Jean Piaget was one of the 20th century's most influential figures in child development and learning studies. He called his general theoretical framework “genetic epistemology”. Piaget concluded that children pass through four stages during their cognitive development and that they all do so in the same order. Being a pioneer in the field, Piaget's theory was widely accepted, studied further, supported and criticized since 1960's.
Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland in 1896, died in 1980. His fruitful career started very early, by making his first important scientific work at age 11, a short essay about albino sparrows. Therefore it's not surprising that he earned doctoral degree at age 22. Piaget had three children, and he based his theory upon experimental data through studying their intellectual development from infancy through language. He became famous for his Theory of cognitive development and Genetic epistemology.
Driven by the ultimate question that he was interested in - how does knowledge grow, Piaget gave answers in his Theory of cognitive development during 1920's. Impact of the Theory wasn't felt worldwide until the 1960's, when sufficient English translations became available. It's also important to point out here that hos research was conducted at the beginning of 20th century, so he had no access to modern means and tools for research.
The Theory describes the cognitive development of children. Key concepts of the Theory are schemes, assimilation, accommodation and equilibration. Schemes are categories of knowledge that help us interpret and understand the world. According to Piaget, a schema also includes the very process of obtaining that knowledge. Learning and development take place through the process between assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation makes the organization of information possible and absorbs it into existing schema and accommodation occurs when an object cannot be assimilated, in which case the schema is modified for the purpose of new object inclusion.
As Theory says, each child passes through four stages of development before reaching the adult age:
Sensorimotor stage (divided into six separate sub stages: reflexes, primary circular reaction, secondary circular reaction, coordination of reactions, tertiary circular reaction, early representational thought) lasts from birth to age two, during which the infant is trying to make sense of the world. Having limited tools for exploration, infant use their sensory perceptions and motor activities in the process. Within this period the transition occurs from what Sigmund Freud called the “oceanic feeling” (inability to separate the self from the external world) tot he ability to make the distinction between the two.
Between age two and six a child passes through preoperational stage. Still unable to use the full power of concrete logic, child is unable to consider another point of view and believe that everybody else thinks in the same ways they do. Piaget called this stage egocentric. An egocentric child cannot stand in another persons shoes and see the world as they do. The preoperational period is divided into two stages: the preconceptual stage and the intuitive stage.In the preconceptual stage of thinking, children are able to classify things, but they have trouble to see two different members of a class at different times, i.e. they believe them to be the same object. An example of this can be found in a story of Piaget's son who sees a snail and then a few meters further sees another snail and yet believes it to be the same snail. During the intuitive stage, which take place from age 4 to 7, children are thinking more logically than they were before, although their logic still didn't reach the full power. One of the major achievements children make during the preoperational stage is for sure the use of symbols and language.
Concrete operational stage lasts until age eleven. Children now have better understanding of mental operations, but still lack ability of abstract thinking. They can think much more systematically and are no longer bound by egocentrism. The children are now able to place themselves in the positions of others and can have a full perception. Example can be found in judging the age of a person. They can also order objects in hierarchical structures, which helps them to deal with numbers and mathematical problems.
Formal operational stage starts approximately at age twelve and lasts until adulthood. Children gain the ability of abstract thinking, deductive reasoning and system planning. According to Piaget, this is lasts stage of cognitive development and there's no further structural improvements in the quality of reasoning.
These four stages have the following characteristics:
- Although the timing can vary the sequence of the stages doesn't
- Not culturally specific (Universal)
- Generalizable; the representational and logical operations available to the child should extend to all kinds of concepts and content knowledge
- Stages are logically organized wholes
- Hierarchical nature of stage sequences; each successive stage incorporates elements of previous stages but more differentiated and integrated
- Stages represent qualitative differences in modes of thinking, not merely quantitative differences
Since Piaget published his Theory, there were many criticisms on his work, especially after 1970's. Theory in it's original form isn't taken seriously anymore, with exception of some neopiagetian theorists, but they are in minority. Recent studies show that the performance of children within a concrete stage isn't that homogenous. According to those studies, the mentioned performance varies within each stage and depends on other factors, like perception, language development, decision rules and real-world knowledge for each individual child. Also there's been many questions about whether each child passes through all four stages and if every child actually reaches the formal operational stage. Even Piaget himself noted that development doesn't always occur as he spoke in his theory. Piaget's theory is considered a “domain general”, meaning that cognital development takes place across different domains of knowledge (such as mathematics, logic, physics, language, etc.). Trends in modern cognitive science are going away from domain generality and towards domain specificity of modularity of mind. Rather than being domain general learners, children come equipped with domain specific theories, a “core knowledge”, which help them learn about specific domains.
Much of the criticism is in regards with his research methods. Piaget based his Theory and was inspired by observations on his own three children. Next, his research sample was rather small and too specific in terms of socio-economic status and education of people in their environment. With those remarks, it was rather unsafe to make general conclusions and the theory that was to be applied to a general population. “One consistent criticism of Piaget's account of development is that it uderestimates children actual abilities. From infancy though early childhood, children have been show to possess greater intellectual skills, at least under certain conditions, that Piaget initially proposed.” (Bjorklund, 1995)
Although Piaget mentioned the environment factor in his theory, it's thought now that he didn't consider environment factor as the major factor in cognitive development. Also, recent researches show that children possess many of the abilities at an earlier age than it's sated in Piaget's theory.
Criticism on quality of Piaget's work can also be found. “Once criticism leveled at Piaget is that he didn't always define his terms operationally. Consequently, it's difficult for others to interpret the significance of his generalizations.” (Carlson and Buskist, 1997)
While critics were many, nobody can really deny tremendous impact Piaget had on psychology and education. He identified several important milestones in the mental development of children. Being the first serious scientist that made effort in an unknown field, his work boosted various additional researches in cognitive and developmental psychology. Many of the aspects of his work are accepted and studied by today's scientists.
Even without being committed to the education itself, Piaget had an important impact on education, as many educational programs were (and are) build upon the fact that certain age of children requires an adequate educational approach. Also, many instructional strategies were derived from Piaget's theory.
A boost in research that happened as a result of Piaget's work evolved through three main waves (Flavell & Miller, 1998)
Piaget-influenced, 1950's to 1960's. Beginning with Piaget, this era is characterized by studies that documented increases with age in various perspective-taking abilities. Piaget believed that children begin development by being cognitively egocentric, maning that they don'y know about conceptual, perceptual, or affective perspectives. (Flavell, 1999)
- Children metacognitive development, 1970's
- Theory of mind development, 1980's to present.
Piaget's Theory of cognitive development had a major impact on future researches and most of the today's researches on cognital development and genetic epistemology have roots in Piaget's Theory. Even it isn't considered a serious theory anymore, as a natural result of enormous research boost and development in the field following Piaget, his influence cannot be questioned and can still be found in recent researches. His interdisciplinary influence is also proof of the true value of his work.
