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https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/piagetstheory/

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The significant influence of Piaget's theory on cognitive behaviour and developmental psychology. Piaget also credited as a pioneer of the constructivist theory.

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The significant influence of Piaget's theory on cognitive behaviour and developmental psychology. Piaget also credited as a pioneer of the constructivist theory.

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Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist and genetic epistemologist. You may have heard of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, for which he is famous. This theory looks at how children develop intellectually throughout the course of childhood.

At a Glance

Overview of Piaget's Life and Work

Prior to Piaget's theory, children were often thought of simply as mini-adults. Instead, Piaget suggested that the way children think is fundamentally different from the way that adults think.

Piaget's theory had a tremendous influence on the emergence of developmental psychology as a distinctive subfield within psychology and contributed greatly to the field of education. He is also credited as a pioneer of the constructivist theory, which suggests that people actively construct their knowledge of the world based on the interaction between their ideas and experiences.

In a 2002 survey of 1,725 American Psychological Society members, Piaget was named the second most influential psychologist of the 20th century.

Biography of Piaget's Life

Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland on August 9, 1896, and began showing an interest in the natural sciences at a very early age.

By the time he was 11, Piaget had already started his career as a researcher by writing a short paper on an albino sparrow.

Piaget continued to study the natural sciences and received his doctorate in zoology from the University of Neuchâtel in 1918. During this time, he published two essays that provided a foundation for his future thoughts and theories.

While his early career consisted of work in the natural sciences, during the 1920s he began to move toward work as a psychologist.

Personal Life

Piaget married Valentine Châtenay in 1923 and the couple went on to have three children. Piaget's observations of his own children served as the basis for many of his later theories.

Later Years

In 1925, Piaget returned to the University of Neuchâtel as a professor of psychology, sociology, and philosophy. From 1929 to 1967, he served as the Director of the International Bureau of Education in Geneva. He also taught at the University of Geneva.

Piaget founded the International Center for Genetic Epistemology in 1955. He died in 1980 and was buried in Geneva.

Piaget Biographies

Piaget's Career and Theories

Piaget had several ideas or theories about cognitive development throughout his career.

Intellectual Development

Piaget developed an interest in psychoanalysis and spent a year working at a boys' institution created by Alfred Binet. Binet is known as the developer of the world's first intelligence test, and Piaget took part in scoring these assessments.

Roots of Knowledge

Piaget identified himself as a genetic epistemologist. In his paper Genetic Epistemology, Piaget explained, "What the genetic epistemology proposes is discovering the roots of the different varieties of knowledge, since its elementary forms, following to the next levels, including also the scientific knowledge."

His early work with Binet's intelligence tests led Piaget to conclude that children think differently than adults. While this is a widely accepted notion today, it was considered revolutionary at the time. It was this observation that inspired his interest in understanding how knowledge grows throughout childhood.

Piaget suggested that children sort the knowledge they acquire through their experiences and interactions into groupings known as schemas. When new information is acquired, it can either be assimilated into existing schemas or accommodated through revising an existing schema or creating an entirely new category of information.

Stages of Cognitive Development

Today, Jean Piaget is best known for his research on children's cognitive development. Piaget studied the intellectual development of his own three children and created a theory that described the stages that children pass through in the development of intelligence and formal thought processes.

The four stages of Piaget's theory are as follows:

Sensorimotor stage: The first stage of development lasts from birth to approximately age 2. At this point in development, children know the world primarily through their senses and movements.

Preoperational stage: The second stage of development lasts from the ages of 2 to 7 and is characterized by the development of language and the emergence of symbolic play.

Concrete operational stage: The third stage of cognitive development lasts from the age of 7 to approximately age 11. At this point, logical thought emerges, but children still struggle with abstract and theoretical thinking.

Formal operational stage: In the fourth and final stage of cognitive development, lasting from age 12 and into adulthood, children become much more adept at abstract thought and deductive reasoning.

Additional Reading

Piaget's Contributions to Psychology

Piaget contributed to psychology in various ways. He provided support for the idea that children think differently than adults and his research identified several important milestones in the mental development of children. His work also generated interest in cognitive and developmental psychology.

Piaget's theories are widely studied today by students of both psychology and education. In the case of the latter, he once said, "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."

Piaget's Influence on Psychology

Piaget's theories continue to be studied in the areas of psychology, sociology, education, and genetics. His work contributed to our understanding of the cognitive development of children. Piaget helped demonstrate that childhood is a unique and important period of human development.

In their 2005 text, "The Science of False Memory," authors C.J. Brainerd and V.F. Reyna wrote of Piaget's influence: "In the course of a long and hugely prolific career, he contributed important scholarly work to fields as diverse as the philosophy of science, linguistics, education, sociology, and evolutionary biology. Above all, however, he was the developmental psychologist of the 20th century.

For two decades, from the early 1960s to the early 1980s, Piagetian theory and Piaget's research findings dominated developmental psychology worldwide, much as Freud's ideas had dominated abnormal psychology a generation before. Almost single-handedly, he shifted the focus of developmental research away from its traditional concerns with social and emotional development and toward cognitive development."

Influence on Psychologists

Piaget's work influenced other notable psychologists including Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg.

Howard Gardner: Gardner developed the theory of multiple intelligences in the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike Piaget, Gardner believed that there are various types of intelligence vs. a single type of intelligence of which people have greater or lesser amounts. Gardner cited Piaget as greatly influencing his work, as he sought to prove Piaget's theory wrong.

Robert Sternberg: Similar to Gardner, Sternberg's work uses classical theories of intelligence like Piaget's, but contradicts them. Sternberg is best-known for his triarchic theory of intelligence in which he posits there are three types of intelligence: practical, creative, and analytical. According to Sternberg, IQ tests only measure analytic intelligence, which doesn't give a complete picture of someone's intelligence.

Influence on Education

Piaget's work continues to influence education. He advocated for the following principles, which are still often used in classrooms:

Discovery learning: This emphasizes the idea that children should be given the freedom to explore and discover new information on their own. A learning environment should also provide courses such as music, dance, and art.

Problem-solving: Piaget believed that children should be taught by solving problems; in addition, teachers should pay attention to how a child arrives at a correct answer.

Stage-based teaching: Since each child falls into a different stage of cognitive development (and children progress through the stages in their own time), Piaget believed it was important that the learning environment reflects which stage a child is in.

Jean Piaget Quotes

Here is a selection of some of Jean Piaget's most famous quotes.

On Genetic Epistemology

"What the genetic epistemology proposes is discovering the roots of the different varieties of knowledge, since its elementary forms, following to the next levels, including also the scientific knowledge."

"The fundamental hypothesis of genetic epistemology is that there is a parallelism between the progress made in the logical and rational organization of knowledge and the corresponding formative psychological processes. With that hypothesis, the most fruitful, most obvious field of study would be the reconstituting of human history-the history of human thinking in prehistoric man. Unfortunately, we are not very well informed in the psychology of primitive man, but there are children all around us, and it is in studying children that we have the best chance of studying the development of logical knowledge, physical knowledge, and so forth."

On Cognitive Development

"Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality. They are more or less isomorphic to transformations of reality. The transformational structures of which knowledge consists are not copies of the transformations in reality; they are simply possible isomorphic models among which experience can enable us to choose. Knowledge, then, is a system of transformations that become progressively adequate."

On Education

"Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them something too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves."

On Intelligence

"Furthermore, intelligence itself does not consist of an isolated and sharply differentiated class of cognitive processes. It is not, properly speaking, one form of structuring among others; it is the form of equilibrium towards which all the structures arise out of perception, habit and elementary sensorimotor mechanisms tend."

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Piaget known for?

Piaget is known for his theory of cognitive development that first introduced the notion that children think differently than adults, which was a new way of thinking at the time. He is also known for creating the term "genetic epistemology," which refers to the study of knowledge development.

According to Jean Piaget, in what stage do children begin to use language?

Children begin to develop language during the preoperational stage, according to Piaget's theory. This is the second stage of development and begins when the child is around 2 years of age and lasts until they are roughly 7.

How did Jean Piaget define egocentrism?

Piaget defined egocentrism as a mindset that "vivifies the external world and materialises the internal world." Put simply, it is having a greater focus on one's own thoughts and feelings than on the thoughts and feelings of others.

Piaget theorized that egocentrism developed between the stages of autistic thought (thought that is undirected and symbolic) and scientific thought (thought that is more logical and socialized)-which is roughly between the ages of 3 and 7.

Why is Jean Piaget important?

Piaget's cognitive development theory changed the way we look at child development-namely, that children have different thought processes than adults. His contributions greatly influenced future developmental theories within the psychology field while also impacting other fields as well, such as education, sociology, and genetics.

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Jean Piaget's Life and Contributions to Psychology

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Jean Piaget is a psychologist who developed a theory of cognitive development focused on intellectual development of children. Learn about Piaget and his theories.

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Society page dedicated to Piaget with information about Publications, Videos, Articles about Piaget.

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The Jean Piaget Society, established in 1970, has an international, interdisciplinary membership of scholars, teachers and researchers interested in exploring the nature of the developmental construction of human knowledge. The Society was named in honor of the Swiss developmentalist, Jean Piaget, who made major theoretical and empirical contributions to our understanding of the origins and evolution of knowledge.

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A 3-year-old cannot learn through internet research or access to a library, but a 13-year-old, whose mental processes are significantly more developed, can.

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Constructivism: Theories, Perspectives and Practices (2005)

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Constructivism: Theories, Perspectives and Practices (2005)

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Cognitive development as the focus of developing and learning.
Learning is complex and nonlinear

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McLoad, S Updated 2015, simplypsychology.org

Article gives full break down of Piaget's work and Theory.

Piaget's (1936) 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.

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3. 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.

4. 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, and this gives us the motivation to learn.

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. The processes of assimilation and accommodation are continuous and interactive.

5. 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 occurs when the new experience is not very different from 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 trying to fit the new information into the information you already have.

Examples

1. Imagine a young child who has only ever seen small, domesticated dogs. When the child sees a cat for the first time, they might refer to it as a "dog" because it has four legs, fur, and a tail - features that fit their existing schema of a dog.

2. A person who has always believed that all birds can fly might label penguins as birds that can fly. This is because their existing schema or understanding of birds includes the ability to fly.

3. 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).

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

6. 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 actually adjust information you already have (schemas you already have, etc.) to make room for this new information.

Examples

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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".

4. A person who grew up thinking all snakes are dangerous might move to an area where garden snakes are common and harmless. Over time, after observing and learning, they might accommodate their previous belief to understand that not all snakes are harmful.

7. 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!

Applications to Education

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 into 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 realized 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:

1. Educational programs 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.

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

3. 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.

4. Child-centered 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

13. Using collaborative, as well as individual activities.

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

15. Educators may use Piaget's stages to design age-appropriate assessment tools and strategies.

Classroom Activities

1. Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years):
Although most kids in this age range are not in a traditional classroom setting, they can still benefit from games that stimulate their senses and motor skills.

2. Preoperational Stage (2-7 years):

Role Playing: Set up pretend play areas where children can act out different scenarios, such as a kitchen, hospital, or market.

Use of Symbols: Encourage drawing, building, and using props to represent other things.

Hands-on Activities: Children should interact physically with their environment, so provide plenty of opportunities for hands-on learning.

Egocentrism Activities: Use exercises that highlight different perspectives. For instance, having two children sit across from each other with an object in between and asking them what the other sees.

3. Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years):

Classification Tasks: Provide objects or pictures to group, based on various characteristics.

Hands-on Experiments: Introduce basic science experiments where they can observe cause and effect, like a simple volcano with baking soda and vinegar.

Logical Games: Board games, puzzles, and logic problems help develop their thinking skills.

Conservation Tasks: Use experiments to showcase that quantity doesn't change with alterations in shape, such as the classic liquid conservation task using different shaped glasses.

4. Formal Operational Stage (11 years and older):

Hypothesis Testing: Encourage students to make predictions and test them out.

Abstract Thinking: Introduce topics that require abstract reasoning, such as algebra or ethical dilemmas.

Problem Solving: Provide complex problems and have students work on solutions, integrating various subjects and concepts.

Debate and Discussion: Encourage group discussions and debates on abstract topics, highlighting the importance of logic and evidence.

Feedback and Questioning: Use open-ended questions to challenge students and promote higher-order thinking. For instance, rather than asking, "Is this the right answer?", ask, "How did you arrive at this conclusion?"

Individual Differences

While Piaget's stages offer a foundational framework, they are not universally experienced in the same way by all children.

Social identities play a critical role in shaping cognitive development, necessitating a more nuanced and culturally responsive approach to understanding child development.

Piaget's stages may manifest differently based on social identities like race, gender, and culture:

Race & Teacher Interactions: A child's race can influence teacher expectations and interactions. For example, racial biases can lead to children of color being perceived as less capable or more disruptive, influencing their cognitive challenges and supports.

Racial and Cultural Stereotypes: These can affect a child's self-perception and self-efficacy. For instance, stereotypes about which racial or cultural groups are "better" at certain subjects can influence a child's self-confidence and, subsequently, their engagement in that subject.

Gender & Peer Interactions: Children learn gender roles from their peers. Boys might be mocked for playing "girl games," and girls might be excluded from certain activities, influencing their cognitive engagements.

Language: Multilingual children might navigate the stages differently, especially if their home language differs from their school language. The way concepts are framed in different languages can influence cognitive processing. Cultural idioms and metaphors can shape a child's understanding of concepts and their ability to use symbolic representation, especially in the pre-operational stage.

Curriculum Development

According to Piaget, children's 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 that 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 the 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, egocentrism 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 emphasizes the need to use 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-centered 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.

Social Media (Digital Learning)

Jean Piaget could not have anticipated the expansive digital age we now live in.

Today, knowledge dissemination and creation are democratized by the Internet, with platforms like blogs, wikis, and social media allowing for vast collaboration and shared knowledge. This development has prompted a reimagining of the future of education.

Classrooms, traditionally seen as primary sites of learning, are being overshadowed by the rise of mobile technologies and platforms like MOOCs (Passey, 2013).

The millennial generation, defined as the first to grow up with cable TV, the internet, and cell phones, relies heavily on technology.

They view it as an integral part of their identity, with most using it extensively in their daily lives, from keeping in touch with loved ones to consuming news and entertainment (Nielsen, 2014).

Social media platforms offer a dynamic environment conducive to Piaget's principles. These platforms allow for interactions that nurture knowledge evolution through cognitive processes like assimilation and accommodation.

They emphasize communal interaction and shared activity, fostering both cognitive and socio-cultural constructivism. This shared activity promotes understanding and exploration beyond individual perspectives, enhancing social-emotional learning (Gehlbach, 2010).

A standout advantage of social media in an educational context is its capacity to extend beyond traditional classroom confines. As the material indicates, these platforms can foster more inclusive learning, bridging diverse learner groups.

This inclusivity can equalize learning opportunities, potentially diminishing biases based on factors like race or socio-economic status, resonating with Kegan's (1982) concept of "recruitability."

However, there are challenges. While the potential of social media in learning is vast, its practical application necessitates intention and guidance. Cuban, Kirkpatrick, and Peck (2001) note that certain educators and students are hesitant about integrating social media into educational contexts.

This hesitancy can stem from technological complexities or potential distractions. Yet, when harnessed effectively, social media can provide a rich environment for collaborative learning and interpersonal development, fostering a deeper understanding of content.

In essence, the rise of social media aligns seamlessly with constructivist philosophies. Social media platforms act as tools for everyday cognition, merging daily social interactions with the academic world, and providing avenues for diverse, interactive, and engaging learning experiences.

Applications to Parenting

Parents can use Piaget's stages to have realistic developmental expectations of their children's behavior and cognitive capabilities.

For instance, understanding that a toddler is in the pre-operational stage can help parents be patient when the child is egocentric.

Play Activities

Recognizing the importance of play in cognitive development, many parents provide toys and games suited for their child's developmental stage.

Parents can offer activities that are slightly beyond their child's current abilities, leveraging Vygotsky's concept of the "Zone of Proximal Development," which complements Piaget's ideas.

Critical Evaluation

The influence of Piaget's ideas on 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 programs 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 ages of 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 cooperation with someone more skillful (MKO). This social interaction provides language opportunities and Vygotsky considered 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, researchers 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 to deduce general principles about the intellectual development of all children. His sample was very small and 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 considered 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 has more to do with our ability to communicate with others than with our interaction with the material world.

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 that challenge the children's existing schemas and for children to be encouraged to discover for themselves.

Alternatively, Vygotsky would recommend that teachers 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.

FAQs

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Piaget's Stages: 4 Stages of Cognitive Development & Theory

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Jean Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development outlines four stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational) in a child's cognitive development from infancy to adolescence.

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Limited Processes = Limited learning
Development is the essential function and each element of learning occurs as a function of total development

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Piaget's stages of mental development and how he developed his theory.

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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.