PRESENTATION ON
JEAN PIAGET’s THEORY OF
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
BY ABDUL SAMAD SAMO
FACULTY:MRS.IFFAT SULTANA
SUBJECT:ADVANCED
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
DEGREE:M.PHIL(EDUCATION)
Date:08-11-2014
OUTLINE
*Introduction
*Background to the Jean Piaget’s theory of Cognitive
Development
*Definition of Cognitive Development
*Piaget’s stages of the theory of Cognitive Development
*Examples of stages of Cognitive Development
*Key concepts emphasized by Piaget(Schemas,Assimilation &
Accommodation)
*Examples of these concepts
*Implications of Jean Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development on
Education
*Criticism of Jean Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development
INTRODUCTION
• Jean Piaget was born in Swizerland in 1896.
• After receiving his Doctoral degree(in science) at the age of
22,Piaget formally began a career that would have a profound
impact on both psychology and education.
• After working with Alfred Binet,Piaget developed an interest
in the intellectual development of children.
• Based upon his observations,he concluded that children were
not less intelligent than adults,they simply think differently on
the basis of their attained ages.
• Piaget was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of
Cognitive Development.
Background to the Piaget’s theory of Cognitive
Development
• Jean 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 on the questions that required logical
thinking.
• He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important
differences between the thinking of adults and children.
• According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic
mental structure(genetically inherited and evolved) on which
all subsequent learning follows.
DEFINITION OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
• Cognitive Development is the construction of
thought processes including remembering,problem
solving and decision making from childhood through
adolescence to adulthood.
• Cognitive Development refers to how a person
perceives,thinks and gains understanding of his/her
world through the interaction of genetic and learned
factors.Among the areas of Cognitive Development
are information processing, intelligence, reasoning,
language development and memory.
PIAGET’s STAGES OF THE THEORY OF
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
• According to Psychologist Jean Piaget,children progress
through a series of key four stages of Cognitive Development.
• Each stage is marked by a shift in how kids understand the
world.
• Piaget believed that children are like “little scientists’ and that
they actively try to explore and make sense of the world
around them.
• Through his observations of his own children,Piaget
developed a theory of intellectual development that included
four distinct stages:the sensorimotor stage(from birth to age
2),the preoperational stage(from age 2 to 7),the concrete
operational stage(from age 7 to 11) and the formal
operational stage(( from age 12 to onwards)
Sensorimotor stage of Cognitive
Development(birth to 2 years old)
• This stage of Cognitive Development is centered on the infant
trying to make sense of the world.
• During the sensorimotor stage, an infant’s knowledge of the
world is limited to his/her sensory perceptions & motor
activities.
• Behaviors are limited to simple motor responses caused by
sensory stimuli.
• Children utilize skills and abilities they were born with to learn
more about the environment.
• Examples: A child picks things up;does not let them go and
puts them in his/her mouth
• Looking,sucking,grasping and listening
Pre-Operational stage of Cognitive
Development(between 2 to 7 years)
• Piaget noted that children in this stage do not manipulate
information & are unable to take the point of view of other
people, which Piaget termed “egocentrism”.
• Examples: Children of this age group easily develop
language, use an object to represent something else such
as pretending that a broom is a horse, playing the roles of
mommy, daddy, doctor and many other characters.
• The child is aware only of himself and his own likes, dislikes
and desires.
• A child does not have the capacity to conserve things
• Can now walk and run.
Concrete Operational stage of
Cognitive Development(7 to 11 years)
• According to Piaget, during this age, children gain a
better understanding of mental operations.
• Children begin thinking logically about concrete
events(which they see or touch).
• But the children of such age group have difficulty in
understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts
• Examples: Children of these age group now develop a
complete sense about numbers, weight, area
occupied, the amount of water and the length of an
object.
• Develop capacity of conservation
Formal Operational stage of Cognitive
Development( from 12 till adulthood)
• People within this age group develop the ability to think
about abstract concepts.
• Skills such as logical thought,deductive reasoning and
systematic planning also emerge during this age.
• Examples: the choice of a career, distinction between right
and wrong, creation of this world(hypothetical
involvement).
• Capacity for formal reasoning
• Becomes adult conceptually
• Capacity for abstract thinking
• Development of deeper moral questions such as
justice,fairness,freedom and equality.
IMPORTANCE OF KEY CONCEPTS
DURING COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
• According to Piaget, certain key concepts play an important role during
the Cognitive Development of a child as they influence him/her how to
learn and grow. These key concepts are schemas, assimilation and
accommodation.
• SCHEMAS(Building blocks of knowledge).This term was introduced by
Piaget in 1926. 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.A mental
structure of pre-conceived ideas.
• Example of Schemas: A young child may first develop a schema for horse.
He/She knows that horse is a large, has hair, four legs and a tail. When the
little boy/ girl encounters a cow for the first time,he/she might initially call
it a horse. After all, it fits in with his/ her schema for the characteristics of
a horse; it is a large animal that has hair, four legs and a tail. Once he/she
is told that this is a different animal called a cow, she will modify her
existing schema for a horse and create a new schema for a cow.
• Assimilation: Using an existing schema to deal with a new
object or situation
• 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”
• Accommodation: Changing or altering our existing schemas
in the light of new information or new experiences.
• 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 was not wearing a
funny costume and was not doing silly things to make
people laugh. With this new knowledge, the boy was able
to change his schema of a clown.
Implications of Piaget’s theory on
Education
• Jean Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development
has been extremely influential in developing
educational policies and teaching.
• For example, a review of primary education by
the UK government in 1966 was based strongly
on Piaget’s theory.
• Discovery learning-the idea that children learn
best through doing and actively exploring-was
seen as central to the transformation of primary
school curriculum in most of the world’s
countries.
Criticism to the Jean Piaget’s theory of
Cognitive Development
• Piaget concentrated on the universal stages of Cognitive
Development and biological maturation. But he failed to
consider the effect that the social setting and culture may
have on Cognitive Development, as advocated by Vygotsky.
• Several studies have shown that Piaget underestimated the
abilities of children because his tests were sometimes
confusing or difficult to understand.
• Piaget carried out his studies with a handful of
participants(i.e small sample size)and in the early studies
he generally used his own children. This sample is biased
and accordingly the results of these studies cannot be
generalized to children from different cultures.
•
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