4. Jean Piaget (1896-1980) : History
• Born: August 9, 1896, Switzerland
• Died: September 16,1980 (Age 84)
• Parents: Eldest son of Arthur Piaget
and Rebecca Jackson.
• Education: Received Ph.D. from
University of Neuchatel in 1918.
• Wife: Married to Valentine Chatenay
in 1923
• Children: 3 children namely
Jacqueline, Lucienne and Laurent
whose intellectual development from
infancy to language was studied by
Piaget.
5. Introduction
• Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the 20th century's most influential researchers
in the area of developmental psychology.
• He was originally trained in the areas of biology and philosophy and considered
himself a "Genetic Epistemologist".
• Piaget wanted to know how children learned through their development inthe
study of knowledge.
• He administered Binet's IQ test in Paris and observed that children's answers were
qualitatively different.
• Piaget's theory is based on the idea that the developing child builds cognitive
structures.
• He believes that the child's cognitive structure increases with the development.
• Piaget's Theory of infant development were based on his observations of his own
three children.
6. Piaget's Theory Differs From
Others In Several Ways
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.
7. What is Cognition?
• The term cognition is
derived from the latin word
"cognoscere" which means
"to know" or "to recognise"
or "to conceptualise".
• Cognition is "the mental
action or process of
acquiring knowledge and
understanding through
thought, experience, and
the senses."
8. What is Cognitive Development?
• Cognitive Development is the emergence of the ability to think
and understand.
• The acquisition of the ability to think, reason and problem solve.
• It is the process by which people's thinking changes across the
life span.
• Piaget studied Cognitive Development by observing children in
particular, to examine how their thought processes changed with
age.
• It is the growing apprehension and adaptation to the physical and
social environment.
9. How Cognitive Development occurs?
• Cognitive Development is gradual and orderly
changes by which mental process becomes more
complex and sophisticated.
• The essential development of cognition is the
establishment of new schemes.
• Assimilation and Accommodation are both the
processes of the ways of Cognitive Development.
• The equilibration is the symbol of a new stage of the
Cognitive Development.
10. Key Concepts :
• Schema : Schema is an internal representation of the world. It
helps an individual understand the world they inhabit. They are
cognitive structures that represent a certain aspect of the world,
and can be seen as categories which have certain pre-conceived
ideas in them.
• For example, my schema for Christmas includes: Christmas
trees, presents, giving, money, green, red, gold, winter, Santa
Claus etc. Someone else may have an entirely different schema,
such as Jesus, birth, Church, holiday, Christianity etc
11. • Assimilation :It is using an
existing schema to deal with
a new object or
situation.Here, the learner fits
the new idea into what he
already knows.In
Assimilation, the schema is
not changed, it is only
modified.
• 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”
12. • Accommodation : This happens when the existing schema
(knowledge) does not work and needs to be changed to deal with a
new object or situation.In Accommodation, the schema is altered; a
new schema may be developed.
• Example : 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”.
13. • Equilibration : Piaget believed that cognitive development
did not progress at a steady rate, but rather in leaps and
bounds. Equilibrium occurs when a child's schemas can deal
with most new information through assimilation. As a child
progresses 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). Equilibrium helps
explain how children are able to move from one stage of
thought to the next.
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19. The Sensorimotor Stage
(Birth to 2 yrs)
- Infancy
• Infants construct an understanding of the world by
coordinating sensory experiences (seeing, hearing) with
motor actions (reaching, touching).
• Infants progress from reflexive, instinctual actions at
birth to the beginning of problem solving (intellectual)
and symbolic abilities (language) toward the end of this
stage.
21. Preoperational Stage
(2-7 yrs)
-Toddler and Early Childhood
• This stage begins when the child starts to use symbols and
language. This is a period of developing language and
concepts. So, the child is capable of more complex mental
representations (i.e, words and images). He is still unable to
use 'operations', i.e,logical mental rules, such as rules of
arithmetic. This stage is further divided into 2 sub-stages :
22. The following are the key features of this stage :
• Egocentrism: The child's thoughts and
communications are typically egocentric (i.e,
about themselves or their own point of view). Eg.:
"if i can't see you, you also can't see me". It is the
inability to see the world from anyone else's eyes.
It is well explained by Piaget as Three Mountain
Task.
23. • Preconceptual stage (2-4 yrs) : Increased use of
verbal representation but speech is egocentric. The
child uses symbols to stand for actions; a toy doll
stands for a real baby or the child role plays mummy
or daddy.
• Intuitive stage (4-7 yrs) : Speech becomes more
social, less egocentric. Here the child base their
knowledge on what they feel or sense to be true, yet
they cannot explain the underlying principles behind
what they feel or sense.
24. • Animism: Treating inanimate objects as living ones.
Eg.: children dressing and feeding their dolls as if
they are alive.
25. • Concentration: The process of concentrating on one
limited aspect of a stimulus and ignoring other aspects.
It is noticed in Conservation. Conservation on the
other hand is the knowledge that quantity is unrelated
to the arrangement and physical appearance of objects.
Children at this stage are unaware of conseravtion.
26. Concrete Operational Stage
(7-12 yrs)
-Childhood and Early Adolescence
The concrete operational stage is characterized by the appropriate
use of logic. Important processes during this stage are :
• Seriation: The ability to sort objects in an order according to size, shape or
any other characterstic. Eg.: if given different-sized objects, they may place
them accordingly.
• Transitivity: The ability to recognize logical relationships among elements
in a serial order. Eg.: if A is taller than B and B is taller than C, then A
must be taller than C.
27. Classification: The ability to group objects together on
the basis of common features. The child also begins
to get the idea that one set can include another. Eg.: there
is a class of objects called dogs. There is also a class
called animals. But all dogs are also animals, so the class
of animals includes that of dogs.
28. • Decentring: The ability to take multiple adpects of a situationinto
account. Eg.: the child will no longer perceive an exceptionally-
wide but short cup to contain less than a normally-wide, taller
cup.
• Reversibility: The child understands that numbers or objects can
be changed, then returned to their original state. Eg.: the child
will rapidly determine that if 4+4=8 then 8-4=4, the original
quantity.
29. • Conservation: Understanding that the quantity, length or number
of items is unrelated to the arrangement or appearance of the
object or item.
• Elimination of Egocentrism: The ability to view things from
another's perspective.
• The child performs operations: combining, separating,
multiplying, repeating, dividing etc
30. Formal Operational Stage
(12 yrs & above)
-Adolscence and Adulthood
• The thought becomes increasingly flexible and abstract, i.e, can carry
out systematic experiments.
• The ability to systematically solve a problem in a logical
and methodological way.
• Understands that nothing is absolute; everything is relative.
31. • Develops skills such as logical thought, deductive
reasoning as well as inductive reasoning and
sytematic planning etc.
• Understands that the rules of any game or social system
are developed by a man by mutual agreement and
hence could be changed or modified.
• The child's way of thinking is at its most
advanced, although the knowledge it has to
work with, will change.
32. Educational Implications
• Emphasis on discovery approach in learning.
• Curriculum should provide specific educational experience based on children's
developmental level.
• Arrange classroom activities so that they assist and encourage self learning.
• Social interactions have a great educational value for Piaget. Positive social
actions, therefore should be encouraged.
33. • Instruction should be geared to the level of the child.
As the level of the child changes at each stage, the
level of instruction or exploratory activities should
also change.
• Simple to Complex and Project method of teaching.
• Co-curricular activities have equal importance as that of
curricular experiences in the cognitive development of
children.
• Major Goals of education according to Piaget are critical
and creative thinking.
34. Contribution to Education
• Piaget's theory helped educators, parents and investigators
to comprehend the capacity of children in their different
stages.
• He made us conscious with the way children and adults
think.
• A lot of school programs have been redesigned taking as
base Piaget's discoveries.
• Piaget made a revolution with the developmental
psychology concentrating all his attention to the mental
process and his role with behavior.
35. Critical Evaluation
Support
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.
His ideas have been of practical use in understanding and
communicating with children, particularly in the field of
education (re: Discovery Learning).
36. Criticism
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.
Dasen (1994) cites studies he conducted in remote parts of the central
Australian desert with 8-14 year old Aborigines. 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
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).
37. References
1. Cognitive Development - Encyclopedia of Special Education: A
Reference for the Education of Children, Adolescents, and Adults
with Disabilities and Other Exceptional Individuals.
2. Franzoi, Stephen. Essentials of Psychology. p. 119.ISBN 978-1-
5178014-2-7.
3. McLeod, S. A. "Piaget | Cognitive Theory". Simply Psychology.
Retrieved 18 September 2012.
4. JEAN PIAGET - Key Thinkers in Linguistics and the Philosophy of
Language - Credo Reference. search.credoreference.com.
5. Great Lives from History: The Twentieth Century; September 2008,
p1–3
