Who was Jean Piaget?

was born in 1896 in At age 10, he wrote

he attended the University of
Neuchâtel, Switzerland, a paper on an
Zurich, where he became
and died in 1980 in albino sparrow
interested in psychoanalysis
Geneva, Switzerland

He married in 1923 and

had three children, Jacqueline
Lucienne and Laurent

one of the most influential researchers

in the area of developmental psychology
during the 20th century

first psychologist to make

a systematic study of
cognitive development

He considered himself as a
“Genetic Epistemologist
 Genetic
Epistemologist

“How we come to
know.”

Piaget studied his

children’s intellectual
development from birth.
According to Jean Piaget…
“What distinguishes human beings from other animals
is our ability to do abstract symbolic reasoning.”

“Children are born with a very basic mental structure

(genetically inherited and evolved) on which all
subsequent learning and knowledge is based.”

“There are two aspects of human mind: cognitive

structure and cognitive functioning.”
 Two Aspects of Human mind
Cognitive structures are mental processes that
individuals use to process and understand
information. They organize information for
learning and recall.
Cognitive functioning refers to multiple mental
abilities, including learning, thinking, reasoning,
remembering, problem solving, decision making,
and attention.
 What is Cognition?
The term cognition is derived from the latin
word “cognoscere” which means “to know”
or “to recognise” or “to conceptualise”.
Cognition is “the mental action or process of
acquiring knowledge and understanding
through thought, experience, and the
senses.”
 What is Cognitive Development?
Cognitive development is the emergence of the ability to think and
understand.
The acquisition of the ability to think, reason and problem solve.
It is the process by which people’s thinking changes across the life
span.
Piaget studied Cognitive Development by observing children in
particular, to examine how their thought processes changed with age.
Piaget's (1936) theory of cognitive development explains how a child
constructs a mental model of the world. He disagreed with the idea
that intelligence was a fixed trait, and regarded cognitive
development as a process which occurs due to biological maturation
and interaction with the environment.
 How Cognitive Development
occurs?
Cognitive Development is gradual and orderly changes by
which mental process becomes more complex and
sophisticated .
The essential development of cognition is the establishment
of new schemes.
equilibration
 Schemas
 Schemas are the basic building blocks of such cognitive models,
and enable us to form a mental representation of the world.
Piaget defined a schema as "a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing
component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning."
 The basic building block of intelligent behavior – a way of
organizing knowledge. Indeed, it is useful to think of schemas as
“units” of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world,
including objects, actions, and abstract (i.e., theoretical) concepts.
 Adaptation Processes
Assimilation is how humans perceive and adapt to new information.
It is the process of fitting new information into pre-existing
cognitive schemas.
Accommodation is the process of taking new information in one's
environment and altering pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the
new information. This happens when the existing schema
(knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with
a new object or situation.
What is Equilibration? For example, a child loves the soups
that their family eats on a regular
basis. They have developed the
Equilibration is a concept developed schema that all soup is delicious.
by Piaget that describes the The child then has dinner at a
friend's house and is served a bowl
cognitive balancing of new of soup- and hates it. Initially the
child is in the assimilation area of
information with old knowledge. This Equilibration - they feel that since
is a major component of Piaget's ALL soup is good then this soup must
be good. They repeatedly keep
theory of childhood cognitive trying it and disliking it. This leads to
development. Equilibration involves disEquilibration which is a state of
cognitive conflict and stress. In
the assimilation of information to fit order to alleviate the disEquilibration
the child enters the
with an individual's own existing accommodation phase of
mental schemas and the Equilibration - they adapt their
thinking to stop the conflict and
accommodation of information by realize that not all soup is good and
adapting it their way of thinking. that some of it tastes bad.
While studying his children, Piaget developed
theories concerning how children learn. His
theory of Cognitive development consists of four
stages of intellectual development:
the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete
operational and formal operational period.
 Four
Developmental
Stages of Cognitive
Development
Keep in mind that children don’t
always move from one stage to
another at the same time.
They will always move from one
stage to the next in the same
order, but you may have students
in your classroom on different
levels
There are many applications that
can be made from Piaget’s
theory.
By using these in our teaching , we
can hopefully teach students in a
way that will help them be the
most effective learners.
For Listening