_________________________________________
The Attic Learning Community Presents
the fourth annual:
PACIFIC NW HOMESCHOOL
COLLEGE FAIR
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Cascadia Community College
18345 Campus Way NE, Bothell, WA
Seminars for the college-bound homeschooler
Colleges from all across the United States!
www.homeschoolcollegefair.com
_________________________________________
WINTER SPEAKER EVENT 2011
The Attic Learning Community
&
Cascadia Community College present:
Dr. Constance Kamii
Professor, Early Childhood Education Program
The University of Alabama at Birmingham
March 9, 2011
Cascadia Community College
18345 Campus Way NE, Bothell, WA
Constance Kazuko Kamii, Ph.D., is passionate about educating teachers, especially educating them on ways to present mathematics so their students will “construct their own knowledge” rather than just memorizing rules. Children learn math the same way they learn everything else, Dr. Kamii explains. They have to experiment with and think about numbers before they really learn about and understand numbers and how they work.
Her pioneering methods in teacher education grew out of her 15-year association with renowned Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Dr. Kamii was born in Geneva when her father, a Japanese citizen, was working for the International Labor Organization. When Japan invaded Manchuria, Japan was ousted from the League of Nations, and the young family was sent back to her father’s home country, even though Dr. Kamii’s mother was an American. After World War II, Dr. Kamii moved to the United States and earned her bachelor’s degree at Pomona College in California before doing graduate work at the University of Michigan. After completing her doctoral degree, she gave herself the gift of going “home” to Switzerland for postdoctoral research, and that is where she met Piaget.
While she was studying at the University of Geneva, Dr. Kamii attended lectures given by Piaget. “His books about his theory of thinking were dense, but when I heard him speak, he presented his ideas much more clearly,” she recalls. “I knew I wanted to work under him."
Dr. Kamii applied Piaget’s approach to thinking to the field of mathematics education. Over the years, her insights on constructivism, supported by extensive, comprehensive research studies of children, have become widely known and accepted throughout the United States as well as other countries. Her books have been translated into Chinese, French, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish, and she speaks to groups around the world.