Jean Piaget's Influence On Child Development

Piaget was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. Piaget’s work includes a detailed observational study of cognition in children. Piaget showed that young children think in different ways to adults. According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent knowledge is based.

Jean Piaget was a psychologist who looked at a child’s developing their reasoning skills. Piaget carried out detailed observations of them and as his work started taking shape on how our understanding a child’s intellectual skills and as a result of this he has made changes in education. Piaget understood that cognitive developments occurred in stages, his research concentrated on how children learn and start to gain an understanding of their stage of development to be able to learn new concepts. He identified a four-stage process of cognitive development all the way through childhood. He stated that every child would go through each stage but not at the same time, but he also said that some children would sometimes never reach the later stages.

His views of how children and young people’s minds work and develop have been enormously influential particularly in educational theory. His particular insight was the role of maturation and increasing the capacity to understand their world, they can’t undertake certain tasks until they are psychologically mature enough to do so. The research has spawned a great deal more, much of which has undermined the detail of his own, but like many other original investigations his importance comes from his overall vision. Today Piaget’s theories have helped to change how people viewed the child or young person’s world and the way they study them he has inspired many theorist to improve on his studies. Piaget’s ideas have been of practical use in understanding and communicating, particularly in education. What he didn’t consider was the effect in the

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a cognitive constructivist born in Neuchatel, Switzerland. He played a huge role in how we view child development and how we can apply it to teaching in our classrooms. A set of cognitive developmental stages were developed by Piaget to explain how, when and where a child’s development takes place.

Mildred Parten and Jean Piaget are two theorists that have had great influences on the way we understand children. Piaget constructed the idea that a person’s thinking passes through four stages and as the person grows, their way of thinking changes thus entering a different stage. He emphasized mostly the preoperational stage, which is for ages two to seven years old. In this stage children are seen as illogical thinkers but they do engage in make-believe games by using objects for purposes other than their actual intended use. Between the ages of four and seven, they still do not think logically but they become interested in games that have rules, structure, and social interaction. Unlike Jean Piaget, Mildred Parten did not see types of

Psychologist Jean Piaget was born August 9, 1896 in Neuchatel, Switzerland. He was his parents first born child. Piaget continued his education through high school then attended the University of Neuchatel where he received his Ph. D in natural science, then study one semester at the University of Zurich in psychology. During his study of psychology, he became interesting in psychoanalysis which leads him to later study abnormal psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris. ("Jean Piaget." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web. 01 Oct. 2014.)

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

Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage greatly contributes to the cognitive development in children. The main area in the preoperational stage is make-believe play. Piaget believed that when children have make-believe playtime they are exercising and enhancing newly required representational schemes. Make-believe play is very important in children’s development because it gives a child the opportunity to engage in problem-solving, communication, and empathy. Make-believe play also encourages imagination and creativity.

Jean Piaget lived from August of 1896 to October of 1980. He grew up in Neachatel, Switzerland where his father studied medieval-literature and wrote about the history of Neuchatel. His childhood lacked normalcy due, in large part, to his mother’s psychological issues. The abnormality of his home sparked an interest in Piaget to learn and discover outside of regular school curriculum. During his elementary school years, Piaget implored Paul Godet, the director at the Neuchatel museum of Naturel History, to allow him the pleasure of studying “the museum’s mollusk collection after hours” (Brainerd, 1996, 191). Godet became Piaget’s tutor, teaching him the methods of classification. Piaget began publishing his discoveries in 1907 at the age of ten. However, as word spread about his young age, publishers refused to continue publishing his articles. He graduated with his bachelor’s degree in 1915 at the age of 18, then finished his Ph.D. at the age of 21 from the University of Neuchatel (Brainerd, 1996, 191). In 1915, Piaget suffered a nervous breakdown and traveled into the mountains to recover.

As a conclusion, we need to relate all the development in teaching young children in each subject. Because the ability and understanding of the children are different. Other than that, most of the philosopher enhance the idea that the children are learn through play and through experience.

Jean Piaget was a major contributor to the world of psychology and sociology that we know today. His works and discoveries still help sociologist determine and figure out ways people in society interact and develop throughout time. Piaget was born on August 9, 1896 and was raised in Neuchâtel, Switzerland (Boeree n.d.). His family was very influential to his success. His father was a historian that authored many writings on the medieval times, and his mother was very intellectual and kind, however, she had a mental health problem that pushed Piaget to become interested in psychology (Presnell 1999). He became an enthused and determined scholar at a young age. Piaget’s early interests were of zoology (Jean Piaget n.d.). At age eleven, he

Jean Piaget is considered to be very influential in the field of developmental psychology. Piaget had many influences in his life which ultimately led him to create the Theory of Cognitive Development. His theory has multiple stages and components. The research done in the early 1900’s is still used today in many schools and homes. People from various cultures use his theory when it comes to child development. Although there are criticisms and alternatives to his theory, it is still largely used today around the world.

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:

Piaget is said to be the founder of cognitive development, he has changed the field of developmental psychology and because of him we no longer discussing strategies, rule-governed behaviors and representations but we do talk a lot about stimulus generalization, mental age, Conditioning, and

Jean Piaget was born in Neuchatel in Switzerland in 1896. In 1923 he became a Professor of psychology, Sociology, and philosophical sciences at Neuchatel University. Piaget was given the role of director of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva in 1921. He married a psychologist and in 1923 they had two daughters and a son. He then went onto become Professor of child psychology in 1929, he also founded and became director of the Institute for Educational science in 1956. When he only 10 years old he published a short paper about a sighting of an albino sparrow. He was then offered a post a Neuchatel’s natural history museum although he did not take this offer and carried on with his studies. Piaget moved to Paris some years later and began working on standardised tests at the Albert Binet Laboratory School. By doing these tests he found that some of the answers given by children of the similar ages did not match up. Due to these findings, he then started to explore the subject of children’s reasoning. Most of his work was done on his 3 children and this has caused some controversy as it has been criticised for not being an appropriate sample for the purposes of scientific research. (Shirley Allen, Peter Gordon, 2011).