This is a post for the "Who is..." Page where we detail who a particular person is and what impact they have on education.
Jean Piaget was an Educational Psychologist. He was born in Switzerland in 1896 and died there in 1980.
Piaget is most known for his development of Cognitive Development. His work is used by educational psychologist today to understand more about the way we learn. He was among the first to epistemology(which is academic jargon for the study of knowledge).
When Piaget was working in France as a teacher in a boarding school, he graded some standardized tests for the school. After a significant number of tests he began to notice a trend. Certain questions younger students did not answer correctly that older students did. So he began to theorize that infants and children did not know information purely because there minds had not matured enough to comprehend it.
Example: If you ask a child (that has a brother) if they have any brothers they will say yes, but if you ask them if their brother has any they will often reply no.
After years of studying, Piaget developed his Theory of Cognitive Development. It describes the progression of cognition from birth to adulthood.
The Stages: (the ages vary from child to child and scientist to scientist but these are close approximations)
- Sensorimotor Stage: (0-2 years old)
- In this stage we learn to identify objects based upon our senses. It is characterized by learning about the world by seeing, and feeling and hearing. When we have realized object permanence we have began to transition to the next stage. Object permanence means that we know an object still exists even though we can't see it. A classical example is when you are playing with an infant you can present an object and they will know it exists but then you can hide it and they will not know it is gone, in fact they will have forgotten it existed in the first place.
- Preoperational Stage: (3-7 years old)
- This stage is largely representative of our childhood. These kids first of all are kids but they still think of themselves as kids. They have no remorse about playing with toys despite who they are around. Whereas in the next stage of cognitive development we become a little more aware of our company and begin the "growing up" process. But not here, not in preoperational. The characteristics that standout in this stage is ego-centrism and conservation. If you are ego-centric then you can not put yourself in someone else shoes. Egocentricity makes it difficult to change perspective to anyone else but your own. Conservation can be described as understanding the values regardless of the capacity it is contained in. If that is confusing watch this video.
- Concrete Operational: (8-13 years old)
- In concrete operational we can fully understand information and we are able to put it into proper contexts. When we reach this stage we are able to apply our experiences to general principles but may struggle applying general principles to understanding likely outcomes of things we have yet to experience.
- Formal Operational: (older than 14 years old)
- When we arrive at this stage we have developed problem solving techniques and the ability to think abstractly. When teaching students at this cognitive level it is very important as teachers to hone these skills. Just because we are able to think abstractly or solve problems does not mean we do it well.
A downfall for many early childhood teachers is that they forget about the cognitive development of their students. We do not understand why they do not understand. How annoying can that be? It is easy for us to forget when we learned certain skills. Do you remember when you learned how to write like an adult instead of 5 year old? When did you learn how to think abstractly?
The problem is that we can do it now and do not remember when we could not do it. So it frustrating to have to grade someone who may just be incapable.
As teachers it is important to understand where our students are cognitively. Do you know of an example where a teacher asked her students to do something they were clearly not able to do? Do you have trouble with Piaget and cognitive development?
