Piaget's Mechanism of the Development of Concepts and the History of Algebra

Piaget의 개념 발달의 메커니즘과 대수의 역사

This study is on the theory of Piaget's reflective abstraction and the mechanism of the development of knowledge and the history of algebra and its application to understand the difficulties that many students have in learning algebra. Piaget considers the development of knowledge as a linear process. The stages in the construction of different forms of knowledge are sequential and each stage begins with reorganization. The reorganization consists of the projection onto a higher level from the lower level and the reflection which reconstructs and reorganizes within a lager system that is transferred by profection. Piaget shows that the mechanisms mediating transitions from one historical period to the next are analogous to those mediating the transition from one psychogenetic stage to the next and characterizes the mechanism as the intra, inter, trans sequence. The historical development of algebra is characterized by three periods, which are intra inter, transoperational. The analysis of the history of algebra by the mechanism explains why the difficulties that students have in learning algebra occur and shows that the roles of teachers are important to help students to overcome the difficulties.