Jean Piaget

Modified: 2025-03-14 9:05 PM CDST

Piaget's approach is unusual compared to other theorists. His discovery of cognitive stages was groundbreaking. His emphasis on individualized instruction and knowing the stage a child was in was important.

• Jean Piaget: A Developmental-Cognitive Position: language, reality, causality, time, intelligence all played a role
• The Méthode Clinique
  • Like unstructured interviewing
  • Hawthorne Effect
    • Famous study at Western Electric plant
    • Those workers who knew they were being observed altered their behavior simply because of that knowledge
  • Is such knowledge by the children being observed similar?
  • Theoretical Orientation
    • Biological, Evolutionary, and Cognitive orientation
    • Assimilation and Accommodation: The Processes of Adaptation
      • Assimilation and Accomodation
      • Schema
      • Equilibration
  • Play: Universal phenomenon
    • Rules
      • Before 3-no understanding/don't follow rules
      • 3-5-from higher authority/break and change rules
      • 5-12-cannot be changed/rigid adherence to rules
      • 12+-understand rules/change rules after discussion
      • Rule differences at the various stages illustrate how children think in a manner different from adults
  • Imitation
    • A kind of accommodation
    • Internalization
    • Object Permanence
      • Another good example of innate ability
      • Young infants do not realize that objects no longer visible still exist
    • Deferred Imitation
      • Brings memory into the picture
      • Imitation that occurs at a later time
  • Intelligence
    • More active process than Gestaltists assumed
    • Adaptive
    • Schemas as learning
    • Cognitive Structures
  • A Stage Theory: Stages are qualitatively different, children must pass through stages
  • Sensorimotor Development: Birth to 2 Years
    • 1. The Object Concept: Object Permanence and age (~9 months)
    • 2. Exercising Reflexes: Sucking, Reaching, Grasping, Gazing
    • 3. Achievement by Age 2: Communication, Object Concept, Cause and Effect
  • Preoperational Thinking: 2 to 7 Years
    • 1. Preconceptual Thinking: 2 to 4 Years 2. Intuitive Thinking: 4 to 7 Years
      • Overgeneralization
      • Transductive Reasoning
    • 2. Intuitive Thinking
      • Conservations: volume, length, number
      • Egocentrism
      • Thinking Example
        • What is 5 take away 3?
        • The child only understood the CONCRETE meaning of "take away"

      

  • Operations: Internalized Activity
  • Concrete Operations: 7 to 11 or 12 Years
    • 1. The Conservations
      • substance, area, volume
      • reversibility, identity, compensation
    • 2. Can Conservation Be Taught?
      • No
    • 3. Classification
      • Improves
    • 4. Seriatings
      • Rank objects
    • 5. Number
      • Also improves
  • Formal Operations: After 11 or 12 Years: Adult-like thought
    • 1. Combinatorial Analysis: Systematic investigation of ALL possible combinations
    • 2. Hypothetical Nature of Thought: Science Fiction, Alternative Worlds
  • Piaget’s Theory as a Theory of Learning: Genetic Epistemology
  • Gradual acquisition of knowledge
  • Stages are hierarchical
  • Learning = maturation, active experience, equilibration, and social interaction
• Educational Implications of Piaget’s Theory
  • Development comes from:
    • Equilibration
    • Maturation
    • Active Experience and Internalization
    • Social Interaction
    • Child actively constructs knowledge
• Piaget’s Position: An Appraisal
  • Underestimated Young Children
  • Formal Operations not Universal
  • Too Complex

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