Children Are Playing With A Child

Jean Piaget cognitive development theory explained the changes of logical thinking of children and adolescent. Piaget suggested that children advance four stages based on maturity and experience.

Piaget claimed that children were in charge of the construction or the building of their own knowledge and that construction was superior to instruction (Gordon and Browne, 2004). Piaget thought that educators should provide a stimulating environment and have the children explore. Teachers should watch and also interact with the children, but they should let the children find and experience new ideas and knowledge on their own. (Crain, 2005)One of Piaget's major contributions is what is known as the general periods of development. He found four major general periods or stages of child development (Crain, 2005, p. 115): Sensorimotor Intelligence (birth to two years). Babies organize their physical action schemes, such as sucking, grasping, and hitting. Preoperational Thought (two to seven years). Children learn to think but their thinking is illogical and different from that of adults. Concrete Operations (seven to eleven years). Children develop the capacity to think systematically, but only when they can refer to concrete objects and activities. Formal Operations (eleven to adulthood). Young people

The teacher could place two cups that have the same amount of liquid in the cups but because one of the cups is taller than the other the child is going to think the taller glass has more liquid in it. The third stage is the concrete operational stage which occurs during ages seven to eleven. The term concrete operational means the child can reason only about tangible objects presents. So the child can conserve and think logically but only with practical aids. Thinking becomes less egocentric with increased awareness of external events. The fourth and final stage is the formal operational stage which occurs during ages eleven to fifteen. This stage focuses on hypothetical thinking and scientific reasoning. Piaget believed that only children can learn when they are ‘ready’ to learn. He also believed that development couldn 't be ‘sped up.’ Piaget believed that children learned through the resolution of disequilibrium (self discovery, active participation). He believed that teachers should ‘bend’ to children’s needs, provide an appropriate environment, promote self discovery, exploratory learning, self-motivated learning, and set challenges to existing schemes.

Psychologist Jean Piaget developed the Piaget’s theory around the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. Piaget’s theory implies that cognitive growth advances in different stages, influenced by an instinctive need to know basis. The four stages of Piaget’s theory are, sensorimotor (birth to about two years old), preoperational (average two to seven years old), concrete operational (seven to eleven years old), and formal operational stage (eleven to undetermined years old).

Piaget – Cognitive Development - Observed his own children, plus others to develop his theories. His theory is broad and runs from birth to adolescence and includes concepts of language, scientific reasoning, moral development and memory. Piaget believed that children went

In this domain Piaget stated that the child who is still in the preoperational stage can’t conceptualize abstractly and needs concrete physical situations. They can’t mentally manipulate information. The child is able to form stable concepts as well as magical beliefs and their thinking is still egocentric, which means that the child has difficulty seeing the viewpoint of others. Piaget split this stage into the symbolic and intuitive thought substage. In the symbolic function stage children are able to understand, represent, remember, and picture objects in their mind without having the object in front of them. Vygotsky stated that children learn cognitive tasks through their interactions with older peers and adults. Not only do younger children watch and imitate older people or peers as they complete tasks, but these older guides also help younger children accomplish tasks they couldn’t accomplish on their own. He calls this the zone of proximal development which he describes what children can do alone and what they can do with assistance. Another theorist named Bandura coined the term observational learning which means people learn appropriate social behaviors by observing and modeling others. This type of learning is most effective during childhood. Vygotsky believed that the important part of the cognitive development is language. He observed that very young

“According to Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development, it states that all children go through specific stages as their brain matures. It also stated that these stages are completed in a fixed order within all children, according to their range of age (Atherton).” In other words, one cannot expect a two month old baby to solve simple math problems as that of a five year old. There are four stages in which Piaget grouped the development of a child according to their age groups, in which children interact with people and their environment. The sensorimotor stage (birth until age 2) children use their senses to explore their environment. During this stage, children learn how to control objects, although they fail to understand that these objects if not within their view continue to exist. The preoperational stage (2 until age 7) children are not able to see other's viewpoints other than their own. In other words, if the same amount of water is poured into a short wide glass and then a tall thin glass the child will perceive that the taller glass has more water because of the height. The concrete operational stage (7 until 12) children begin to think logically, but only with a practical aid. The last stage of Piaget’s cognitive theory is the formal operation stage (12 through adulthood) in which children develop abstract thinking and begin to think logically in their minds (Piaget).

Four well known theorists each created their own ideas on how children develop mentally and physically, how they learn from others and the conceptual of what they are like when they are first brought into the world. Through research and their own experience, these scientists challenged the current beliefs of their time on two topics: active and reactive development and constant or ever changing development. The philosopher John Locke supported reactive development where children developed completely based on what was happening in their life and growth was constant. In his eyes, society determined how a baby boy or girl would mature and has stages that can provide an advance declaration of their physical and mental growth in the following years.However, the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau supported active development and ever changing development. To Rousseau, kids progress in how they think and look is set in stages where each stage is not the same as the last. Each theory is based on an angle different from the others that affect the researches questions, processes and interpretation: psychoanalytic, learning, cognitive, contextual and evolutionary.

Piaget and Vygotsky both believed that young children actively learn from their hands-on, day-to-day experiences. Jean Piaget portrayed children as "little scientists" who go about actively constructing their understanding of the world. His theories hold the essence of developmentally appropriate curriculum since Piaget believed that children undergo cognitive development in a stage-based manner, such that a very young child would not think about things the same way that an adult might. He referred to the knowledge and the manner in which the knowledge is gained as a schema. In order to build on the cognitive stages that children experience, informal learning opportunities, formal instructional sessions, and the utilized curriculum must all dovetail with a child's current cognitive stage so that assimilation of the new knowledge may occur. Working with what the child knows and experiences, parents and teachers create bridges to the next cognitive stage that are characterized by the child's accommodation. Piaget argued that optimal learning took place in this manner and that adults should avoid thinking that they can accelerate a child's development through the age-based, maturity-referenced stages. This is because a child works toward establishing an equilibrium between the assimilation and application of new knowledge and changing their behavior to accommodate their newly adopted schemas.

Jean Piaget is best known for his theory that suggested children think differently than adults. His theory proposed that children’s cognitive development developed in

The Critique of Piaget's Theories Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) was a constructivist theorist. He saw children as constructing their own world, playing an active part in their own development. Piaget’s insight opened up a new window into the inner working of the mind and as a result he carried out some remarkable studies on children that had a powerful influence on theories of child thought. This essay is going to explain the main features and principles of the Piagetian theory and then provide criticism against this theory. Cognitive development refers to way in which a person’s style of thinking changes with age.

In the early 20th century many theories were put forward to help explain why and how children develop. A theorist who played a

growth in stages. He believed that each child matured and learned at a different rate, so

Jean Piaget is one of the pioneers to child development, he was an important factor in the growth, development and one of the most exciting research theorists in child development. A major force in child psychology, he studied both thought processes and how they change with age. He believed that children think in fundamentally different ways from adults.. Piaget’s belief is that all species inherit the basic tendency to organize their lives and adapt to the world that’s around them, no matter the age. Children develop schemas as a general way of thinking or interacting with ideas and objects in the environment. Children create and develop new schemas as they grow and experience new things. Piaget has identified four major stages of cognitive development which are: sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operations, and formal operations. According to the text here are brief descriptions of each of Piaget’s stages:

Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is one the most widely accepted, his four stages of development are age based.