Genetic epistemological notes on recent research into children's understanding of light

This paper reports a new analysis of data on children's ideas about seeing and light. The analysis is theoretically informed by Piagetian stage theory of genetic epistemology. Data produced by other researchers have been recoded to enable quantitative comparisons to be made with the survey data reported by Shayer and Adey (1981). The patterns in the data exposed by genetic epistemological analysis suggest that: (a) the qualitative nature of schemata depends on the content and context of learning opportunities, (b) the stage of genetic epistemological processing marks a ceiling on performance and (c) the ontogenesis of schema in the cognitive development of the individual is still best described in genetic epistemological terms.