If you can remember far enough back, I wrote both part one and two of this series on Theorists of Child Development.  My first post was about Freud and my second was aboutErikson.  Today, I am going to take us closer to the end of this series and discuss Piaget.  If you are not sure who Piaget was, let me give you a little information about the man before I start going on and on about his theories. 

Jean Piaget (1896 t0 1980) was born in Neuchatel Switzerland.  He studied the Cognitive Development of first animals then humans.  Like Freud and Erikson, Piaget believed that a number of developmental milestones occur throughout childhood.  He group his Theory of Cognitive Development into 4 stages: Sensorimotor Stage, Preoperational Stage, Concrete Operational Stage, and Formal Operational Stage.  

Piaget also went on to identify Schema, which are structures that allow a child to gain knowledge.  Each level of development had a different schema such as the sucking relex in infants.  When something does not fit an existing schema, such as the first time a child eats solid food without needing to suck, it presents a problem where the child must learn to adapt. 

Piaget believed that cognitive ability was an inborn trait that deals with adapting to the world around it.  He also believed that children learned through two different means.  These were assimilation, where the child learns by using and adapting an already existing schema, such as sucking moves to the developmental stage where a child mouths objects, and accommodation, where a child will change her schema to accommodate the encounter. 

 Now that I touched on Piaget, let’s look at each of his stages separately.

Piaget’s Stage of Cognitive Development:

• Sensorimotor Stage:  This stage occurred during the age of birth to 2 years of age.  It is the stage where a child’s cognitive development is encouraged by the senses and the child’s movement.  Piaget went on to break this stage into 6 sub-stages.
  • Reflexes:  This is the stage when the infant is still relying on reflexes to understand the world around him.  Things like the Morro Reflex, which is when a child startles, or the Rooting Reflex, when the baby turns its head when the cheek is stroked. 
  • Primary Circular Reactions: Occurs between the ages of 1 to 4 months of age and is the stage where the child will do something unintentionally but will repeat it to form a new schema. 
  • Secondary Circular Reactions:  This next stage occurs between the ages of 4 to 8 months and it is when the child will use an action, and repeat it, to see a reaction from the world around him.  Things like pointing to a bottle will trigger the response of mom or dad to give her a bottle. 
  • Coordination of Reactions: Occurring between 8 and 12 months, this is the stage where the child will intentionally use a schema and may begin to combine schemas together to start exploring the world around her.
  • Tertiary Circular Reaction: 12 to 18 months of age is when you will see this sub-stage and it is basically your child trying to figure out the world around him through trial and error style of learning.
  • Early Representational Thought: This sub-stage occurs between 18 to 24 months and is the period where the child begins thinking with symbolic representation.  Exploration of the world around him is no longer through actions but is through thought as well.
• Preoperational Stage:  This stage occurs during the ages of 2 to 7 years old and it is the stage where the child’s language is significantly developed.  In this stage, children are using representational objects for the world around them and they are unable to understand concrete logic.  Piaget identified this stage of development as the one where children are egocentric. 
• Concrete Operational Stage: Occurring between the ages of 7 to 11 years old, this is the stage where children begin to develop their logical thinking.  They can understand the concrete operations of the world around them but they have a harder time understanding abstract thinking.
• Formal Operational Stage:  This is the stage that goes from 11 years and throughout adulthood.  It is the stage where a person is able to think in abstract ways and also able to use deductive reasoning.

There are many pros and cons to Piaget’s theories and it is important to note that while Piaget had some excellent points to make about the importance of education and the cognitive development, there were some weaknesses to his theory.  One of the biggest weaknesses is the fact that most of his work focused on the development of his own children.  He also failed to consider differences in culture, emotional and personal development and also on the differences in education systems.  Lastly, Piaget often underestimated the abilities of the children that he was studying.

So there is a rather long summary of Jean Piaget.  Please check back in a few weeks and I will go over behaviourists.

Sirena Van Schaik

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Tags: child development, Concrete Operational Stage, Coordination of Reactions, Early Childhoood Education, Early Representational Thought, Erik Erikson, Formal Operational Stage, Freud, Id, Infant Development, Jean Piaget, Preoperational Stage, Preschool Development, Primary Circular Reactions, Reflexes, School-Age Development, Secondary Circular Reactions, Sensorimotor Stage, Stages of Development, teen development, Tertiary Circular Reaction, Theorists, Toddler Development

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