What are the main points of Piaget’s theory?
Jean Piaget is a Swiss developmental psychologist who is known for his theory of cognitive development. His theory of cognitive development suggests that a child’s intellectual development goes through different stages as they age until they reach the point of thinking similar to adults.
As one of the cornerstones of developmental psychology, Jean Piaget’s theory is widely regarded as a breakthrough in giving the world insight into cognitive processes.
How Piaget developed the theory
In order to understand how children develop logical thinking, Piaget studied children from birth as young infants through their young adulthood. It is said that his interest in the early cognitive development and thought processes of children was inspired by his observations of his own child and nephew.
The IQ tests administered by Alfred Binet to children were scored by Piaget early in his career. When it came to questions that required logic, he was intrigued by children’s incorrect responses. From these observations and a follow-up study and interview with younger children, Jean Piaget believed that children learn and develop through a series of stages of cognitive development.
Piaget’s stages of development
The Sensorimotor Stage
This is the earliest stage of the four stages of cognitive development, it occurs when the child is between 0 to 2 years old. During this time, infants and toddlers learn through sensory experiences and motor activities. Their experience is based on basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.
The sensorimotor stage has six substages.
- Use of reflexes– happens from 0 to 2 months. It is impossible for children to integrate sensory information into a single, unified concept.
- Primary circular reactions– within the first four months of a child’s life, they begin storing information and engaging in behaviour based on their needs or feelings. They respond to audio and visual stimuli in their environment
- Secondary circular reactions- this sensorimotor stage begins in the fourth month until the eighth month of a child. Their behaviour becomes more intentional, and children learn to repeat actions to achieve interesting responses.
- Coordination of secondary schemes- between 8-12 months, children begin to be goal oriented to achieve desired results of their combined actions and behaviours.
- Tertiary circular reactions- as children reach their first year up until their 18th month, children start to explore and be more purposeful with their behaviour. Piaget suggested that children try new actions to arrive at different results.
- Mental combinations- at this stage of cognitive development children are able to use mental abstractions to solve problems, communicate with gestures and words, and start to do pretend play.
The Preoperational Stage
When children reach the age of two, they start to use mental abstractions. It is much easier for a child to conceptualize objects or people using mental images rather than just physical representations. Pretend play and referring to people, things or events who are not present are good examples of abstract representations.
Children also learn abstract concepts such as identities and categorisation these key concepts are the gateway leading to object permanence. For example, if a person they know such as their parents or caregivers wears a costume, they would still know it is them. With a more advanced cognitive process, they can also tell the similarities or differences between things. At this stage, they also have a concept of quantity and numbers knowing what is smaller or bigger, what is less or more.
The Concrete Operational Stage
In the concrete operational stage, children become more capable of solving problems as their cognitive abilities improve and they can consider multiple outcomes and perspectives.
Through the development of categorization, children are able to organize items along dimensions. They can also identify subcategories within categories, and relate two objects to each other through the use of a third object. Additionally, they are able to perform more complicated mathematical operations due to their improved numerical abilities.
Their spatial reasoning ability improves with cognitive developments in this stage as seen by an increase in accuracy when estimating time and distance. The child will be able to read maps and describe how to navigate between locations.
The difference between concrete operational thinking and preoperational thinking is key to children’s learning capabilities and allows more advances in early childhood education.
Piaget proposed that, in the concrete operational stage, children are making intentional and calculated choices, illustrating that they are conscious of their decentering.
While logical thinking improves during the concrete operational state, in its infancy, it is very rigid. During initial development children will struggle with abstracts and hypotheticals, unlike older children.
The Formal Operational Stage
At the age of 11, children begin the formal operational stage where they are able to reason about more abstract ideas. A child’s thought processes are not restricted by the time, the person, or the situation in which he or she is currently placed.
Among the stages of cognitive development, this is where a child thinks about hypothetical situations and possibilities. In this final stage, they learn to apply their reasoning skills to more complex problems in a systematic and logical way.
Important concepts of Piaget’s theory
Schemas
Schemas describe both mental and physical activities involved in understanding and knowing. Our ability to interpret and understand the world depends on these categories of knowledge.
We all possess schemas and continue to form and change them throughout our lives. In fact, the schema is present in all of Piaget’s stages of development. However, new information and experiences can modify and develop preexisting schemas.
There are four types of schemas–person, social, self and event.
Person schema
This refers to our point of view or idea of an individual or a person. For instance, our schema of our mother includes her looks, her smell, her mannerisms, the way she talks or how she dresses up.
social schema
This can be our notion of how people should behave or act in different social circumstances. For example, how you behave around your family at home is not necessarily the same as how you act in front of strangers in public.
self-schema
This is how we perceive ourselves. Self-schema may include our preferences, the kind of food we like, hobbies, and things that make us happy or upset. Our ideas of how we want to be in the future are another good example of a self-schema.
event schema
There are certain behaviours that should be followed in certain situations. It’s similar to a routine or a practice.
Adaptation
Information and experiences change over time, and adaptation is the ability to adjust to them. In essence, adapting to our constantly evolving surroundings is an essential part of the learning process involved in our cognitive growth. According to Piaget’s theory, adaptation can happen in two ways- through assimilation and through
Assimilation
Adaptation through assimilation is the process of incorporating new information into an existing schema through the incorporation of external information. Information or experiences are usually modified in this process so that they conform with pre-existing beliefs, which is subjective in nature.
Accommodation
Accommodation is another aspect of adaptation that involves changing existing schemas in light of new information. This involves processing new information and developing additional schemas or altering current schemas by adjusting psychological representations to welcome new information.
Equilibrium
Jean Piaget believed that as children progress in the stages of development they find a balance between assimilation and accommodation through equilibration. Throughout the stages of cognitive development, children maintain a balance between applying previous knowledge or existing schemas and adapting their behaviour to account for the new information.
How Piaget’s theory can be applied in the classroom
Children benefit from playing by staying healthy, active, and happy. Good physical and mental health promotes young people’s healthy cognitive development.
Jean Piaget highlights how important play is in every child’s intellectual development. Practice games, symbolic games and games with rules are the three types of games that help promote more cognitive development or intellectual development among children.
Practice games are an important part of the cognitive development of a child because they help kids form friendships with their peers, move around and be physically active, and learn skills that will benefit them in the future. It is common for practice games to involve repeating a set of actions for the sole purpose of having fun.
Symbolic games are usually played during the preoperational stage when a child’s creativity blossoms. These games are based on make-believe settings and characters. It is when children use objects to symbolise another object. For example, they act as if they have a call using a banana pretending it’s a mobile phone.
The last type of play that Piaget suggested and documented is rule-based games. By definition, it is any game that imposes rules on the players. Good examples of rule-based games include chess, checkers, hopscotch, board games and card games. They are mostly played during the concrete operational stage of cognitive development.
These games help children understand the value of rules and consequences. The game helps children develop dexterity and hand-eye coordination as they identify colors and count spaces.
Classroom games
Piaget’s theory can be applied in developing classroom games to match the stage of a child’s development. Whichever among the four stages of cognitive development a child is in, whether they’re in the preoperational stage, formal operational thinking stage, or sensorimotor intelligence stage, there’s a game that can be tailored for them.
For young learners in the sensorimotor stage, practice games are the best type of play. Where the teacher or classroom staff will initiate play involving repetition to bring out interesting results or actions from the children. Through these games a child can exhibit a skill or behaviour they have learned such as rattling toys, throwing and catching the ball, striking a toy drum and more.
For children who are at the preoperational stage, games can involve imitation to learn new concepts. Teachers can teach children different sounds from the surrounding like the beeping sound of a car horn or tick tock from the clock. Animal sounds are common examples of sounds children learn to pretend like the bark of a dog, the hiss of a snake, the meow of a cat, moo of a cow.
Symbolic games are also a big hit in classrooms where children get the opportunity to play pretend games with their teachers and classmates. Through these games, they learn how to interact socially. For example, they pretend they’re in a grocery shop. One kid plays as a cashier, one acts as a shopper. Or a restaurant pretend scenario where a kid acts as a customer and another classmate pretends to be a waiter taking their order.
For older children, rule-based games start to become more preferred. It teaches them to focus and follow rules, learn techniques on how to go around the rules and create strategies that will help them win.
It involves decision-making in a fun way where children understand better how to make choices and how these choices affect them and their standing in the game. This is a crucial skill to learn at a young age as you take this with you as you grow older. A child’s creativity, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking skills are honed.
Piaget’s theory can be applied in developing classroom games to match the stage of a child’s development. Whichever among the four stages of cognitive development a child is in, whether they’re in the preoperational stage, formal operational thinking stage, or sensorimotor intelligence stage, there’s a game that can be tailored for them.
For young learners in the sensorimotor stage, practice games are the best type of play. Where the teacher or classroom staff will initiate play involving repetition to bring out interesting results or actions from the children. Through these games a child can exhibit a skill or behaviour they have learned such as rattling toys, throwing and catching the ball, striking a toy drum and more.
For children who are at the preoperational stage, games can involve imitation to learn new concepts. Teachers can teach children different sounds from the surrounding like the beeping sound of a car horn or tick tock from the clock. Animal sounds are common examples of sounds children learn to pretend like the bark of a dog, the hiss of a snake, the meow of a cat, moo of a cow.
Symbolic games are also a big hit in classrooms where children get the opportunity to play pretend games with their teachers and classmates. Through these games, they learn how to interact socially. For example, they pretend they’re in a grocery shop. One kid plays as a cashier, one acts as a shopper. Or a restaurant pretend scenario where a kid acts as a customer and another classmate pretends to be a waiter taking their order.
For older children, rule-based games start to become more preferred. It teaches them to focus and follow rules, learn techniques on how to go around the rules and create strategies that will help them win.
It involves decision-making in a fun way where children understand better how to make choices and how these choices affect them and their standing in the game. This is a crucial skill to learn at a young age as you take this with you as you grow older. A child’s creativity, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking skills are honed.
Piaget vs Montessori vs Vygotsky
The 19th century saw the development of three major theories of child and cognitive development proposed by three psychologists, Montessori, Piaget and Vgotsky. Educating today’s children has been heavily influenced by each psychologist’s theories.
Montessori and Piaget believed that a child develops and learns in sequence while Vygotsky believed that children learn using their social environment. According to him, children’s communities play a major role in how they learn to “make meaning” of the world around them.
Montessori learning seeks to enrich each child’s interest through activities they are inclined to rather than require them to participate in a formal teaching session. Children have the upper hand when it comes to their learning. When they are engaged in an activity that they’re interested in they must not be interrupted to join a group activity.
Meanwhile, Piaget states that child development involves stages of development in their cognitive abilities. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development points out that children go through these stages of development as they age. Their early development has an impact on a child’s life as they get older.
Vygotsky believed that human development is a collaborative process in which children acquire cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through social dialogue and exposure.
The 19th century saw the development of three major theories of child and cognitive development proposed by three psychologists, Montessori, Piaget and Vgotsky. Educating today’s children has been heavily influenced by each psychologist’s theories.
Montessori and Piaget believed that a child develops and learns in sequence while Vygotsky believed that children learn using their social environment. According to him, children’s communities play a major role in how they learn to “make meaning” of the world around them.
Montessori learning seeks to enrich each child’s interest through activities they are inclined to rather than require them to participate in a formal teaching session. Children have the upper hand when it comes to their learning. When they are engaged in an activity that they’re interested in they must not be interrupted to join a group activity.
Meanwhile, Piaget states that child development involves stages of development in their cognitive abilities. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development points out that children go through these stages of development as they age. Their early development has an impact on a child’s life as they get older.
Vygotsky believed that human development is a collaborative process in which children acquire cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through social dialogue and exposure.