Should We Abandon Piaget’s Theory Given the Amount of Criticism It Has Received over the Year?

Psychology is full of theories that explain why we think the way we think. Of those theories, is the popular Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Jean Piaget introduced a variety of ideas and concepts to the world of psychology describing logical thinking in children and adolescents. To fully comprehend just how valuable his theories are today, it is important to explore the life of Jean Piaget, his educational background, and the stages of cognitive development and how the stages impact the classroom. This will give a further analysis and explanation of how Piaget has helped to shape our viewpoints as teachers today.

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

Most of the criticism of Piaget’s work is in regards to his research methods. A major source of his inspiration for the theory was based on his observations of his own children. And because of this small sample group, people believe that it is difficult and incorrect to generalise his findings to a larger population. Similarly, many psychologists believe that Piaget underestimated the age which children could accomplish certain tasks and that sometimes children understand a concept before they are able to demonstrate their understanding of it. For example, children in the Sensorimotor stage may not search for a hidden object because their motor skills are not developed, rather than because they lack object permanence. This has been supported by evidence from Bower & Wishart (1972). They found that the way that an object is made to disappear influences the child’s response. As well as this, Piaget’s theory has been said to overestimate that every child and adult reaches the formal operational stage of knowledge development. Dasen (1994) claims that only a third of adults ever reach this stage.

Research done by Piaget involves the theory of cognitive development in children (Packer, 2017). Piaget used his own child to develop what is considered the most comprehensive methods for understanding the phases of child development. Dr. Franco uses Piaget’s research to build upon her own research. All

According to Flavell (1982) and Siegal (2003), they argued that although Piaget’s theory has had great reach and significance, it has encountered criticism of some aspects of it. Problems with his theory have gradually surfaced.

Jean Piaget was a biologist in the 1900s who studied the development of children's understanding. He believed that children didn't just gather information and add on it as they got older. Instead, he suggested that intelligence develops and progresses as one gets older through a series of four stages; the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stage. The sensorimotor stage begins from birth until the age of 2, during this stage knowledge is limited, an infant tends to use motor activity without the use of symbols. They spend this time experimenting constantly, For example, putting things in the

Much of Piaget’s early work involved the “clinical method” – children being asked questions in a somewhat unstructured way, the onus being to establish whether they understood different problems. This approach was criticised for being unscientific, with Piaget and his fellow workers eventually being more precise in their experiments. It was agreed however that Piaget posed problems in a way that young children found difficult to comprehend. (Eysenck,

I was unsure of the model that you argued from, it just sounded like you were pointing out the flaws in Piaget’s model. Every model has flaws, but it can still be the best one currently available. New models are created all the time and they all eventually have some sort of flaw, that doesn’t make the entire thing invalid. As Piaget was the first to study cognitive development and is still relevant today, his theory is groundbreaking. The basic arithmetic, which is your largest point, is said by thorities to be prewired in the human brain. This, being in the human brain at birth, cannot be developed and could be outside Piaget’s cognitive development theory. A lot of what Piaget says in his theory is undeniably true. The younger a child is

Experts have argued “...the clear-cut ages and stages forming the basis of Piaget 's theory are actually quite blurred and blend into each other” (Donaldson, page 57). In Donaldson’s book, ‘Children 's Minds’, she suggests that Piaget may have underestimated children 's language and thinking abilities by not giving enough consideration to the contexts he provided for children when conducting his research (Castella, 2011). Although Piaget’s theory gives us a brief understanding of how children’s learning develops, not all children are taught the same way nor do they learn at the same pace. Each of the four stages have been criticised by experts. For instance on evaluation of the sensorimotor stage; Bower (1982) found that children display object permanence at a much younger age than Piaget suggested. We can agree or disagree with Piaget’s theory but one thing is certain, we will always imagine the stages whilst observing our children grow “... it is certainly true that, whether we agree with the theory or not, Piaget has changed the way we think about children’s thinking” (Sternberg, page 761).

In the concrete operational stage between the ages of seven and twelve, children become capable of logical thought, they also start to be able to think abstractly. However they are best suited to visible or concrete objects and things they can see (Lee and Gupta). Once the child has reached the formal operations stage from twelve years onwards it becomes more practiced at abstract processing, carrying out problem solving systematically and methodically thus completing the cognitive development process.

Being one of the most influential researchers in childhood development, Jean Piaget considered himself to be a “genetic epistemologist.” He began his track originally studying biology and philosophy. He was heavily interested in the biological influences on how we come to know. The believed that the main thing that makes us different from other animals is the human’s ability to do Abstract Symbolic Reasoning. His views and thoughts on this were often compared and thought of with those of Lev Vygotsky. Piaget, along with Jerome Bruner, John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky and Ulrick Neisser, was able to put together an instruction manual or construction guide to the theory of human learning and mental thought.

Several years ago, an insightful and profound man, Jean Piaget, established a theory of cognitive growth during childhood. This theory was viewed as a major model for understanding the intricate steps of mental development from the thinking to understanding for a child. This theory also gave rise to the mentality that cognitive processes during childhood are not minuscule versions of adults but rather an irrational yet unique process with its own rules. Even though Piaget’s theory seems quite reasonable and logical, under the light of recent speculation his theory has been widely challenged. However, Piaget’s theory holds great impact in today’s psychology.

In the sensorimotor stage the child discovers the environment through physical actions such as sucking, grabbing, shaking and pushing. During these first two years of life children realize objects still exist, even if it is out of view. This concept is known as object permanence. Children in the preoperational stage develop language skills, but may only grasp an idea with repeated exposure. As Piaget describes in the next stage, children draw on knowledge that is based on real life situations to provide more logical explanations and predictions. Lastly, in the formal operational stage children use higher levels of thinking and present abstract ideas.

On November 6th 2017 I had the pleasure to observe Johnny a two-year-old boy that attends Land of Learning preschool in Sycamore, Illinois. I have worked with Johnny a lot this year because I work in this classroom as an assistant teacher. While observing Johnny I realized all the detail that Piaget explains in his theory is very accurate. Jean Piaget was a psychologist that was very know for his observations in child development and the study of human intelligence. Piaget concluded with four stages of cognitive development. The two stages that I am going to talk about in this paper is the Sensorimotor stage and the Preoperational stage.

According to Atherton (2011), Jean Piaget’s Developmental Theory is a seminal work in the field of education. Although Piaget was a biologist and he devoted most of his early works to the study of mollusks, he later on moved into the study of children’s minds and their progress as they grew up. He mainly worked with the children in his family and his methodology was mainly interactional.