Jean Piaget was a cognitive theorist who believed that children learn through active exploration of their environment and imitation of others. He identified four main stages of cognitive development: sensory-motor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Piaget's theory informs early childhood practice by emphasizing the importance of hands-on learning activities that allow children to discover through interactions. This enables practitioners to support development by providing opportunities for real-world experiences through play, exploration of materials, trips, and role play.

1. Jean Piaget
By robyn Allera

2. Which category did the theorist view
the purpose of play as?
Play as intellectual development.
• Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a
comprehensive theory about the nature and
development of human intelligence.
• Jean Piaget believed that childhood plays a vital and
active role to the growth of intelligence, and that the
child learns through doing and actively exploring.

3. Brief overview of his theory
• Jean Piaget was a cognitive theorist, his interest was mainly about how
children learn instead of what or when they might learn it.
• He said that children are active learners not passive learners
• Children use first hand experiences and prior experiences to develop their
learning and understanding of the world
• He also believes that the information children learn is through imitating others
and transform this into symbolic behaviour.
He also believes that children go through stages and sequences in their learning; which
are:
1. Sensory-Motor (Ages Birth Through Two) The infant knows the world through their
movements and sensations.
2. Pre-operational (Ages Two Through Seven) Children begin to think symbolically and
learn to use words and pictures to represent objects. They also tend to be very
egocentric, and see things only from their point of view.
3. Concrete Operations (Ages Seven Through Eleven) During this stage, children begin
to thinking logically about concrete events.
4. Formal Operations (Ages Eleven Through Sixteen) At this stage, the adolescent or
young adult begins to think theoretically and reason about hypothetical problems.

4. how his ideas on play informs practice and enables
practitioners to support children’s development
• His ideas informs practice as practitioners learnt that, learning is
supported by action. Children need to experiment actively with
materials and to experience things in the real world to develop
thought.
• Practitioners are encouraged to provide learning activities which
enable the child to discover themselves through interactions with
the environment. Which will help develop their intellectual
development
• This enables practitioners to support children's development as
they can provide children with:
- Opportunities to experience things in the real world by taking them
out on trips and through role play/ home corner.
- A variety of recourses/ materials to explore with

5. Cont...
• He stressed the importance of personal and individual
ways of communicating through:
- Expressing thoughts, Ideas, Feelings and relationships, as well
as the shared and agreed forms of language.
• His work supported the development of
communication in children with disabilities and
complex needs.
• His work is also useful in looking at babies/ toddlers,
who use personal language such as gestures or props
more than conventional spoken or signed language.