Lisa Southwell Piagetian Techniques Piagetian Techniques in School Psychological Assessment

Jean Piaget, a biologist, philosopher, and most notably a developmental psychologist, had a profound impact upon many aspects of education. His work with Binet and Simon in 1919 sparked his interest in intellectual functioning. It is interesting that Piaget and his colleagues, Binet and Simon developed such different assessment procedures to measure aptitude and intelligence. The psychometric approach of Binet and Simon and Piaget’s qualitative approach can be used together to produce even more accurate measures of intelligence. With the two dimensional approach of traditional psychometrics such as the Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale and the Weschler Intelligence Scales, it is possible to view only one side of an individual’s cognitive abilities, which is how much he or she knows. Many times scores of psychometric scales do not reflect a true measure of intelligence, because a child may not have been exposed to the material or is not ready to learn certain material which has been presented by the test. These factors may not always be taken into consideration when evaluating the child’s intelligence level, and are not reflected in the test scores. Piaget’s measures of intelligence do present these factors and enable the school psychologist to more fully perceive the child’s level of intelligent functioning. Piaget’s techniques can also be utilized to determine a child’s readiness level for attaining certain concepts in the classroom. Piaget’s assessments view cognitive abilities in three dimensions, or how a person knows what he or she knows, which is useful in determining one’s developmental level, or readiness for learning. Using Piaget’s measures, it is possible to see the reasoning behind the content, or what goes on beneath the surface in a young mind.