Piaget’s Theory
EDSA700 Unit 3
Reading: EDSA700 Course Reader: Donald, D.,
Lazarus, S. & Moolla, N. 2014. Educational
Psychology in Social Context: Ecosystemic
applications in southern Africa. 5th ed. Cape Town:
Oxford University Press: pp. 72 to 77; 93-96.
Introduction
• Cognitive development concerns the development of
thinking processes in children as they grow up
• Children develop processes of perceiving and understanding
phenomena, reasoning and problem solving skills, and use
language as well as concrete and abstract thinking to assist
them in their development of knowledge and application thereof
• Some theorists of cognitive development support an orderly
“stage” approach (nature) whereas other acknowledge that
children can be guided in their development of thinking
processes (nurture)
• Some say it is strictly in steps (discontinuity model), others that it
is a gradual process (discontinuity model)
Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
• He studied the development of children through
observation and intelligence testing
• He believe that children go through a process of maturation due
to biological processes that are genetically programmed
• As they mature, so their activity with the environment also
increases – access to the environment therefore also plays a
role in the child’s development (cognitive constructivism)
• Children also learn through a process of social
transmission so have access to adults who can
transmit knowledge also plays a role
Source:
https://sites.google.com/site/hookappsychology2a/cognitive-developmentby-taylor-boger/piaget-s-stages
• Piaget’s focus was on the reasoning that children used
to arrive at their understandings rather than what they
could and could not do
• Children begin their development of thinking skills through a
process of organisation, e.g. looking at, reaching for and
grasping an object eventually become separate activities
• He believed that children learn through the development of a set
of schemas or schemata, each one (a schema) representing a
mental framework or action strategy for understanding a
phenomenon and interaction with the environment
Consider some examples of schemas that children might
develop…
• Children develop through a process of adaptation: as a
child grows and develops, schemas change and adjust
in order to meet the challenges of the environment and
this is the foundation for the construction of knowledge
• Adaptation is comprised of two complementary processes:
assimilation and accommodation
• Assimilation involves incorporating new situations into existing
schemas: trying to understand something by fitting it in to what is
already known
• Accommodation involves adjusting existing schemas or
creating new ones to meet new experiences or challenges
Consider some examples explaining the above…
• Equilibration refers to the process of searching for a
balance as the child is interacting with the world through
the process of organisation, assimilation and
accommodation – often leading to “cognitive conflict”
• In this way, children are likely to search for
meaning in their quest for stablishing
equilibration
Consider an example to
explain the above…
Piaget’s stages of development
• Piaget believed that children go through a series of
stages: an ordered sequence at about the same ages in all
children
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Birth to 2 years
Sensori-Motor
Uses senses and motor
skills, items known by use
Object Permanence
learned
2 to 6 years
Preoperational
Symbolic thinking,
language used, egocentric
thinking
Imagination/experience
grow, child decentres
7 to 11 years
Concrete
Operational
Logic applied, has
objective/rational
interpretations
Conservation, numbers,
ideas, classification
12 years to
adulthood
Formal Operational
Thinks abstractly,
hypothetical ideas
(broader issues
Ethics, politics,
social/moral issues
explored
Sensori-Motor Stage (Birth to 2 years)
• The term “sensori-motor” refers to young children
exploring their world by using their senses (seeing, hearing,
moving, touching, tasting) and applying their developing motor skills
(body movement and hand control)
• They will purposefully act on and manipulate objects to learn about
them
• Birth to one month: inborn reflexes
• One to eight months: grasps objects, repeats action
• Before about eight months: out of sight, out of mind
• After eight months develop object permanence: can retain a mental
picture of the object even if it is no longer there and can look and ask
for it (Peek-a-boo)
• As children go through this period, they develop the beginning of
logical, goal-directed actions
Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 years)
• It is preoperational because children still lack the
ability to perform basic logical operations but they are moving
towards mastery of operations
• They are, however, able to form mental or symbolic
representations of the work, especially with the use of
language, e.g. they can name an object and describe it in words
• They also begin to play “pretend games”: this means that they
can now have a mental representation of a situation which
allows them to act out scenes that are in their imagination and
are not actually physically present
• Towards the end of this stage, they can act out scenes
from TV or even create scenes with imaginary
characters
• Children’s language develops dramatically during this period:
from about 200 to 2000 words (Woolfolk, 2007)
• The child’s thinking demonstrates egocentrism: the child can
only view the world from his/her perspective (don’t confuse with
selfishness)
• The child will also display collective monologue: he/she will
talk about what he/she is doing whether someone is listening or
not
• Children often think that
inanimate objects have living
qualities: this is called animistic thinking
• Irreversibility is the inability to reverse the direction of a
sequence of events to their starting point: children at this
stage find it difficult to “think backwards” and tend to use
one-way logic
• Centration is the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a
situation at a time: children at this stage have difficulty in
decentering so tend to see things from their immediate
perception of events
• Conservation is the ability to recognise that the quantity or
amount of an object remains constant despite superficial
changes in its outward appearance
Concrete Operational (7 to 11 years)
• At this stage, the child develops characteristics of conservation
(recognises that the amount or quantity of a substance does not
change if its outward appearance is changed as long as nothing
is added), reversibility (can retrace one’s steps) and
decentered thinking (can focus on more than one aspect at a
time)
• Child is less egocentric in thinking (realises that other people’s
thoughts are no necessarily the same as his/her own)
• Most importantly, the child can perform simple logical
operations but only when tied to concrete examples
• The child is also able to master classification e.g. group
objects in terms of colour
• Child can reclassify e.g. group buttons in terms of
colour or number of holes
• Child is also able to perform seriation: the process of making an
orderly arrangement from large to small or vice versa
• The ability to understand sequential relationships permits a
learner to construct a logical series e.g. A˂B˂C: the child will
understand that B is larger than A but smaller than C: there are
rules to follow
Formal Operational Stage:
Puberty to Adulthood
• This is the final stage of full cognitive maturity which not
everyone reaches according to Piaget
• It involves the person being able to think in abstract terms, e.g.
understand abstract ideas, generate hypotheses, think
deductively
• It involves being able to handle a number of variables when
working through a problem and being able to generate a number
of possibilities which you can then work through
• People can also imagine a hypothetical situation so they have
developed hypothetico-deductive reasoning (identify all the
factors that might affect a problem and then deduce and
systematically evaluate specific solutions; test hypotheses)
• They can evaluate data and generate new ideas
• Teenagers could exhibit adolescent egocentrism: unlike
egocentric young children, adolescents do not deny that other
people may have different perceptions and beliefs but they just
become very focused on their own ideas
Questions to think about
• What are the criticisms of Piaget’s Theory?
• What are the educational implications of Piaget’s Theory?
• Consider the role played by Piaget’s Theory in terms of
constructivism of knowledge.