Essay about Understanding Piaget’s Theory and Current Criticism

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.

During this stage, the child can engage in symbolic play, and have developed an imagination. This child may use an object to represent something else, such pretending that a broom is a horse. An important feature a child displays during this stage is egocentrism. This refers to the child’s inability to see a situation from another person’s point of view. To test whether or not children are egocentric, Piaget used the ‘Three Mountain Task’. Piaget concluded that the four-year olds thinking was egocentric, as the seven year olds was not. Children, at this stage, do not understand more complex concepts such as cause and effect, time, and comparison.

The teacher could place two cups that have the same amount of liquid in the cups but because one of the cups is taller than the other the child is going to think the taller glass has more liquid in it. The third stage is the concrete operational stage which occurs during ages seven to eleven. The term concrete operational means the child can reason only about tangible objects presents. So the child can conserve and think logically but only with practical aids. Thinking becomes less egocentric with increased awareness of external events. The fourth and final stage is the formal operational stage which occurs during ages eleven to fifteen. This stage focuses on hypothetical thinking and scientific reasoning. Piaget believed that only children can learn when they are ‘ready’ to learn. He also believed that development couldn 't be ‘sped up.’ Piaget believed that children learned through the resolution of disequilibrium (self discovery, active participation). He believed that teachers should ‘bend’ to children’s needs, provide an appropriate environment, promote self discovery, exploratory learning, self-motivated learning, and set challenges to existing schemes.

Piaget thought that cognitive thinking happed in four distinct stages, the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages. The sensorimotor stage happens between birth and the age of two years old. During the sensorimotor stage a child forms object permeance, which is defined as thing can continue to exist even if the object is failed to be seen. An example of object

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.

Jean Piaget is known for his theories in cognitive development theory. His theory is based on the idea that children constantly construct knowledge as they explore and mold their environment. There are four stages in Piaget’s theory, sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operations, the stages also corresponds with how old the child is. Not every child will be in the stage that matches the child’s age because some children are exceptional. Piaget’s theory is based on the cognitive development of how the average child shows their learned behavior through performed tasks. As I went through the first interview, I realized that how the children came to develop their answers was what’s important about the assignment. each child with the Piagetian Task Kit, I started to realize The Piagetian Task Kit helped me examine and see where each child was at in their cognitive development level.

Piaget theory was said to believe that children go through Four stages of Cognitive Development. Each stage marks development in how children understand the world. Piaget liked to say that children are “little scientist” and that they explore and make sense of the world around them. Through his observations, Piaget developed a stage theory that included four stages. The Sensorimotor Stage that begins from birth to age 2, is the first one. The Preoperational stage from age 2 to about 7, and the third stage is the Concrete Operational stage from the age 7 to 11. Piaget was interested in children's wrong answers that they’ve given on problems that require logical thinking. Piaget revealed

The Critique of Piaget's Theories Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) was a constructivist theorist. He saw children as constructing their own world, playing an active part in their own development. Piaget’s insight opened up a new window into the inner working of the mind and as a result he carried out some remarkable studies on children that had a powerful influence on theories of child thought. This essay is going to explain the main features and principles of the Piagetian theory and then provide criticism against this theory. Cognitive development refers to way in which a person’s style of thinking changes with age.

Piaget’s theory can be broken into two substages: the symbolic function substage and the intuitive thought substage. The symbolic function is when the child is able to represent an object that is not there physically or mentally. This stage also consists of egocentrism and animism. Egocentrism is the inability for one to separate between their own perspective and someone’s else. While, animism is the belief that something that is not animated have life like qualities and are also capable of actions. An example of animism would be when asking my niece, “Do you believe that dolls can come to life?”, she answered that she believe her dolls come to life at night when she is asleep and when she wakes up they stop. The intuitive thought substage is the second substage and it occurs normally when the child is around 4 to 7 years of age. It is called the intuitive thought stage because during this stage the child knows a lot but doesn’t know

Piaget’s theory is that he believed it is in a child's nature to be curious about their surroundings, children want to grasp an understanding of what is going on around them, sometimes their ideas may or may not be correct. According to Piaget, “Assimilation which occurs when new experiences are readily incorporated into a child’s existing theories” (172). For example, this means that a child knows when the family dog barks and licks his face. When the child has the same experience at another house it makes sense because they child has already learned that theory of the dog.

Cognitive development is the process of development and change in terms of mental abilities such as, thinking, reasoning, and understanding. However, there are three theories in which, all attempt to explain the development of cognition in childhood. Jean Piaget, whom was a swiss clinical psychologists known for his, pioneering work in child development believed that in his theory children experience four different inclusive phases of cognitive development. The four stages are the sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. In these four stages, of cognitive development children might show different personalities of more than one

Although Jean Piaget proved his four stages and experimented in debt to reach a conclusion, observationists nowadays often contradict his facts and prove some errors. Hence, the sequence of the developments are usually accurate, the age base that Piaget assigned them to is underestimated. Children far younger than the suggested ages grasp concepts that Piaget believed unattainable at those years. All things considered, psychologists and researchers, although often in disagreement with Piaget's theories, still base their studies and observations on his

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:

The first difference is on the points of emphasis on the theory by the two psychologists. According to Vygotsky theory, more emphasis is on the culture as the main factor that affects cognitive development in human beings. However, Piaget theory contradicts this emphasis by maintaining his views that development happens in stages and the stages are universal, that means all children develop in the same way, that means environment, culture and social relationship have no effect on children development (Jones, & Reynolds, 1992). In summary, Piaget’s theory believes that there is uniform development of children across culture while, Vygotsky emphasizes every child different cognitive development depending on the social environment and culture.

The first stage of Piaget’s development theory is the sensorimotor stage which takes place in children most commonly 0 to 2 years old. In this stage, thought is developed through direct physical interactions with the environment. Three major cognitive leaps in this stage are the development of early schemes, the development of goal-oriented behavior, and the development of object permanence. During the early stages, infants are only aware of what is immediately in front of them. They focus on what they