EDU 329

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Educational Psychology EDU 329 Jean Piaget’s Theory By : Coderro D. Johnson Shanderia Culmer Lorin Walkine Valencia Knowles

Introduction : 

WHAT IS COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT? Cognitive development focuses on how children learn and process information. It is the development of the thinking and organizing systems of the mind. It involves language, mental imagery, thinking, reasoning, problem solving and memory development. Introduction

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INTRODUCTION TO PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT No theory of cognitive development has had more impact than the cognitive stages presented by Jean Piaget. Piaget , a Swiss psychologist suggested that children go through four separate stages in a fixed order that is universal in all children.

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Piaget declared that these stages differ not only in the quantity of information acquired at each, but also in the quality of knowledge and understanding at that stage. Piaget suggested that movement from one stage to the next occurred when the child reached an appropriate level of maturation and was exposed to relevant types of experiences. Without experience, children were assumed incapable of reaching their highest cognitive ability. Piaget’s four stages are known as the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.

SENSORIMOTOR STAGE : 

SENSORIMOTOR STAGE The sensorimotor stage in a child is from birth to approximately two years. During this stage, a child has relatively little competence in representing the environment using images, language, or symbols. An infant has no awareness of objects or people that are not immediately present at a given moment. Piaget called this a lack of object permanence. Object permanence is the awareness that objects and people continue to exist even if they are out of sight. In infants, when a person hides, the infant has no knowledge that they are just out of sight. According to Piaget, this person or object that has disappeared is gone forever to the infant.

PREOPERATIONAL STAGE : 

The preoperational stage is from the age of two to seven years. The most important development at this time is language. Children develop an internal representation of the world that allows them to describe people, events, and feelings. Children at this time use symbols, they can pretend when driving their toy car across the couch that the couch is actually a bridge. PREOPERATIONAL STAGE

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Although the thinking of the child is more advanced than when it was in the sensor motor stage, it is still qualitatively inferior to that of an adult. Children in the preoperational stage are characterized by what Piaget called egocentric thoughts. The world at this stage is viewed entirely from the child’s own perspective. Thus a child’s explanation to an adult can be uninformative.

CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE : 

The concrete operational stage lasts from the age of seven to twelve years of age. The beginning of this stage is marked by the mastery of the principal of conservation. Children develop the ability to think in a more logical manner and they begin to overcome some of the egocentric characteristics of the preoperational period. One of the major ideas learned in this stage is the idea of reversibility. This is the idea that some changes can be undone by reversing an earlier action. An example is the ball of clay that is rolled out into a snake piece of clay. CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

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Children at this stage understand that you can regain the ball of clay formation by rolling the piece of clay the other way. Children can even conceptualize the stage in their heads without having to see the action performed. Children in the concrete operational stage have a better understanding of time and space. Children at this stage have limits to their abstract thinking, according to Piaget

FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE : 

The formal operational stage begins in most people at age twelve and continues into adulthood. This stage produces a new kind of thinking that is abstract, formal, and logical. Thinking is no longer tied to events that can be observed. A child at this stage can think hypothetically and use logic to solve problems. FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE

Bibliography : 

Allyn., & Bacon. (1995 – 2008). Educational Implications of Piaget’s Theory. 2, 41. Funderstanding (1998 – 2008) retrieved September 19 2009 http://www.funderstanding.com/content/piaget Bibliography

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Morrow, L. (2005). Literacy Development In The Early Years. Boston: Pearson. Seifert K., & Hoffnung., R. (2000). Child and Adolescent Development. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

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