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We know from a great deal of research that, as humans, we are intrinsically motivated to learn through repeating patterns of action – for example, by repeatedly dropping objects from a height, children come to expect the object to usually fall to the ground. Piaget and Athey called these repeated actions ‘schemas’.
Commonly observed schemas are: trajectories/lines (up/down, side to side and oblique), transporting (carrying stuff around), rotating, connecting, enveloping, enclosing, ordering, one-to-one correspondence, containing (oneself or objects) and going through a boundary.
Athey thought of these actions as partial concepts that combine with each other to become more complex ideas. For example, ‘ordering’ objects in ‘lines’ and applying a ‘one-to-one correspondence’ can become ‘counting’, a complex concept when understood fully. Piaget and Athey claimed that our actions become our thoughts.
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