Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development

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Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Thesis Statement: Jean Piaget is one of the most important theorists in all psychology who forged one of the most comprehensive and compelling theories of intellectual development.

PIAGET’S BACKGROUND
Jean Piaget was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Piaget considered his father a careful thinker, as his profession was medieval historian at the University. Piaget’s mother, in contrast, was highly emotional and created tension within the family. Piaget adopted his father’s academic discipline and found refuge from the family’s conflicts in his own research.
Piaget showed promise as a scientist from the start. At 10 years old, he published his first article on an albino sparrow he had seen in a local park.
Piaget began to study children in 1920 while working in the Binet Laboratory in Paris. There he was to construct an intelligence test for children. Initially, he found the work boring, however he quickly became interested in the children’s answers, particularly the wrong answers. It is then he realized that the wrong answers formed a pattern that was quite different than older children or adults.
OVERVIEW OF PIAGET’S THEORY
Piaget believed that we were born motivated to construct meaning out of new experiences, and the child wants to learn. Children are inherently active learners, not blank slates. He did not believe that children’s thinking is shaped by adult teachings or other environmental influences.
Although Piaget’s researched changed over the years, each part of it contributes to a single, integrated stage theory. He has broken down the learning process into periods.
Period I: Sensory-Motor Intelligence: Piaget’s first developmental period consists of six stages:
Stage 1 – Birth to 1 Month: The Use of Reflexes
The infant’s first schemes (the infant’s action-structures) consist primarily of inborn reflexes. The most prominent...