His findings lead him to concise that an individual's intellectual development is a process of equilibration, where the individual himself is the active motor and coordinator of his own development. What the first three factors have in common is that the individual is passive. But intellectual development is not this passive. Piaget finds it necessary to call upon the factor of the individual's own activity. An individual comes to see the world as coherent, as structured, to the extent that he acts upon the world, transform it, and succeeds in coordination these actions and transformations.
Development proceeds as partial understandings are revised, broadened, and related to one another.
Piaget's model for this is one of auto-regulation to attain ever broader and more stable equilibrium in the individual's dealing with his world. As far as education is concerned, the chief outcome of this theory of intellectual development is a plea that children be allowed to do their own learning. YOU have to teach yourself. Dr. Leyden will not teach you in this course. He will give you opportunities to teach yourself.