Creating and Using Symbolic Mental Structures via Piaget’s Constructivism and Popper’s Three Worlds View with Falsifiability to Achieve Critical Thinking by Students in the Physical Sciences
Matthew E. Edwards
Learning a new concept requires the mind to enter into a
state of disequilibrium and then progress through identified
stages to re-establish eventually a new state of equilibrium.
The human intellect persists in a dynamical equilibrium
state while maintaining self-satisfaction and a contented
worldview by constantly integrating and assimilating
incoming information that resonates with its current
understanding and previous experiences. This equilibrium
state allows reflective thought and reassurance to the
individual about what is already known albeit it with a
limited generalization. However, with the onset of
receiving and assimilating a new concept, you are thrown
into a state of mental disequilibrium. It is the need to
remove the disequilibrium that requires either critical
thinking by the individual, resulting in an expanded
worldview, or a discounting of it while maintaining a
disengaging behavior. The former allows re-establishment
of mental equilibrium with an expanded understanding,
and the latter persists by never departing from equilibrium.
In either case, the intellect has its equilibrium—one
instance with requisite development of new understanding,
the other without change. To restrict the onslaught of a
constant barrage of new concepts, underprepared students
avoid majoring in the physical sciences, opting instead to
pursue other majors or to take fewer physical science
courses. To address the lack of effective learning, we have
developed the notion that individual Symbolic Mental
Structures, as a key component of constructivism, can
assist the underachieving student to become more engaged
in the physical sciences and academia in general. This
approach requires us to revisit Piaget’s constructivism
theory, Karl Popper theory with its falsifiability criterion,
which supports the former, and to consider Bloom’s
affective and cognitive domains. Full Text
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