Jean Piaget's constructivist structuralism posits that knowledge is organized into changing cognitive structures as children interact with their environments. His theory emphasizes three main influences on cognitive development: maturation, active engagement, and learning from others. The process of knowledge construction involves assimilation, accommodation, and cognitive equilibration, allowing children to adapt their mental structures to better fit their experiences.

1. Dr. RAM S. MATORIA
JEAN PIAGET’S
constructivist structuralism:
A DYNAMIC CONCEPTION
PSYCHIATRIC CENTRE, SMS MEDICAL COLLEGE, JAIPUR

2. PIAGET’S ASSUMPTIONS………..
 Knowledge can be described in terms of structures that
change with development.
 As children develop, new schemes emerge, and are
sometimes integrated with each other into cognitive
structures.
 Piaget defined cognitive development more than the
addition of new facts and ideas into existing store of
information.
 He propounded that Cognitive development results from
the interactions that children have with their physical and
social environments.

3. PIAGET’S ASSUMPTIONS………..
 Piaget's approach was “constructivist structuralism,”
according to which mental structures are built through the
interaction of the child and the world.
 Mental structures originate through the actions of the child
on objects as the child strives to adapt to the environment.
 His view of the child as an active constructor of her or his
knowledge rather than a passive recipient of information,
on one hand, or a genetically predetermined knower, on the
other.

4. PIAGET’S ASSUMPTIONS………..
 What Piaget deemed innate was only an intelligent
functioning that makes possible the construction of
progressively more adequate structures of knowledge.
 This improvement of structures is based on abstractions
from actions performed over time, and qualitative
improvements makes more comprehensive & more
adaptive to next stage

5. Main three influences on children’s cognitive development
Piaget explained that three dominant influenced factors on
children’s cognitive development as:
1. Maturation:
It is the unfolding of biological changes that are genetically
programmed into us at birth.
2. Activity:
Activity is related with maturation directly. This means that an
increase maturations means child will be more cognitively
develop and act to the environment and surroundings and learn
from those actions.
3. Transmission:
The word transmission is used to describe the act of learning
from others.

6. PIAGET’S APPROACH…….
NATIVISM EMPIRICISM
CONSTRUCTIVIST
STRUCTRALISM
1.Assimilation
2.Accommodation
3.Equilibration

7. PIAGET’S: “CONSTRUCTIVIST STRUCTURALISM”
Mental structures are built through the interaction of the child and the world
INPUT
INFORMATION- FIT
TO SCHEMA
INFORMATION -
RELATED BUT NOT
FIT TO SCHEMA
DISEQILIBRATION
SCREENING
EQUILIBRATION
ASSIMILATION
INTEGRATED AS
SUCH
INCORPORATED
WITH SOME
ALTERATIONS
ACCOMODATION
COGNITIVE
SCHEMATA
3 major ingredients for constructing
cognitive structure (schemas):
 Assimilation
 Accommodation
 Cognitive Equilibration

8. INFORMATION
MATCH INTO
SCHEMA
INFORMATION
RELATED BUT NOT
MATCH TO
SCHEMA
ASSIMILATION
“an inward-
directed
tendency”
INTEGRATING
REALITY INTO ONE’S
OWN VIEW
ACCOMMODATION
“an outward-
directed
tendency”
CHANGING ONE’S VIEW
TO BETTER MATCH
REALITY
COGNITIVE EQUILIBRATION
PIAGET’S: “CONSTRUCTIVIST STRUCTURALISM”
Mental structures are built through the interaction of the child and the world
“STRIKE A BALANCE” : TO CONSTRUCT SCHEMATA/STRUCTURE
CC
ADAPTATION
“COGNITIVE
SCHEMATA”
ORGANIZATION
INNATE:INTELLIGENTFUNCTIONING

9. THANKS