Piaget theory of cognitive development

PIAGET THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
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 During the past half-century, Swiss psychologist Jean
Piaget devised a model describing how human go
about making sense of their world by gathering and
organising information. He began his study of child
development which the observation of his own three
children from beginning, his investigations resulted in
the publication of a large number of papers and books
with are often quoted by eminent psychologist and
other thinkers on education.
Piaget assert that all children progress through four
stages in fixed order. According to his theory, human
intellect is constructed over time as the individual
experiences progressively more complex interactions
with the environment.
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 Following are the four stages of cognitive
development:
 Sensorimotor
 Pre-operational
 Concrete operational
 Formal operational
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Piaget asserts that all children progress through all the these stages
in a fixed order. According to his theory, human intellect is
constructed over time as the individual experiences progressively
more complex interaction with the environment.
Two Processes
In Piaget’s system, two processes -organization and adaptation -
actively operation during each of the four stages.
Organization is the process by which different elements within a
system, maintain communication e.g we have a tendency to
organize basic sensory information ( such as image and other
experiences ) in order to form more complex ideas and thoughts.
Adaptation consists of complementary process of assimilation and
accommodation. These two processes are basis for cognitive
growth.

 Assimilation : ‘Assimilation’ implies incorporation of something from the
environment. New ideas concepts and stimuli are taken in and incorporation
into one’s ‘existing set of schemes ‘ . A scheme is the organized pattern of
behaviour which the child develops when he is engaged in any activity for e.g
when a child is engaged in sucking, there is a certain pattern of movements of
the cheeks, lips and hands. When a child is confronted with a new object by
assimilating it. His old scheme doesn’t change a process.

Accommodation : ‘Accommodation’ involves modification or change of some
element of an old scheme or learning a new scheme which is more appropriate
for the new object. A baby who has already got a scheme of sucking mother’s
breast accommodate to the object placed in the mouth-finger, nipple, pencil a
toy - depending on its shape, from and the size The baby develops a new
scheme or a modified scheme. This is called accommodation.
 Thus, a baby assimilated when he understand and perceives the new in light of
his old perceptions. A baby forms a new scheme when he modifies or changes
his old perception to suit the new. This implies adjusting or accommodating.
In this way a baby forms new structures or new schemes and consequently
develops cognivity.

SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
 There are six steps at this stage.
 During the first month of file, the babies are unaware of themselves and the object around them e.g.
they do not realise that bottle they suck and the bottle they grasp are one and the same thing. The
infant has a lack of what Piaget called object performance.
 Between 4 to 8 months, the infant's attempt to control and manipulated the objects which are often
conical. They may hear an interesting noise but since they do not know what cause it, they try to make
noise reoccur by repeating whatever they were doing when they heard the noise. The baby at this
stage also realises that objects exist when they are out of sight.
 During 8 to 12 months, thinking gives way to more instrumental activity. The child has achieved object
permanent. He has developed some internal image of the object to help him recall it and its location -
he displays sense of space and time - but the child is limited intellectually.
 12 to 14 months : The child is able to locate the hidden toys. Piaget seen much of the cognitive growth
as the formation of increasingly complex hypotheses in the light of the experiences.
 18 to 24 months : During this period the child can infer what the moving hand holds holds. This last
stage is important because it represents the beginning of the child’s ability to represent normally
objects that are no longer physically present. In essence, it is the start of abstract thought.

 PRE-OPERATIONAL STAGE
The major advance made during this period is the ability to represent the external world
mentally by means of arbitrary symbols that stand for objects. This is the period in which
language develops and begins to reflect the child’s cognitive abilities and limitations. The
pre-operational period is transitional period. The perspective of the child on the words is
expanding rapidly, but the child is still confusing in the use of physical concepts and in
evaluations of cause and effect. During this phase, the child makes appropriate
generalizations and attribute his feelings to inanimate objects- assuming, e.g. that clouds
‘cry’ to make rain. Alternate perspectives are not imaged by child. This is also known as
stage of preoperational thought.
 CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE
This period is characterized by the emergence of operations such as conservation.
Conservation is Piaget’s term for the idea that a property or attribute of an object remains
the same despite some transformation that change the appearance of the object. Piaget
found that when a child at a child at pre-operational stage is shown two identical balls of
clay and then sees one rolled into a saucer he may claim that the saucer contains less clay
because it is thinner than ball. The child is taking only one aspect (shape) into account. The
child does not know that the saucer has taken shape from the same ball.

 At about age 7, the child grasps the solution to
conservation problems by development three concepts that
characterise concrete operations. This first is compensation
- sausage is thinner but that change is balanced by its
increase in length. The second is reversibility - if you role
the sausage back, you get the same ball you started with,
the third is identity - nothing has been added to or subtract
from the clay. So, the sausage and the ball contain same
amount of clay.
 Children at the level of concrete operations are able to
consider two aspects of a problem simultaneously. In their
social interpretations, they consider not only what they are
saying but also listen to others.
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 FORMAL OPERATIONS STAGE
Here the youth begins and the nature of thought undergoes a change. The
complex abstract and mature logic of adult begins to manifest it self during
adolescence with the systematic analysis, exploration and solution of
problems.
During this period, this period, thinking is purely abstract and hypothetical.
Piaget has been most concerned with the capacity to reason with represent
problems, concepts of geometry, language, space, time, number, order etc.
During the teenage years young people realise that thoughts are private and
that no one else knows what they are thinking. They value friendship and
sincerity and spend much time trying. The value friendship and sincerity and
spend much time trying to discharge real motives. The adult is more sensitive
to the discrepancy between reality and ideals. Teenager has knowledge of the
rule and his knowledge is different forms that of small children.
Lastly, during this period ( formal operations ), the crystallization of
personality development takes place. Forming of social and ideation at
position is closely linked with the acquisition of moral values.

At this stage, the individual has reached his intellectual maturity

EDUCATION IMPLICATIONS OF PIAGET'S THEORY OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
 The child is learning by himself, the teacher occupies a secondary
position. The child discovers things actively. Infants explore the
world knowledge should not be imposed.
 It is the duty of the school, teachers and parents to provide
materials to children to sharpen their interests. Let the child
explore and solved the problems. The classrooms in early grades
might be arranged in a series of counters stocked with intriguing
materials to arouse children’s curiosity. Children should be allowed
to manipulate things and see results.
 Instruction should be geared to the level of the child. As. the level
of the child. As the level of the child change at each stage, the level
of instruction or exploratory activities should also change.
 The knowledge of cognitive stage of growth of a child does help the
teacher in more then one way. There teacher should be sensitive to
understand the child’s actions and be guided by his spontaneous
interests.
 Social interaction have a great education value for Piaget. Positive
social actions, therefore, should be encouraged.

 He did not make specific education recommendations. He was more
interested in understanding children’s thinking. He did express
some general ideas about educational philosophy, however, he
believed that the main goal of education should be to help children
learn how to learn how to learn and that education should “form
not furnish” the minds of students even though Piagent did not
design programmers of education based on his ideas, many other
people have e.g. the National Association for The Education of
Young Children has guidelines for developmentally appropriate
education that incorporate Piaget findings. Piaget has taught us
that we can learn a great deal about how children think by listening
carefully, If we understand children’s thinking we will better able to
match teaching methods to children abilities.
 The student in any class will vary greatly greatly in both their level
of cognitive development and their and their academic knowledge .
As a teacher, we can determine whether student’s are having
trouble because they simply have not learned the basic facts at
level. The student are the best sources of information about their
own thinking abilities. “Student must be neither bored by work that
is simple nor left behind by teaching they cannot understand”.

 According to Hunt, disequilibrium must be kep “just right” to
encourage growth. Setting up Situations that lead to errors can help
create an appropriate level of disequilibrium when student
experience some conflict between what they think should happen
( a pieces of wood should sink because it is big and what actually
happen ( it floats ) they may rethink the situation and new
knowledge may develop.
 RELATED RESOURCES – visit website-
http://ctetexampreparation.blogspot.com
 Cognitive Development theory
 FACTORS AFFECTING COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
 Social and Emotional Development - Infancy, Childhood and Adolescence
 INFLUENCE OF HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT ON DEVELOPMENT
 Physical Motor Development and Characters of Different Stages
 DEVELOPMENT TASK BY - R.J HAVIGHURST’S FROM CHILDHOOD TO
ADOLESCENCE PERIOD
 Concept and Principles of Growth and Development
 THE END

Piaget theory of cognitive development

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