Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget emphasises the learners interaction with their physical environment, his general theoretical framework is called "Genetic Epistemology" because of his primary interest in how knowledge developed in the human organism.
http://tip.psychology.org/piaget.html from reading some of the articles that I have on Piaget's theories, I can see that having these well instilled in my mind, will help me when I am in the classroom. I will have to understand and possibly assess what each student is capable of understanding and how they are computing the information. Giving us all these different stages and periods in a child's life, and how they all pass the same sequence of stages of cognitive development at similar ages and personal meanings which they can construct from experience depending on their current stage, is a platform for me see where they are at. It gives me a basis, a structure of criteria that will help me understand each student so that I can manage the individuals in my class to the best advantage for all of them.
Then you can tie in the other theorists and use techniques from all of them to help all your students, so students then have the ability given to them to all learn a topic or whatever it is that you are showing them, but learn it in relation to their own schema of their world. So this gives every child in the class a possibility to achieve good learning outcomes whether they are very bright and quick or they have learning disabilities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget
http://www.piaget.org/biography/biog.html
http://www.piaget.org/biography/biog.html