Jean Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

1. Key Ideas

   • Children are active and motivated learners
   • Children organise what they learn from their experiences
   • Children adapt to their environment through assimilation and accomodation
   • Interaction with the physical environment is critical for cognitive development
   • Equilibration promotes increasingly complex forms of thought
   • Interaction with other people is equally critical
   • Children think in qualitatively different ways at different age levels
   • Childrens logic and modes of thinking are entirely different from adults

2. Stages of Cognitive Development

   • Sensorimotor (Birth) - children only think about things that are immediately infront of them, what they are doing and seeing at that moment
   • Preoperational (age 2)- children can now think and talk about things beyond their immediate experience, but cannot yet reason in adult-like ways
   • Concrete Operations (age 6 or 7)- adult-like logic appears limited to reasoning about concrete, real-life situations
   • Formal Operations (age 11 or 12)- Logical reasoning processes are applied to abstract ideas as well as concrete ideas and situations

3. Biography

   • Born 1896, Died 1980
   • Studied natural sciences at university
   • Published more than 50 books and 500 papers
   • Occupied chairs in: psychology, sociology, history of science and scientific thinking.