Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who developed a theory of cognitive development in children. His theory proposes that children progress through four distinct stages as their mental abilities develop: sensorimotor (birth to age 2), preoperational (ages 2 to 7), concrete operational (ages 7 to 11), and formal operational (ages 11 to adulthood). At each stage, children develop new cognitive abilities that allow for more complex understanding and logical thought. Piaget's theory has been influential in the field of education by shifting focus to how children learn and think at different ages.

1. Jean Piaget’s Cognitive development theory Presented by: Kirsten, Candice, Sarah, Sara, Hannah & Nora

6. Symbolic thinking use symbols and pictures to represent objects. Shift from egocentrism (also known as decentring) capable of seeing things from another’s point of view Animism belief that everything has some kind of consciousness or awareness Understanding transformation understanding of the change in structure or state of an object Centration Involved in transformation - child only being able to concentrate on one quality or feature of an object at a time Reversibility inability of a child being able to follow a line of reasoning back to its original starting point PREOPERATIONAL STAGE – (2-7 years)

7. Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years) Ages 7 through to 11. During this time, children gain a better understanding of mental operations. The child will begin to think logically about concrete events, but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts. Important processes during this stage are: Seriation - The ability to sort objects in an order Classification — Name and identify sets of objects according to appearance, size or other characteristic, including the idea that one set of objects can include another Reversibility —the child understands that numbers or objects can be changed, then returned to their original state Conservation —understanding that quantity, length or number of items is unrelated to the arrangement or appearance of the object or items Compensation - where the ability to see that an increase in one dimension (such as height) is compensated by for a decrease in another dimension (such as width.) http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA04ew6Oi9M&NR=1 - child showing conservation

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10. Building on Piaget theories Many theories of cognitive development have been built on Piagets original ideas Neo – Piagetians (Biggs & Collis, 1982; Case, 1999) Theory Theories (Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1997; Wellman & Gelman, 1998) Overlapping waves model (Siegler 2006)