Following the work of Piaget, Emília Ferreiro and Ana Terbosky, two Argentine educational psychologists have revolutionized literacy processes through their analysis of children’s reading and writing learning processes.
The influence of the work of these psychologists developed from the 1980s onwards, with their work “The Psychogenesis of Writing” first in South America, Argentina and Brazil, influencing school programs and literacy work and especially in the first. childhood.
The “Psychogenesis of Written Language” is an analysis of the learning processes of reading and writing in children. It is not a learning method but presents reflections and conclusions that questioned traditional methods and literacy.
The constructivism defended by Piaget in the field of knowledge (which he has known by genetic epistemology) defends the active role of the subject in the creation and modification of his representations about the object of knowledge. In education, and more specifically in the process of formation of reading and writing, the works and Emília Ferreiro and Ana Terbosky emphasize the relevance that the active participation of children has in the construction of their learning. It reveals that its implication in knowledge building is a relevant issue. The “child builds his own knowledge,” which leads to the focus of learning, in particular reading and writing learning being shifted from the learning object (the content of what is taught) to the learning subject.
According to Piaget’s theory, the process of knowledge on the part of the child must be gradual, corresponding to the various stages of cognitive development, its assimilation by each child, its necessary accommodation to pre-existing structures. All of this takes some time, and through its internalization allows the epistemological “leaps” or break from formal to concrete and abstract.
Finally, the works of the hypothesis of knowledge of these psychologists also reveal that it is not through the repetition of what was heard (memorization) but the understanding of the error. Error demonstrates what is learned and it is therefore relevant to always do the self-assessment exercise.