Visva-Bharati (1921).
6. Crediting the project method to Dewey. Dewey inspired it through pragmatism, but the project method was propounded by Kilpatrick (1918). Read the stem's verb: "inspired" vs "propounded."
7. Misassigning the spiral curriculum. Spiral curriculum = Bruner — not Piaget (stages), not Ausubel (organisers).
8. Misassigning the advance organiser. Advance organiser = Ausubel, the champion of meaningful reception learning — the deliberate opposite of Bruner's discovery learning.
9. Floating the law of readiness. Readiness, exercise and effect are Thorndike's primary laws. Do not drift "readiness" to Piaget (maturation) — and do not confuse it with Bruner's anti-readiness quotation.
10. Swapping Montessori and Froebel. Kindergarten, play, gifts and occupations, songs, teacher-gardener = Froebel. Children's House, didactic apparatus, sense training, auto-education, directress = Montessori.

Where candidates lose marks on this — Pedagogy II: Development & Methods

1. Placing conservation in the preoperational stage. Conservation is achieved in the concrete operational stage; the preoperational child fails conservation tasks.
2. Misplacing egocentrism. Egocentrism (three-mountain task) is the hallmark of the preoperational stage — not concrete operational, not sensorimotor.
3. Confusing Erikson's play-age and school-age crises. Industry vs inferiority is 6–12 (school age); initiative vs guilt is 3–6 (play age).
4. Promoting "law and order" to post-conventional. It is Stage 4, conventional level. Stage 5 (social contract) begins the post-conventional level.
5. Swapping Gardner and Guilford. Gardner = 8 multiple intelligences; Guilford = Structure of Intellect, 180 cells. Numbers-to-names must be exact.
6. Crediting the heuristic method to the wrong man. Heuristic method = H.E. Armstrong.
7. Crediting the project method to Dewey. The project method is Kilpatrick's (Dewey was the inspiration, not the formaliser).
8. Misattributing micro-teaching. Micro-teaching = D.W. Allen, Stanford, 1963 — not Flanders, not Skinner, not Passi (Passi adapted it for India).
9. Calling Flanders category 10 "pupil talk". Category 10 = silence or confusion; pupil talk is 8 (response) and 9 (initiation).
10. Inverting Dale's cone. Direct purposeful experience sits at the BASE; verbal symbols at the apex. Any option with "direct experience at the top" is wrong.

Where this is taught

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