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A child's cognitive development is not just about acquiring knowledge, the child has to develop or construct a mental model of the world.

Cognitive development occurs through the interaction of innate capacities (nature) and environmental events (nurture), and children pass through a series of stages.

Piaget's theory of cognitive development proposes 4 stages of development.

1. Sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years

2. Preoperational stage: 2 to 7 years

3. Concrete operational stage: 7 to 11 years

4. Formal operational stage: ages 12 and up

The sequence of the stages is universal across cultures and follows the same invariant (unchanging) order.

All children go through the same stages in the same order (but not all at the same rate).

How Piaget Developed the Theory

Piaget was employed at the Binet Institute in the 1920s, where his job was to develop French versions of questions on English intelligence tests. He became intrigued with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers to the questions that required logical thinking.

He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important differences between the thinking of adults and children.

Piaget branched out on his own with a new set of assumptions about children's intelligence:

Children's intelligence differs from an adult's in quality rather than in quantity. This means that children reason (think) differently from adults and see the world in different ways.

Children actively build up their knowledge about the world. They are not passive creatures waiting for someone to fill their heads with knowledge.

The best way to understand children's reasoning was to see things from their point of view.

Piaget did not want to measure how well children could count, spell or solve problems as a way of grading their I.Q. What he was more interested in was the way in which fundamental concepts like the very idea of number, time, quantity, causality, justice, and so on emerged.

Piaget studied children from infancy to adolescence using naturalistic observation of his own three babies and sometimes controlled observation too. From these he wrote diary descriptions charting their development.

He also used clinical interviews and observations of older children who were able to understand questions and hold conversations.

Stages of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of intellectual development which reflect the increasing sophistication of children's thought

Each child goes through the stages in the same order, and child development is determined by biological maturation and interaction with the environment.

At each stage of development, the child's thinking is qualitatively different from the other stages, that is, each stage involves a different type of intelligence.

Although no stage can be missed out, there are individual differences in the rate at which children progress through stages, and some individuals may never attain the later stages.

Piaget did not claim that a particular stage was reached at a certain age - although descriptions of the stages often include an indication of the age at which the average child would reach each stage.

The Sensorimotor Stage
Ages: Birth to 2 Years
The first stage is the sensory motor stage, and during this stage the infant focuses on physical sensations and on learning to co-ordinate his body.

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

The infant learns about the world through their senses and through their actions (moving around and exploring its environment).

During the sensorimotor stage a range of cognitive abilities develop. These include: object permanence;
self-recognition (the child realises that other people are separate from them);
deferred imitation; and
representational play.

They relate to the emergence of the general symbolic function, which is the capacity to represent the world mentally

At about 8 months the infant will understand the permanence of objects and that they will still exist even if they can't see them and the infant will search for them when they disappear.

During this stage the infant lives in the present. It does not yet have a mental picture of the world stored in its memory therefore it does not have a sense of object permanence.

If it cannot see something then it does not exist. This is why you can hide a toy from an infant, while it watches, but it will not search for the object once it has gone out of sight.

The main achievement during this stage is object permanence - knowing that an object still exists, even if it is hidden. It requires the ability to form a mental representation (i.e., a schema) of the object.

Towards the end of this stage the general symbolic function begins to appear where children show in their play that they can use one object to stand for another. Language starts to appear because they realise that words can be used to represent objects and feelings.

The child begins to be able to store information that it knows about the world, recall it and label it.
Learn More: The Sensorimotor Stage of Cognitive Development
The Preoperational Stage
Ages: 2 - 7 Years
The pre-operational stage is one of Piaget's intellectual development stages. It takes place between 2 and 7 years. At the beginning of this stage the child does not use operations, so the thinking is influenced by the way things appear rather than logical reasoning.

A child cannot conserve which means that the child does not understand that quantity remains the same even if the appearance changes.

Furthermore, the child is egocentric; he assumes that other people see the world as he does. This has been shown in the three mountains study.

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

Toddlers and young children acquire the ability to internally represent the world through language and mental imagery.

During this stage, young children can think about things symbolically. This is the ability to make one thing, such as a word or an object, stand for something other than itself.

A child's thinking is dominated by how the world looks, not how the world is. It is not yet capable of logical (problem solving) type of thought.

Moreover, the child has difficulties with class inclusion; he can classify objects but cannot include objects in sub-sets, which involves classify objects as belonging to two or more categories simultaneously.

Infants at this stage also demonstrate animism. This is the tendency for the child to think that non-living objects (such as toys) have life and feelings like a person's.

By 2 years, children have made some progress toward detaching their thought from the physical world. However, have not yet developed logical (or "operational") thought characteristics of later stages.

Thinking is still intuitive (based on subjective judgements about situations) and egocentric (centred on the child's own view of the world).
Learn More: The Preoperational Stage of Cognitive Development
The Concrete Operational Stage
Ages: 7 - 11 Years
By the beginning of the concrete operational stage, the child can use operations ( a set of logical rules) so he can conserve quantities, he realises that people see the world in a different way than he does (decentring) and he has improved in inclusion tasks. Children still have difficulties with abstract thinking.

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

During this stage, children begin to thinking logically about concrete events.

Children begin to understand the concept of conservation; understanding that, although things may change in appearance, certain properties remain the same.

During this stage, children can mentally reverse things (e.g. picture a ball of plasticine returning to its original shape).

During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people might think and feel.

The stage is called concrete because children can think logically much more successfully if they can manipulate real (concrete) materials or pictures of them.

Piaget considered the concrete stage a major turning point in the child's cognitive development because it marks the beginning of logical or operational thought. This means the child can work things out internally in their head (rather than physically try things out in the real world).

Children can conserve number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight (age 9). Conservation is the understanding that something stays the same in quantity even though its appearance changes.

But operational thought only effective here if child asked to reason about materials that are physically present. Children at this stage will tend to
make mistakes or be overwhelmed when asked to reason about abstract or hypothetical problems.
Learn More: The Concrete Operational Stage of Development
The Formal Operational Stage
Ages: 12 and Over
The formal operational period begins at about age 11. As adolescents enter this stage, they gain the ability to think in an abstract manner, the ability to combine and classify items in a more sophisticated way, and the capacity for higher-order reasoning.

Adolescents can think systematically and reason about what might be as well as what is (not everyone achieves this stage).. This allows them to understand politics, ethics, and science fiction, as well as to engage in scientific reasoning.

Adolescents can deal with abstract ideas: e.g. they can understand division and fractions without having to actually divide things up, and solve hypothetical (imaginary) problems.

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

Concrete operations are carried out on things whereas formal operations are carried out on ideas. Formal operational thought is entirely freed from
physical and perceptual constraints.

During this stage, adolescents can deal with abstract ideas (e.g. no longer needing to think about slicing up cakes or sharing sweets to understand division and fractions).

They can follow the form of an argument without having to think in terms of specific examples.

Adolescents can deal with hypothetical problems with many possible solutions. E.g. if asked 'What would happen if money were abolished in one hour's time? they could speculate about many possible consequences.

From about 12 years children can follow the form of a logical argument without reference to its content. During this time, people develop the ability to think about abstract concepts, and logically test hypotheses.

This stage sees the emergence of scientific thinking, formulating abstract theories and hypotheses when faced with a problem.
Learn More: The Formal Operational Stage of Development
Piaget's Theory Differs From Others In Several Ways:

Piaget's (1936, 1950) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a mental model of the world. He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed trait, and regarded cognitive development as a process which occurs due to biological maturation and interaction with the environment.

Children's ability to understand, think about and solve problems in the world develops in a stop-start, discontinuous manner (rather than gradual changes over time).

It is concerned with children, rather than all learners.

It focuses on development, rather than learning per se, so it does not address learning of information or specific behaviors.

It proposes discrete stages of development, marked by qualitative differences, rather than a gradual increase in number and complexity of behaviors, concepts, ideas, etc.

The goal of the theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the infant, and then the child, develops into an individual who can reason and think using hypotheses.

To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience.

Children construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment.

Schemas

Piaget claimed that knowledge cannot simply emerge from sensory experience; some initial structure is necessary to make sense of the world.

According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge are based.

Schemas are the basic building blocks of such cognitive models, and enable us to form a mental representation of the world.

Piaget (1952, p. 7) defined a schema as: "a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning."

In more simple terms Piaget called the schema the basic building block of intelligent behavior - a way of organizing knowledge. Indeed, it is useful to think of schemas as "units" of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including objects, actions, and abstract (i.e., theoretical) concepts.

Wadsworth (2004) suggests that schemata (the plural of schema) be thought of as "index cards" filed in the brain, each one telling an individual how to react to incoming stimuli or information.

When Piaget talked about the development of a person's mental processes, he was referring to increases in the number and complexity of the schemata that a person had learned.

When a child's existing schemas are capable of explaining what it can perceive around it, it is said to be in a state of equilibrium, i.e., a state of cognitive (i.e., mental) balance.

Operations are more sophisticated mental structures which allow us to combine schemas in a logical (reasonable) way.

As children grow they can carry out more complex operations and begin to imagine hypothetical (imaginary) situations.

Apart from the schemas we are born with schemas and operations are learned through interaction with other people and the environment.

Piaget emphasized the importance of schemas in cognitive development and described how they were developed or acquired.

A schema can be defined as a set of linked mental representations of the world, which we use both to understand and to respond to situations. The assumption is that we store these mental representations and apply them when needed.

Examples of Schemas

A person might have a schema about buying a meal in a restaurant. The schema is a stored form of the pattern of behavior which includes looking at a menu, ordering food, eating it and paying the bill. This is an example of a schema called a "script." Whenever they are in a restaurant, they retrieve this schema from memory and apply it to the situation.

The schemas Piaget described tend to be simpler than this - especially those used by infants. He described how - as a child gets older - his or her schemas become more numerous and elaborate.

Piaget believed that newborn babies have a small number of innate schemas - even before they have had many opportunities to experience the world. These neonatal schemas are the cognitive structures underlying innate reflexes. These reflexes are genetically programmed into us.

For example, babies have a sucking reflex, which is triggered by something touching the baby's lips. A baby will suck a nipple, a comforter (dummy), or a person's finger. Piaget, therefore, assumed that the baby has a "sucking schema."

Similarly, the grasping reflex which is elicited when something touches the palm of a baby's hand, or the rooting reflex, in which a baby will turn its head towards something which touches its cheek, are innate schemas. Shaking a rattle would be the combination of two schemas, grasping and shaking.

The Process of Adaptation

Piaget also believed that a child developed as a result of two different influences: maturation, and interaction with the environment. The child develops mental structures (schemata) which enables him to solve problems in the environment.

Adaptation is the process by which the child changes its mental models of the world to match more closely how the world actually is.

Adaptation is brought about by the processes of assimilation (solving new experiences using existing schemata) and accommodation (changing existing schemata in order to solve new experiences).

The importance of this viewpoint is that the child is seen as an active participant in its own development rather than a passive recipient of either biological influences (maturation) or environmental stimulation.

When our existing schemas can explain what we perceive around us, we are in a state of equilibration. However, when we meet a new situation that we cannot explain it creates disequilibrium, this is an unpleasant sensation which we try to escape, this gives the motivation for learning.

According to Piaget, reorganization to higher levels of thinking is not accomplished easily. The child must "rethink" his or her view of the world. An important step in the process is the experience of cognitive conflict.

In other words, the child becomes aware that he or she holds two contradictory views about a situation and they both cannot be true. This step is referred to as disequilibrium.

Jean Piaget (1952; see also Wadsworth, 2004) viewed intellectual growth as a process of adaptation (adjustment) to the world. This happens through assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration.

To get back to a state of equilibration we need to modify our existing schemas, to learn and adapt to the new situation.

This is done through the processes of accommodation and assimilation. This is how our schemas evolve and become more sophisticated.

Assimilation

Piaget defined assimilation as the cognitive process of fitting new information into existing cognitive schemas, perceptions, and understanding. Overall beliefs and understanding of the world do not change as a result of the new information.

Assimilation coccurs when the new experience is not very different form previous experiences of a particular object or situation we assimilate the new situation by adding information to a previous schema.

This means that when you are faced with new information, you make sense of this information by referring to information you already have (information processed and learned previously) and try to fit the new information into the information you already have.

For example, a 2-year-old child sees a man who is bald on top of his head and has long frizzy hair on the sides. To his father's horror, the toddler shouts "Clown, clown" (Siegler et al., 2003).

For example, a baby learns to pick up a rattle he or she will then use the same schema (grasping) to pick up other objects.

Accommodation

Accommodation: when the new experience is very different from what we have encountered before we need to change our schemas in a very radical way or create a whole new schema.

Psychologist Jean Piaget defined accommodation as the cognitive process of revising existing cognitive schemas, perceptions, and understanding so that new information can be incorporated.

This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation.

In order to make sense of some new information, you actual adjust information you already have (schemas you already have, etc.) to make room for this new information.

For example, a baby tries to use the same schema for grasping to pick up a very small object. It doesn't work. The baby then changes the schema by now using the forefinger and thumb to pick up the object.

Also, a child may have a schema for birds (feathers, flying, etc.) and then they see a plane, which also flies, but would not fit into their bird schema.

In the "clown" incident, the boy's father explained to his son that the man was not a clown and that even though his hair was like a clown's, he wasn't wearing a funny costume and wasn't doing silly things to make people laugh.

With this new knowledge, the boy was able to change his schema of "clown" and make this idea fit better to a standard concept of "clown".

Equilibration

Piaget believed that all human thought seeks order and is uncomfortable with contradictions and inconsistencies in knowledge structures. In other words, we seek "equilibrium" in our cognitive structures.

Equilibrium occurs when a child's schemas can deal with most new information through assimilation. However, an unpleasant state of disequilibrium occurs when new information cannot be fitted into existing schemas (assimilation).

Piaget believed that cognitive development did not progress at a steady rate, but rather in leaps and bounds. Equilibration is the force which drives the learning process as we do not like to be frustrated and will seek to restore balance by mastering the new challenge (accommodation).

Once the new information is acquired the process of assimilation with the new schema will continue until the next time we need to make an adjustment to it.

Equilibration is a regulatory process that maintains a balance between assimilation and accommodation to facilitate cognitive growth. Think of it this way: We can"t merely assimilate all the time; if we did, we would never learn any new concepts or principles.

Everything new we encountered would just get put in the same few "slots" we already had. Neither can we accommodate all the time; if we did, everything we encountered would seem new; there would be no recurring regularities in our world. We"d be exhausted by the mental effort!

Applying Piaget's Theory to the Classroom

Think of old black and white films that you've seen in which children sat in rows at desks, with ink wells, would learn by rote, all chanting in unison in response to questions set by an authoritarian old biddy like Matilda!

Children who were unable to keep up were seen as slacking and would be punished by variations on the theme of corporal punishment. Yes, it really did happen and in some parts of the world still does today.

Piaget is partly responsible for the change that occurred in the 1960s and for your relatively pleasurable and pain free school days!

"Children should be able to do their own experimenting and their own research. Teachers, of course, can guide them by providing appropriate materials, but the essential thing is that in order for a child to understand something, he must construct it himself, he must re-invent it. Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand that which we allow him to discover by himself will remain with him visibly".
Piaget (1972, p. 27)

Plowden Report

Piaget (1952) did not explicitly relate his theory to education, although later researchers have explained how features of Piaget's theory can be applied to teaching and learning.

Piaget has been extremely influential in developing educational policy and teaching practice. For example, a review of primary education by the UK government in 1966 was based strongly on Piaget's theory. The result of this review led to the publication of the Plowden report (1967).

In the 1960s the Plowden Committee investigated the deficiencies in education and decided to incorporate many of Piaget's ideas in to its final report published in 1967, even though Piaget's work was not really designed for education.

The report makes three Piaget-associated recommendations:

1. Children should be given individual attention and it should be realised that they need to be treated differently.

2. Children should only be taught things that they are capable of learning

3. Children mature at different rates and the teacher needs to be aware of the stage of development of each child so teaching can be tailored to their individual needs.

"The report's recurring themes are individual learning, flexibility in the curriculum, the centrality of play in children's learning, the use of the environment, learning by discovery and the importance of the evaluation of children's progress - teachers should "not assume that only what is measurable is valuable."

Discovery learning - the idea that children learn best through doing and actively exploring - was seen as central to the transformation of the primary school curriculum.

How to teach

Within the classroom learning should be student-centered and accomplished through active discovery learning. The role of the teacher is to facilitate learning, rather than direct tuition.

Because Piaget's theory is based upon biological maturation and stages, the notion of "readiness" is important. Readiness concerns when certain information or concepts should be taught.

According to Piaget's theory children should not be taught certain concepts until they have reached the appropriate stage of cognitive development.

According to Piaget (1958), assimilation and accommodation require an active learner, not a passive one, because problem-solving skills cannot be taught, they must be discovered.

Therefore, teachers should encourage the following within the classroom:

Educational programmes should be designed to correspond to Piaget's stages of development. Children in the concrete operational stage should be given concrete means to learn new concepts e.g. tokens for counting.

Devising situations that present useful problems, and create disequilibrium in the child.

Focus on the process of learning, rather than the end product of it. Instead of checking if children have the right answer, the teacher should focus on the student's understanding and the processes they used to get to the answer.

Child-centred approach. Learning must be active (discovery learning).
Children should be encouraged to discover for themselves and to interact with the material instead of being given ready-made knowledge.

Accepting that children develop at different rate so arrange activities for individual children or small groups rather than assume that all the children can cope with a particular activity.

Using active methods that require rediscovering or reconstructing "truths."

Using collaborative, as well as individual activities (so children can learn from each other).

Role of the Teacher

Evaluate the level of the child's development so suitable tasks can be set.

Adapt lessons to suit the needs of the individual child (i.e. differentiated teaching).

Be aware of the child's stage of development (testing).

Teach only when the child is ready. i.e. has the child reached the appropriate stage.

Providing support for the "spontaneous research" of the child.

Using collaborative, as well as individual activities.

Devising situations that present useful problems, and create disequilibrium in the child.

Curriculum Development

According to Piaget children cognitive development is determined by a process of maturation which cannot be altered by tuition so education should be stage-specific.

For example, a child in the concrete operational stage should not be taught abstract concepts and should be given concrete aid such as tokens to count with.

According to Piaget children learn through the process of accommodation and assimilation so the role of the teacher should be to provide opportunities for these processes to occur such as new material and experiences which challenge the children's existing schemas.

Furthermore, according to this theory, children should be encouraged to discover for themselves and to interact with the material instead of being given ready-made knowledge.

Curricula need to be developed that take into account the age and stage of thinking of the child. For example there is no point in teaching abstract concepts such as algebra or atomic structure to children in primary school.

Curricula also need to be sufficiently flexible to allow for variations in ability of different students of the same age. In Britain, the National Curriculum and Key Stages broadly reflect the stages that Piaget laid down.

For example, egocentricism dominates a child's thinking in the sensorimotor and preoperational stages. Piaget would therefore predict that using group activities would not be appropriate since children are not capable of understanding the views of others.

However, Smith et al. (1998), point out that some children develop earlier than Piaget predicted and that by using group work children can learn to appreciate the views of others in preparation for the concrete operational stage.
The national curriculum emphasises the need for using concrete examples in the primary classroom.

Shayer (1997), reported that abstract thought was necessary for success in secondary school (and co-developed the CASE system of teaching science). Recently the National curriculum has been updated to encourage the teaching of some abstract concepts towards the end of primary education, in preparation for secondary courses. (DfEE, 1999).

Child-centred teaching is regarded by some as a child of the 'liberal sixties.' In the 1980s the Thatcher government introduced the National Curriculum in an attempt to move away from this and bring more central government control into the teaching of children.

So, although the British National Curriculum in some ways supports the work of Piaget, (in that it dictates the order of teaching), it can also be seen as prescriptive to the point where it counters Piaget's child-oriented approach.

However, it does still allow for flexibility in teaching methods, allowing teachers to tailor lessons to the needs of their students.

Critical Evaluation

The influence of Piaget's ideas in developmental psychology has been enormous. He changed how people viewed the child's world and their methods of studying children.

He was an inspiration to many who came after and took up his ideas. Piaget's ideas have generated a huge amount of research which has increased our understanding of cognitive development.

Piaget (1936) was one of the first psychologists to make a systematic study of cognitive development. His contributions include a stage theory of child cognitive development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities.

His ideas have been of practical use in understanding and communicating with children, particularly in the field of education (re: Discovery Learning). Piaget's theory has been applied across education.

According to Piaget's theory, educational programmes should be designed to correspond to the stages of development.

Criticisms

Are the stages real? Vygotsky and Bruner would rather not talk about stages at all, preferring to see development as a continuous process. Others have queried the age ranges of the stages. Some studies have shown that progress to the formal operational stage is not guaranteed.

For example, Keating (1979) reported that 40-60% of college students fail at formal operation tasks, and Dasen (1994) states that only one-third of adults ever reach the formal operational stage.

The fact that the formal operational stage is not reached in all cultures and not all individuals within cultures suggests that it might not be biologically based.

According to Piaget, the rate of cognitive development cannot be accelerated as it is based on biological processes however, direct tuition can speed up the development which suggests that it is not entirely based on biological factors.

Because Piaget concentrated on the universal stages of cognitive development and biological maturation, he failed to consider the effect that the social setting and culture may have on cognitive development.

Cross-cultural studies show that the stages of development (except the formal operational stage) occur in the same order in all cultures suggesting that cognitive development is a product of a biological process of maturation.

However the age at which the stages are reached varies between cultures and individuals which suggests that social and cultural factors and individual differences influence cognitive development.

Dasen (1994) cites studies he conducted in remote parts of the central Australian desert with 8-14 year old Indigenous Australians. He gave them conservation of liquid tasks and spatial awareness tasks. He found that the ability to conserve came later in the Aboriginal children, between aged 10 and 13 ( as opposed to between 5 and 7, with Piaget's Swiss sample).

However, he found that spatial awareness abilities developed earlier amongst the Aboriginal children than the Swiss children. Such a study demonstrates cognitive development is not purely dependent on maturation but on cultural factors too - spatial awareness is crucial for nomadic groups of people.

Vygotsky, a contemporary of Piaget, argued that social interaction is crucial for cognitive development. According to Vygotsky the child's learning always occurs in a social context in co-operation with someone more skillful (MKO). This social interaction provides language opportunities and Vygotksy conisdered language the foundation of thought.

Piaget's methods (observation and clinical interviews) are more open to biased interpretation than other methods. Piaget made careful, detailed naturalistic observations of children, and from these he wrote diary descriptions charting their development. He also used clinical interviews and observations of older children who were able to understand questions and hold conversations.

Because Piaget conducted the observations alone the data collected are based on his own subjective interpretation of events. It would have been more reliable if Piaget conducted the observations with another researcher and compared the results afterward to check if they are similar (i.e., have inter-rater reliability).

Although clinical interviews allow the researcher to explore data in more depth, the interpretation of the interviewer may be biased.

For example, children may not understand the question/s, they have short attention spans, they cannot express themselves very well and may be trying to please the experimenter. Such methods meant that Piaget may have formed inaccurate conclusions.

As several studies have shown Piaget underestimated the abilities of children because his tests were sometimes confusing or difficult to understand (e.g., Hughes, 1975).

Piaget failed to distinguish between competence (what a child is capable of doing) and performance (what a child can show when given a particular task). When tasks were altered, performance (and therefore competence) was affected. Therefore, Piaget might have underestimated children's cognitive abilities.

For example, a child might have object permanence (competence) but still not be able to search for objects (performance). When Piaget hid objects from babies he found that it wasn't till after nine months that they looked for it.

However, Piaget relied on manual search methods - whether the child was looking for the object or not.

Later, research such as Baillargeon and Devos (1991) reported that infants as young as four months looked longer at a moving carrot that didn't do what it expected, suggesting they had some sense of permanence, otherwise they wouldn't have had any expectation of what it should or shouldn't do.

The concept of schema is incompatible with the theories of Bruner (1966) and Vygotsky (1978). Behaviorism would also refute Piaget's schema theory because is cannot be directly observed as it is an internal process. Therefore, they would claim it cannot be objectively measured.

Piaget studied his own children and the children of his colleagues in Geneva in order to deduce general principles about the intellectual development of all children. Not only was his sample very small, but it was composed solely of European children from families of high socio-economic status. Researchers have therefore questioned the generalisability of his data.

For Piaget, language is seen as secondary to action, i.e., thought precedes language. The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978) argues that the development of language and thought go together and that the origin of reasoning is more to do with our ability to communicate with others than with our interaction with the material world.

Piaget vs Vygotsky

Piaget maintains that cognitive development stems largely from independent explorations in which children construct knowledge of their own.

Whereas Vygotsky argues that children learn through social interactions, building knowledge by learning from more knowledgeable others such as peers and adults. In other words, Vygotsky believed that culture affects cognitive development.

These factors lead to differences in the education style they recommend: Piaget would argue for the teacher to provide opportunities which challenge the children's existing schemas and for children to be encouraged to discover for themselves.

Alternatively, Vygotsky would recommend that teacher's assist the child to progress through the zone of proximal development by using scaffolding.

However, both theories view children as actively constructing their own knowledge of the world; they are not seen as just passively absorbing knowledge. They also agree that cognitive development involves qualitative changes in thinking, not only a matter of learning more things.

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Jean Piaget's Theory and Stages of Cognitive Development

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A child's cognitive development is not just about acquiring knowledge, the child has to develop or construct a mental model of the world. Cognitive development occurs through the interaction of innate capacities (nature) and environmental events (nurture), and children pass through a series of stages. Piaget's theory of cognitive development proposes 4 stages of development.

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The Continuous Influence of Piaget's Theory

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The Continuous Influence of Piaget's Theory

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Association for Psychological Science - APS

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The Psychology Today interview with Jean Piaget took place in 1970 at the height of his influence. During that year, the international Jean Piaget Society was formed, and the society, as well as Piaget's influence, endure.

The interview captured many facets of Piaget's remarkable career: his roots in epistemology and natural history; his interests in the underlying processes of intelligence and reasoning, the development of morality, and the theoretical basis within developmental psychology for educational practices; and his comparisons between his theory and other major theoretical positions of the day. This commentary considers some of these aspects in the context of Piaget's legacy for contemporary psychology.

The interviewer, Elizabeth Hall, began with an ingratiating statement:"You and Sigmund Freud are regarded as the two giants of 20th-century philosophy."This statement by itself must be viewed as extreme hyperbole because she puts Piaget's philosophical role above that of - to name only a few - Ludwig Wittgenstein, John-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx, and William James. However, despite the hyperbole, it is clear that Piaget was an extraordinarily important contributor to the philosophical underpinnings of psychology. Various attempts to identify the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, such as that of Steven Haggbloom et al. (2002), invariably place Piaget in the top tier. In Haggbloom's empirical scheme, Piaget ranked second in professional journal citations (after Sigmund Freud) and fourth in citations for introductory psychology textbooks (after Sigmund Freud, B. F. Skinner, and Albert Bandura).

Piaget claimed in the interview that all the problems he had undertaken had been epistemological. Throughout his career, he described himself as a "genetic epistemologist," which is an apt description for someone who endeavored to trace the nature and origin of knowledge from sensory-motor actions in infancy to formal cognition and logical operations in adulthood. (The term genetic in Piaget's parlance was a synonym for developmental.

From the perspective of the early 21st century, three criticisms of Piaget's work stand out. First is his approach to methodology. He rarely reported anything about how he selected his participants, how many children he examined to arrive at his conclusions, or anything even remotely statistical beyond the age (in years and months) of individual children who gave answers to his queries. One of his most influential books, The Origins of Intelligence in Children (Piaget, 1952), had only three participants; his own three children. In that book, Piaget described a sequence of six sub-stages in the cognitive development of infants in what he called the sensorimotor stage of development. Perhaps the most famous of these sub-stages is the fifth, when object permanence develops. Despite reservations about Piaget's methodology, one must admit that he pioneered a technique for studying children that has yielded enormously influential results. Called the "clinical method," it was essentially an in-depth interview with individual children about their thinking.

The second criticism of Piaget concerns the nature of the stages themselves. Stage theories of development have fallen out of favor in developmental research. Although stages are seen as useful heuristics for describing the trajectory of human behavior, several problems have pushed stage theories aside. One problem is that stages often fail to capture the complexities of intraindividual and interindividual variation in development. Furthermore, in the case of Piaget's theory, intelligence is now viewed more as a modular system than as a unified system of general intelligence. In Piaget's system, once an individual has mastered an overall intellectual operation, it should apply across all domains of the mind, as a "structured whole" (or " structure d'ensemble," to use Piaget's phrase). Contemporary developmental approaches to intelligence consider modules of the mind to be largely independent, and do not assume a structured whole.

The third criticism relates to what might be called the endpoint of the development of intelligence. Piaget's theory implies that formal operations of intelligence are attained at puberty, around age 11 or 12 (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). Formal operations entail the kind of hypothesis testing, abstract thinking, and deductive reasoning associated with scientific thought. The 13 tasks that Piaget and his colleague Bärbel Inhelder used to measure formal operations have a strong natural-science bias. The children were presented with tasks on the equality of angles, isolation of variables in chemical combinations, separation of variables in the flexibility of rods, exclusion of variables in pendulum oscillation, equilibrium in a balance, centrifugal force, and the use of floating bodies to test Archimedes' principle. If the criteria for formal operations outlined by Inhelder and Piaget are used, college students, in my experience, often fail to show formal operations. But Piaget implied that all children attain this stringently systematic hypothetico-deductive reasoning by about age 12. Perhaps such expectations are not surprising from a man who began publishing scientific articles on mollusk shells when he was 15, and whose first paper - a report on an albino sparrow - was published when he was 10!

Having implied that everyone gains formal operations at age 12 or so, Piaget went on to suggest that not much else happens in the development of cognition during adolescence and adulthood. Did Piaget seriously believe that the cognition of a 12-year-old was no less sophisticated than the cognition of a 25-year-old? It seems to me that his claims were too narrow and too broad: Narrow when it came to the types of tasks he used to measure formal thinking, and broad when he suggested that cognitive development is completed at such an early age.

Piaget's theory has been influential in curriculum design, with scores of books and papers addressing the application of his theory to education (e.g., Elkind, 1976; Furth, 1970; Furth & Wachs, 1975; Jardine, 2006). Piaget was dismissive of the American tendency to try to speed up cognitive development, which he sometimes referred to as the "American question" - the question of whether it is possible to speed up the acquisition of cognitive-stage milestones. In the interview, he posed a counter-question: "Is it a good thing to accelerate the learning of these concepts?" It was clear that he thought such a goal was not desirable.

Piaget's theory was highly influential in American schools in the latter half of the 20 th century, but that influence may have waned. One example is Piaget's emphasis on active involvement in learning. As he said in the interview, "You cannot teach concepts verbally; you must use a method founded on activity." He favored education based on cognitive processes rather than cognitive products. However, American education has become quite product-oriented, with its emphasis on assessment and adequate yearly progress. Perhaps no child will be left behind because most children will not get very far. This notion is related to the concept of readiness for education, and his view that one should not push children too early. Attempting to teach children concepts before they have arrived at them spontaneously "is completely useless," as he put it.

Piaget's interview ended with a question about how he saw the future of psychology."With optimism," he replied. "We see new problems every day." More than 40 years later, I think it is fair to say that Piaget's influence remains strong and that his optimism was justified. Much of the revolution in cognitive neuroscience was anticipated by Piaget's approach. The "contemporary biological revolution" that he believed had bypassed the behaviorists has continued unabated since Piaget's death in 1980. I think if he could be interviewed today, he would express delight in the direction of the field.

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The Psychology Today interview with Jean Piaget took place in 1970 at the height of his influence. During that year, the international Jean Piaget Society was formed, and the society, as well as Piaget's influence, ...

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Influence of Educational Practices and Curricula

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Influence of Educational Practices and Curricula

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The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done. (Jean Piaget 1896-1980)

How has Piaget's theory Influenced education practices?

Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts....little vessels...ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim...(Charles Dickens - Hard Times)

Thankfully we have moved away from the belief that children are moulded from the outside. Piaget's theory marked an important change of direction from the Behaviourist viewpoint which did not acknowledge the cognitive processes that children go through, but rather viewed them like empty vessels to be filled.

This change of direction resulted in an important shift in the way people view and study children's development. In turn, this has led to a greater understanding of the way children think and learn.

Although Piaget did not directly link his theory to education, his research has been extremely influential within educational policy. In the UK for example, there was a thorough review of primary education by the government which resulted in the publication of the Plowden Report,
( http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/plowden/plowden1967-1.html). The result of this was the advocacy of discovery learning: that children learn most affectively by doing, by exploring.

It was Piaget's belief that the way children ultimately learn, is by them being active in their learning and that knowledge is, not merely transmitted verbally but must be constructed and reconstructed by the learner, ( www. sk.com.br/sk-piaget.html)

His theory is also rooted in the belief that children need to be ready:that children at a certain stage cannot be taught the concepts of a higher stage (for more on this see post).

A Piaget influenced curricula

A Piaget influenced curricula, upholds the belief that children need to explore, to experiment, (and something close to my heart), to question. It advocates that children should be provided with opportunities to discuss and debate with each other, with teachers acting as guides and facilitators. Moreover, that children should be able to make mistakes and learn from them.

The four main teaching implications from Piaget's theory has been outlined by Berk (2001). These are:

i) A focus on the process of children's thinking, not just its products.

This refers to teachers not only checking a child's answer for example, but understanding how the child arrived at that answer. What thought processes did they go through? It is only when the teacher understands the child's methods, that they in a position to build on the child's level of cognitive functioning.

ii) Recognition of the crucial role of children's self-initiated, active involvement in learning activities.

This refers to children being able to discover things for themselves through spontaneous interaction with their environment rather than the presentation of ready made knowledge.

iii) A de-emphasis on practices aimed at making children adult like in their thinking.

When speaking to educators around the world, Piaget noticed that many of them were interested in how they could speed up children's development; particularly those in the USA. Piaget believed that premature teaching, (i.e. teaching the child something before they are ready), could be worse than no teaching at all, because it leads to superficial acceptance of adult formulas rather than true cognitive understanding (May and Kundert, 1997).

iv) Acceptance of individual differences in developmental progress.

A key feature of Piaget's theory was that children progress through the cognitive stages at different rates. This being the case, a child's progress should be measured against their, previous course of development, not in terms of normative standards provided by the performances of same age peers. ( http://wps.ablongman.com/ab_slavin_edpsych_8/38/9951/2547688.cw/content/)

Closing comments

The final teaching implication seems to be very much at odds with what is happening in a lot of our schools today. Standardised tests are commonplace and it is difficult to see how they can measure against previous individual development. By their nature, they also do not take into account that children learn at different rates.

My daughter hasn't yet started primary school, but I already know that the standardised testing, as well as the sheer amount of it, will prove to be a bone of contention!
If you have any experiences/comments that you would like to share based on this post, then I'd love to hear about them in the comments section below.
References
http://wps.ablongman.com/ab_slavin_edpsych_8/38/9951/2547688.cw/content/
Education Psychology: theory and practice, Robert E. Slavin
www.piaget.weebly.com/educational-implications-activities
www.ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education

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Piaget's Influence on Educational Practices - Minds of Wonder

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The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done. (Jean Piaget 1896-1980) How has Piaget's theory Influenced education practices? Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts....little vessels...ready to have imperial gallons of facts [...]

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TED talk (bringing up key concepts of Piaget's beliefs on education)

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TED talk (bringing up key concepts of Piaget's beliefs on education)

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Alan November is recognized internationally as a leader in education technology. He began his career as an oceanography teacher and dorm counselor at an island reform school for boys in Boston Harbor. He has been a director of an alternative high school, computer coordinator, technology consultant, and university lecturer.

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Key Concepts of Piaget's Theory of Education (video)

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Key Concepts of Piaget's Theory of Education (video)

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In the video 4 Keys to CSLE+COVA and in the upcoming CSLE+COVA book my colleagues and I are just about to release we argue that we need to take a positive approach to exploring how we improve or enhance the learning environment and we propose the following four keys or presuppositions to creating significant learning environments by giving learners choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning:

1. Anything we do for the learner will improve achievement.

2. There has never been a better time to be a learner.

3. There really are no new fundamental approaches to learning; just new ways of combining well-established ideas.

4. There is no quick fix to learning, the classroom or education.

I want to focus on the 3rd point where I argue that there really are no new fundamental approaches to learning; just new ways of combining well-established ideas. I am not alone in the assertion; Piaget made a similar claim over fifty years ago. Ginsburg and Opper (1969) point out in the summary of their book Piaget's theology of intellectual development: An introduction:

It should be clear that these ideas are not particularly new. The "Progressive" education movement has proposed similar principles for many years. Piaget's contribution is not in developing new educational ideas, but in providing a vast body of data and theory which provide a sound basis for a "progressive" approach to the schools. A long time ago, John Dewey, in rejecting traditional approaches to education called for and attempted to provide a "philosophy of experience"; that is a thorough explication of the ways in which children make use of experience in genuine learning. Piaget has gone a long way toward meeting this need (p. 231)

Piaget spent most of his career, over fifty years, observing and interviewing children of all ages as he gathered the data to support his theories. It is extremely important that we recognize that "none of the investigators whose theories have been used to explain the development of children-Freud, Lewin, Hull, Miller and Dollard, Skinner, Werner-has studied children as extensively as Piaget (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969 p. x).

We should be shocked and concerned to learn that Skinner who is one of the originators of the Behaviourist approach that still dominates our educational system "hardly studied children at all" (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969 p. x).

Despite writing over 30 full-length books and over 100 articles, being the first theorist to provide an effective empirical argument against behaviorism, and being viewed as one of the founding fathers of constructivism, Piaget full body of work is all too often ignored. Piaget's writing may be viewed as difficult to read for a contemporary audience that may lack the necessary philosophical background. Even though many hold Piaget to be one of the foremost authorities on child development he did not intend to focus on the field of child developmental psychology but was more interested in dealing with the problems in the philosophical study of epistemology which is concerned with how we come to know and how we attain knowledge-how we learn. Piaget's writing may be difficult to access because he is first a philosopher and only used the science of psychology to help him deal with the philosophical issues of knowledge. He also felt that many epistemological problems were essentially psychological and scientific method would help him to move from the speculation of philosophy and move more of an objective explanation.

This notion of how we come to know or make meaningful connection and essentially learn is a fundamental aspect of the CLSE+COVA approach and as we have stated earlier we owe much of our foundational thinking to Dewey, Piaget, Brunner, Papert and more contemporary authors who provide current interpretations on these foundational works. Ginsburg and Opper (1969) chapter Genetic epistemology and the implications of Piaget's finding for education offers some the most accessible and concise summaries of Piaget's ideas that we have incorporated into CSLE+COVA. The chapter deals with much more than what I will share below but my intention is to make Piaget's work accessible rather than expand on his blending of philosophy and psychology. Since this particular issue of Ginsburg and Opper (1969) book Piaget's theology of intellectual development: An introduction is out of print and only used copies are available I will share as much of the final chapter of the book that I can. Newer editions of the book are also out of print but used copies are available online. Where ever expedient I will paraphrase the writing and where it is more appropriate I will use direct quotes.
Active learning - Authentic Learning Opportunities

Perhaps the most important single proposition that an educator can derive from Piaget's work and thus use in the classroom, is that children, especially young ones, learn best from concrete activities. (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969 p. 220).

The concrete activities that Piaget refer to can easily be mapped to the authentic learning opportunities that we recommend in COVA. Our use of the notion of authentic correlates to concrete in the sense that the activities have a "real-world" component and are activities that the learner can fully engage. Ginsburg and Opper (1969) expand on how a teacher would create this type of a Piagetian classroom or learning environment.

For these reasons a good school encourage the child's activity and their manipulation and exploration of objects. When the teacher tries to bypass this process by imparting knowledge in a verbal manner, the result is superficial learning. But by promoting activity in the classroom the teacher exploits the child's potential for learning and permits them to evolve an understanding of the world around them. This principle (that occurs through the child's activity) suggests that the teacher's major task is to provide for the child a wide variety of potentially interesting materials on which them may act. The teacher should not teach, but should encourage the child to learn by manipulating things (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969 p. 221).

This notion of active learning means that an educator must reorient traditional their beliefs about education and focus the fact that:

Teachers can, in fact, impart or teach very little. It is true that they can get the child to say certain things, but these verbalizations often indicate little in the way of real understanding. Second, it is seldom legitimate to conceive of knowledge as a thing which can be transmitted. Certainly, the child needs to learn some facts, and these may be considered things; the child must discover them for themselves. Also, facts are but a small portion of real knowledge. True understanding involves action, on both the motoric and intellectual level...The teacher's job then is not so much to transmit facts or concepts to the child but to get them to act on both the physical and mental levels. These actions-far more than imposed facts or concepts- constitute real knowledge. (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969 p. 222).

Since information transfer isn't the role of the teacher creating a significant learning environment in which the learner is able to discover things for themselves is the key. We would argue that this guided discover happens by giving the learner choice, ownership and voice through authentic learning opportunities.
Ownership of Learning

Equilibration theory emphasizes that the self-regulatory process are the basis for genuine learning. The child is more apt to modify their cognitive structure in a constructive way when they control their own learning than when methods of social transmission (in this case teaching) are employed. Do recall Smedslund's experiments on the acquisition of conservation. If one tries to teach this concept to a child who does not yet have available the mental structure necessary for its assimilation, then the resulting learning is superficial. On the other hand, when children are allowed to progress at their pace through the normal sequence of development, they regulate their own learning so as to construct the cognitive structures necessary for the genuine understanding of conservation (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969 p. 224).

Ginsburg and Opper (1969) indicate that Piaget would then argue that to take these principles seriously then one must extensive change classroom practice. Teachers should:

Be aware and assess the learners current level of understanding/functioning.

Orient the classroom toward the individual rather than the group.

Give the learner considerable control over their learning.

The following section summary captures what this type of learning would look like. Piaget argues that the classroom unit should be disbanded and that learners work on individual projects that they are interested in and given considerable freedom in their learning. To deal with the most common objectives to this learning arrangement Piaget suggests learners shouldn't all be learning the same thing at the same time and that we should have more faith in the intellectual life of the learner. He stresses the importance of tailoring the learning to the individual and points out how important it is to allow the child and the adolescent to follow their interests and control how they acquire knowledge through their own directed activities apart from instruction in school and formal instruction.

Perhaps the most poignant example of how foolish it is for us to attempt to rigidly control all aspects of learning with traditional teaching methods is to consider how an infant is interested in the world around them is able to learn so much without formal instruction.

One need only watch an infant for a short period of time to know that they are curious, interested in the world around them, and eager to learn. It is quite evident, too, that these are characteristics of older children as well. If left to themselves the normal child does not remain immobile; they are eager to learn. Consequently, it is quite safe to permit the child to structure their own learning. The danger arises precisely when the schools attempt to perform the stalk for them. To understand this point consider, the absurd situations that would result if traditional schools were entrusted with teaching the infant what they spontaneously learn during the first few years. The schools would develop organized curricula, in secondary curricular reactions; they would develop lesson plans for object permanence; they would construct audio-visual aids on causality; they would reinforce "correct" speech; and they would set "goals" for the child to reach each week. One can speculate as to the outcome of such a program for early training. What the student needs then is not formal teaching, but an opportunity to learn. They need to be given a rich environment, containing many things potentially of interest. They need a teacher who is sensitive to their needs, who can judge what materials will challenge them at a given point in time, who can help when they need help and who has faith in their capacity to learn (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969 p. 224-225).

Social interaction
Piaget suggests that in addition to physical experience and concrete manipulations the learner needs social experience and interactions with a wide assortment of people. He points out that younger children learn to relinquish their egocentrism through social interaction and adjust to others at the emotional level. In addition, the social interaction helps the learner to become more coherent and logical and use language to discover reality and internalize the experience into a compact category of experience. Piaget argues:

...social interaction should play a significant role in the classroom. Children should talk with one another. They should converse, share experience, and argue. It is hard to see why schools force the child to be quiet when the results seem to be only an authoritarian situation and extreme boredom. Let us restrict the vow of silence to selected orders of monks and nuns (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969 p. 228).

Traditional Methods of Instruction

Piaget's theory implies that there are grave deficiencies in "traditional" methods of instruction, especially in the early years of school. By "traditional" methods we mean cases in which the teacher uses a lesson plan to direct the students through a given sequence of material; attempts to transmit the material to the students by means of lectures and other verbal explanations; forces all students to cover essentially the same lessons; and employs a textbook as the basic medium for instruction. Under such an arrangement students take fixed positions in a classroom; talk to one another only at the risk of punishment; are required to listen to the teacher; must study the material which the teacher feels is necessary to study; and must try to learn from books. It is, of course, the case that teachers differ in degree to which they employ traditional methods. No two classrooms are identical, and it would be difficult to find one which is traditional in all respects and at all times. Nevertheless, traditional methods are still highly influential in education today, as even casual observations of the school reveal (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969 p. 229).

This traditional environment is based on four assumptions that have some aspect of merit but are acted upon in the traditional school in an excessive manner.

1. Students at a given age level should learn the same material. While it is true that there are levels of development and age-appropriate instruction the traditional school forces students to cover the same material each day the traditional method ignores the fact that there are individual differences in the pace of learning.

2. Students learn through verbal explanation from the teacher or through written exposition in books. While this has some element of truth Piaget's research shows that students verbal explanations are only useful after a basis of concrete activity.

3. If given greater control over their learning students would waste their time and learn little. If students aren't given guidance then they would waste their time but this doesn't mean they should have no control. Piaget points to research that a major part of learning depends on the self-regulatory process. In addition, we can't ignore just how much students learn outside of school.

4. Uncontrolled taking in class is disruptive to the educational process. Piaget points out that while excessive noise may prevent learning he also points to the fact that teachers are more distracted by noise then students. The noise is worthwhile because the clash of opinions and the intelligent and spontaneous conversations is beneficial for mental growth.

The following quote from Piaget offers a helpful summary of his educational goals:

The principle goal of education is to create [people] who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done-[people] who are creative, inventive and discoverers. The second goal of education is to form minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered. The great danger today is of slogans, collective opinions, ready-made trends of thought. We have to be able to resist individually, to criticize, to distinguish between what is proven and what is not. So we need pupils where active, who learn early to find out by themselves, partly by their own spontaneous activity and partly through material we set up for them; who learn early to tell what is verifiable and what is simply the first idea to come to them (Duckworth, 1964 p. 175).

References
Ginsburg, H., & Opper, S. (1969). Piaget's theology of intellectual development: An introduction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Duckworth, E. (1964). Piaget rediscovered. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2(3), 172-175.

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In the video 4 Keys to CSLE+COVA and in the upcoming CSLE+COVA book my colleagues and I are just about to release we argue that we need to take a positive approach to exploring how we improve or enhance the learning environment and we propose the following four keys or presuppositions to creating significant learning environments by giving learners choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning: Anything we do for the learner will improve achievement.

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Piaget’s theory of education - THE EDUCATION HUB

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An overview of Piaget’s key educational principles

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Biography (simple video explaining Jean Piaget's life and work)

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Biography (simple video explaining Jean Piaget's life and work)

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Biography and Awards/Major Achievements and Contributions

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Biography and Awards/Major Achievements and Contributions

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Also Known As: Jean William Fritz Piaget

Born Country: Switzerland

Born in: Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Spouse/Ex-: Valentine Châtenay

father: Arthur Piaget

mother: Rebecca Jackson

children: Jacqueline Piaget, Laurent Piaget, Lucienne Piaget

place of death: Geneva, Switzerland

education: University of Neuchâtel, University of Zurich

awards: 1979 - Balzan Prize for Social and Political Sciences
- Erasmus Prize

Who was Jean Piaget?

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist and philosopher best known for his work on the cognitive development in children. He identified his field of study as 'genetic epistemology', a theory which combines cognitive development with epistemological view. Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, origin, extent, and limits of human knowledge. What Piaget studied was the impact of genetics on the epistemological process. An intelligent child with a curious mind, Jean Piaget's inclination towards scientific research was evident from his childhood when he began researching on an albino sparrow when he was just 11 years old. His interests later on were directed at psychoanalysis and he assisted Alfred Binet, the developer of Binet intelligence tests in marking the tests. During this time he became interested in the process of cognitive development in young children which differed considerably form the cognitive processes of older children and adults, and this motivated him to study the development of thinking processes in children. He considered education as a very important tool of imparting knowledge and believed that only education had the power of saving future societies from possible collapse. He founded the International Center for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva and served as its director till his death.

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Who was Jean Piaget? Everything You Need to Know

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Also Known As: Jean William Fritz Piaget Born Country: Switzerland Born in: Neuchâtel, Switzerland Spouse/Ex-: Valentine Châtenay father: Arthur Piaget mother: Rebecca Jackson children: Jacqueline Piaget, Laurent Piaget, Lucienne Piaget place of death: Geneva, Switzerland education: University of Neuchâtel, University of Zurich awards: 1979 - Balzan Prize for Social and Political Sciences - Erasmus Prize Who was Jean Piaget?

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Main Theories and Psychological Contributions

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Main Theories and Psychological Contributions

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Sociology Group: Welcome to Social Sciences Blog

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Jean Piaget, a prominent figure in developmental psychology, was known for his theories that helped create an understanding of early development. In the field of psychology, developmental psychology has played a crucial role in understanding the development of the human mind. Combining evolutionary findings with present-day research developmental psychology aims at studying the change in human beings at the various stages of life. Developmental psychology aims at catering to the changing emotional and social needs of individuals.

The following article looks at a brief introduction of Piaget's life, followed by understanding his two most prominent theories, Theory of Cognitive Development and Theory of Moral Development. The article also looks at influences of his theory on other works and criticisms of these theories.

Jean Piaget: Biography and Developmental Theories

Jean Piaget was a Swiss Psychologist who was born in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Piaget was passionate about biology and philosophy right from an early age. He, later on, went to combine his two interests and was described as an epistemologist. Epistemology studies philosophical concepts such as knowledge, ethics, morality and logic. Piaget is acclaimed for his work in developmental psychology, where his theory of cognitive development and theory of moral development are two of the most prominent theories in the field. Apart from these two, Piaget is also known for his influence on education, as well as philosophers. Piaget's work on understanding cognitive development was influenced by his observations amongst younger children, who were consistent in the mistakes they made, unlike others. His work on understanding morality in children was influenced by making observations, amongst children once again, which led to the development of Piaget's theory on morality which was also influenced by Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis. Freud's theory of psychoanalysis looks at personality development. Freud's theory looked at the three structures of personality, the Id, Ego and Superego, which influenced Piaget's theory of moral development.

Read: 10 Famous Psychologists and Contributions

Piaget: Theory of Cognitive Development

The theory of cognitive development looked at the development of children from birth until the age of eleven. Piaget's theory was based on observations of his daughter and nephew. Piaget found his theory on the Schema Theory developed by Frederich Bartlett (1932). Schemas are mental frameworks that help organise new information into pre-existing units created from previous knowledge. Piaget stated that children are born with some schemas which are modified as a result of experience and further information. Piaget termed the modification of schemas as adaptation. Piaget divided adaptation into two types.

1. Assimilation - when new information can be categorised into existing schemas

2. Accommodation - when new schemas need to be made or modification of existing schemas need to happen to accommodate the further information

Piaget stated that the development of a child is divided into four stages. Each stage was distinguished by an age range and specific developmental milestones associated with it.

Stage 1 - Sensorimotor (birth to 2 years)

Infants in this stage lack dominant schemas except for schemas of senses (such as sucking). Due to a lack of formal schemas, children in this stage are limited to their knowledge about their world. As a result, infants cannot distinguish themselves from the environment as they lack knowledge of the environment. This is known as profound egocentrism. Children in the early parts of the stage, (up to 8 months) lack object permanence. This means that if an infant can not see the object, the object ceases to exist. This also means that a child will only look in the place where the child last saw it. Object permanence completely develops at the age of 18 to 24 months, as children begin developing schemas about the world around them.

Stage 2 - Preoperational ( 2 to 7 years)

Once object permanence is established, children begin to think and use language and visual representations (such as drawings) to express their thoughts, however, cannot distinguish between animate and inanimate objects. Children also develop egocentrism, where they can not comprehend another person's perspective when looking at objects. Children begin thinking but still lack concepts such as reversibility ( for example a multiplied by b is equal to b multiplied by a) conservation (for example 2 glasses of the same size with water are poured into two glasses wherein one is taller than the other, the child will believe the taller glass has more water) and classification (for example a Labrador is a dog as well as a mammal).

Stage 3 - Concrete Operational (7 to 11 years)

The development of concrete schemas characterises this stage, hence the name. This stage, children develop logical thinking and understand conservation. They develop reasoning and logic. However, they still can not grasp abstract concepts and are bound by reality in their thinking. Egocentrism begins to diminish, and children start to learn to look at other people's perspectives and can comprehend the notion of differing thoughts and perceptions of other people.

Stage 4 - Formal Operational (11 years onwards)

Children are considered to have fully developed mental structures at this stage. Children at this age can understand abstract concepts such as morals and love. They are also able to imagine themselves in other people's positions and roles without actual enactment of the incident. They even can comprehend abstract and hypothetical situations which they have never been exposed to. Self-consciousness and self-focusing emerge in this phase. A distorted version of egocentrism returns where the individual is faced with the inability to distinguish self from others which creates a distorted sense of self and others.

Influences and Critiques of Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget's theory of cognitive development allows other psychologists to understand development in other forms such as Lev Vygotsky's theory of language development. Piaget's theory is generalizable across several cultures which have been proven. However, there have been criticisms as Piaget ignored the importance of language. He also ignores the impact of the environment and upbringing's influence. (nature and nurture) His theory, although generalisable does not hold in cases of feral children as they don't have exposure to nurture, which poses as a critique of his theory.

Piaget: Theory of Moral Development

The theory of moral development is seen to have a significant impact on the understanding of morality in children. The theory looks at morality, the ability to distinguish right from wrong, and it's development. Morality is dictated by the need to live in a society, the survival of the human race hence creating norms for right and wrong. Sigmund Freud was once again a significant influence in laying the foundation for morality. He stated that morality develops by the age of 6. Children below the age were seen as belonging to the pre-moral stage where the difficulty to comprehend rules as stated in his previous theory (in the preoperational stage) as children in this age group also cannot see from the perspective of others. Piaget worked on understanding morality in children through a game. He theorised two forms of morality.

Heteronomous Morality (5 to 10 years)

In this stage, children do not have autonomy as they are considered too young, and hence morality is imposed by others (such as parents and teachers). Children at this stage believe that the morality imposed (in the form of rules0 must be followed as breaking will result in punishment. Here, children do not question the rules and believe that the rules are unchangeable and know that they result in consequences. Hence the amount of damage influences the extent to which the action is wrong even if it was accidental as it is considered "bad behaviour".

Autonomous morality (10 years onwards)

This stage is also known as moral relativism as here, the children and people above the age of 10 see themselves as being old enough to make their own rules. The egocentrism which is slowly diminishing as the children are almost reaching the stage of formal operational where they can comprehend morals and values independently. Here, children understand that the rules are imposed by authority. They understand that the rules in this stage are seen as flexible but some are also fixed. Children over the age of ten also take on moral responsibility where they understand the consequences and despite that, choose to own up to their mistakes. They follow social norms and understand the purpose of punishment.

Critiques of Theory of Moral Development

Although the study helps understand morality in children as a whole his theory has proven to be very age restrictive which has been disproved as further research by later psychologists noticed morality in young children in the form of telling the difference between the lie and the truth. In his theory, unlike cognitive development, morality is highly influenced by reinforcement from cultural values which was not taken into account. The variations in cultures lead to questioning the generalisability of the theory. However, the theory laid a formation for understanding morality, and it's development.
Conclusion
Piaget's works have been used as a basis for further research by several other psychologists such as Vygotsky. Piaget's theories are still considered to be of profound importance despite counter-evidence as the two theories covered in the article, the theory of cognitive development and the theory of moral development, help create an understanding for behaviours observed in the various stages of development in a person's life. Piaget's findings in the cognitive development theory had been proven to be adaptable cross-culturally, making it a crucial need in understanding developmental psychology. Piaget's second theory follows the development of morality in children in two phases. One thing to be noted is that Piaget's theories are not always applicable as the role of the environment; genetics can influence a variation in his fixed age groups. His theories have also been criticised for ignoring the differences amongst children in processing information which makes his theories reliability amongst the general population low as his samples were small and the method of testing for creation of the theories were not standardised.

References

Bapat, D. (2019).Moral Development. Lecture, FLAME University.

Bapat, D. (2019).Piaget Lecture, FLAME University.

Cherry, K. (2020). What Are Piaget's Four Stages of Development?. Retrieved 17 July 2020, from https://www.verywellmind.com/piagets-stages-of-cognitive-development-2795457

Holt, R. (1980). Freud's Impact on Modern Morality. The Hastings Center Report , (2), 38. doi: 10.2307/3561279

Jay, M. (2020). Sigmund Freud | Biography, Theories, Works, & Facts. Retrieved 17 July 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sigmund-Freud

Law, A., Halkiopoulos, C., & Bryan-Zaykov, C. (2010). Psychology . Oxford, U.K.: Pearson Education.

Mcleod, S. (2015). Piaget's Theory of Moral Development | Simply Psychology. Retrieved 17 July 2020, from https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget-moral.html

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Jean Piaget: Biography and Contributions to Psychology

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Jean Piaget, a prominent figure in developmental psychology, was known for his theories that helped create an understanding of early development. In the field of psychology, developmental psychology has played a crucial role in understanding the development of the human mind.

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Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of learning. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence. Piaget's stages are:

Sensorimotor stage: Birth to 2 years

Preoperational stage: Ages 2 to 7

Concrete operational stage: Ages 7 to 11

Formal operational stage: Ages 12 and up

Piaget believed that children take an active role in the learning process, acting much like little scientists as they perform experiments, make observations, and learn about the world. As kids interact with the world around them, they continually add new knowledge, build upon existing knowledge, and adapt previously held ideas to accommodate new information.

History of Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget was born in Switzerland in the late 1800s and was a precocious student, publishing his first scientific paper when he was just 11 years old. His early exposure to the intellectual development of children came when he worked as an assistant to Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon as they worked to standardize their famous IQ test.

Piaget vs. Vygotsky

Piaget's theory differs in important ways from those of Lev Vygotsky, another influential figure in the field of child development. Vygotsky acknowledged the roles that curiosity and active involvement play in learning, but placed greater emphasis on society and culture.

Piaget felt that development is largely fueled from within, while Vygotsky believed that external factors (such as culture) and people (such as parents, caregivers, and peers) play a more significant role.

Much of Piaget's interest in the cognitive development of children was inspired by his observations of his own nephew and daughter. These observations reinforced his budding hypothesis that children's minds were not merely smaller versions of adult minds.

Until this point in history, children were largely treated simply as smaller versions of adults. Piaget was one of the first to identify that the way that children think is different from the way adults think.

Piaget proposed that intelligence grows and develops through a series of stages. Older children do not just think more quickly than younger children. Instead, there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between the thinking of young children versus older children.

Based on his observations, he concluded that children were not less intelligent than adults-they simply think differently. Albert Einstein called Piaget's discovery "so simple only a genius could have thought of it."

Piaget's stage theory describes the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development involves changes in cognitive process and abilities. In Piaget's view, early cognitive development involves processes based upon actions and later progresses to changes in mental operations.

The Sensorimotor Stage of Cognitive Development

During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. A child's entire experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.
Birth to 2 Years
Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

Know the world through movements and sensations

Learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening

Learn that things continue to exist even when they cannot be seen (object permanence)

Realize that they are separate beings from the people and objects around them

Realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them

During the sensorimotor stage, children go through a period of dramatic growth and learning. As kids interact with their environment, they continually make new discoveries about how the world works.

The cognitive development that occurs during this period takes place over a relatively short time and involves a great deal of growth. Children not only learn how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking; they also learn a great deal about language from the people with whom they interact. Piaget also broke this stage down into substages. Early representational thought emerges during the final part of the sensorimotor stage.

Piaget believed that developing object permanence or object constancy, the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, was an important element at this point of development.

By learning that objects are separate and distinct entities and that they have an existence of their own outside of individual perception, children are then able to begin to attach names and words to objects.

The Preoperational Stage of Cognitive Development

The foundations of language development may have been laid during the previous stage, but the emergence of language is one of the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development.
2 to 7 Years
Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

Begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects

Tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others

Getting better with language and thinking, but still tend to think in very concrete terms

At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy.

Children become much more skilled at pretend play during this stage of development, yet they continue to think very concretely about the world around them.

For example, a researcher might take a lump of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then give a child the choice between two pieces of clay to play with. One piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball while the other is smashed into a flat pancake shape. Because the flat shape looks larger, the preoperational child will likely choose that piece, even though the two pieces are exactly the same size.

The Concrete Operational Stage of Cognitive Development

While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in development, they become much more adept at using logic.﻿﻿ The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as kids become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation.
7 to 11 Years
Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

Begin to think logically about concrete events

Begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example

Thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete

Begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle

While thinking becomes much more logical during the concrete operational state, it can also be very rigid. Kids at this point in development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.

During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people might think and feel. Kids in the concrete operational stage also begin to understand that their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

The Formal Operational Stage of Cognitive Development

The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas. At this point, adolescents and young adults become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.
Age 12 and Up
Major characteristics and developmental changes during this time:

Begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems

Begins to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning

Begins to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information

The ability to thinking about abstract ideas and situations is the key hallmark of the formal operational stage of cognitive development. The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about hypothetical situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this stage.

Important Cognitive Development Concepts

It is important to note that Piaget did not view children's intellectual development as a quantitative process. That is, kids do not just add more information and knowledge to their existing knowledge as they get older.

Instead, Piaget suggested that there is a qualitative change in how children think as they gradually process through these four stages. At age 7, children don't just have more information about the world than they did at age 2; there is a fundamental change in how they think about the world.

Piaget suggested several factors that influence how children learn and grow.

A schema describes both the mental and physical actions involved in understanding and knowing. Schemas are categories of knowledge that help us to interpret and understand the world.

In Piaget's view, a schema includes both a category of knowledge and the process of obtaining that knowledge. As experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add to, or change previously existing schemas.

For example, a child may have a schema about a type of animal, such as a dog. If the child's sole experience has been with small dogs, a child might believe that all dogs are small, furry, and have four legs. Suppose then that the child encounters an enormous dog. The child will take in this new information, modifying the previously existing schema to include these new observations.

Assimilation

The process of taking in new information into our already existing schemas is known as assimilation. The process is somewhat subjective because we tend to modify experiences and information slightly to fit in with our preexisting beliefs. In the example above, seeing a dog and labeling it "dog" is a case of assimilating the animal into the child's dog schema.

Accommodation

Another part of adaptation is the ability to change existing schemas in light of new information; this process is known as accommodation. New schemas may also be developed during this process.

Equilibration

As children progress through the stages of cognitive development, it is important to maintain a balance between applying previous knowledge (assimilation) and changing behavior to account for new knowledge (accommodation).

Piaget believed that all children try to strike a balance between assimilation and accommodation using a mechanism he called equilibration. Equilibration helps explain how children can move from one stage of thought to the next.

One of the main points of Piaget's theory is that creating knowledge and intelligence is an inherently active process.

"I find myself opposed to the view of knowledge as a passive copy of reality," Piaget wrote. "I believe that knowing an object means acting upon it, constructing systems of transformations that can be carried out on or with this object. Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality."

Piaget's theory of cognitive development helped add to our understanding of children's intellectual growth. It also stressed that children were not merely passive recipients of knowledge. Instead, kids are constantly investigating and experimenting as they build their understanding of how the world works.

Additional Reading

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What Is Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development?

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Psychologist Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development has 4 stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.