Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Criticism of Piaget's theories
Criticism of Piaget's theories
Criticism of Piaget's theories
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Essay Topic: Jean Piaget proposed a step-wise sequence of mental development during childhood. Provide an overview of Piaget’s core ideas, discussing the evidence for and against these ideas. Introduction: Piaget is most commonly recognised for his work in forming a theory explaining how children’s thinking evolves to become more complex with age (Passer & Smith, 2012). For more than fifty years, Piaget researched the area of child thought processes, proposing a step-wise sequence of child mental development involving four distinct stages (Passer & Smith, 2012, p. 422). According to Passer and Smith (2012), a core belief of Piaget’s was that “cognitive development results from an interaction of the brain’s biological maturation and personal experiences” (p. 422). Piaget’s research has since received considerable attention and debate as to its validity. Many assessments of his work detail a greater level of criticism than praise; this criticism presumably being in place to support recent scientific discoveries and assist in the evolution of particular elements of his theories to what is regarded as relevant today (Flavell, 1996). Despite those who doubt his work, many sympathetic theorists (labelled neo-Piagetians) have opted to adopt and …show more content…
Acknowledged by Muuss (1967) was the fact that age norms described within stages are approximations, and how such ideas could provide guidance and insight into a child’s learning limitations and abilities. Evidence to suggest that this knowledge can help to address limitations in child cognitive development exists (Ojemann & Pritchett, 1963; as cited in Muuss, 1967). Even so, these proposals are not noticeably grounded by concrete
Piaget’s mother, Rebecca Jackson, was very intelligent and kind, but had a rather neurotic temper that made his family life very rough. Her mental health attributed to his early interest and studies of psychology. Piaget became an active scholar at the age of ten when he published his first paper. He received his PhD. in science from the University of Neuchatel by the age of twenty two. He started out studying mollusk and then began to study his own children as they grew up. He planned to study children for only five years, but it ended up taking thirty years to complete his studies. After studying children for many years, he identified that all children went through four stages
Jean Piaget was a Swiss developmental psychologist known for his studies with children. Piaget’s work on cognitive development accumulated much attention from the fields of both psychology and education. His work and theories on the developmental stages helped shape the way we still practice and teach within the education system today.
Many people have made astounding contributions to the school of psychology. One of them was Jean Piaget and his theories on the cognitive developmental stages. Jean Piaget was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland on August 9, 1896. He received a doctorate in biology at the age of 22. When he was younger, he became instantly interested in psychology and began researching and studying it. In Piaget’s research, he created an inclusive theoretical system for the development of cognitive abilities. His work was similar to Sigmund Freud, but Piaget focused on the way children think and obtain knowledge. At the age of ten, he wrote his first scientific paper. As a young teen, he was publishing papers in earnest. He was considered a great expert in the field.
Jean Piaget was one of the most prominent researchers of the 20th century in the field of psychology and human development. He concentrated his attention on the biological influences on the psychological portrait of the person and developmental stages. Piaget pointed out that the development of a person passes through certain stages; each stage can be characterized by specific features. He argued that learning about the world was possible through personal experience. However, his inspiration of developing the idea of cognitive growth and changes of people came while researching child behavior. Moreover, it is important to note that his research was based on the observation of behavior of his own three children (Berlin, Zeanah & Lieberman, 2008).
Now known as one of the trailblazers of developmental psychology, Jean Piaget initially worked in a wide range of fields. Early in his career Piaget studied the human biological processes. These processes intrigued Piaget so much that he began to study the realm of human knowledge. From this study he was determined to uncover the secrets of cognitive growth in humans. Jean Piaget’s research on the growth of the human mind eventually lead to the formation of the cognitive development theory which consists of three main components: schemes, assimilation and accommodation, and the stage model. The theory is best known for Piaget’s construction of the discontinuous stage model which was based on his study of children and how the processes and products of their minds develop over time. According to this stage model, there are four levels of cognitive growth: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. While a substantial amount of psychologists presently choose to adhere to the constructs of the information processing approach, Piaget’s ground breaking cognitive development view is still a valuable asset to the branch of developmental psychology. Whether or not Piaget uncovered any answers to the mysteries of human knowledge is disputable, but one belief that few dispute is that Jean Piaget did indeed lay a strong foundation for future developmental psychologists.
After many years of his career in child psychology Jean came up with four stages of mental development called a schema. Jean Piaget categories these stages by age but he has said ...
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development helps us to understand the developmental stages of a child from birth to 7 years of age. According to Jean Piaget, children are forever processing information and adapting them to their environment. They become “aware” of their surroundings and act according to its demands. You see Piaget, while observing his own children and others, discovered that infants and toddlers learn through exploring and playing. During his four stages of cognitive development, children are constantly learning through a process of assimilation and accommodation.
Piaget also believed that children would only learn when they are ready. Children's use of language represents their stage in cognitive development, but he didn’t see language as a ‘central’ to children's development, as cognitive development begins at birth and is required for language development. He also states that children are egocentric – they can’t understand another person’s point of view. Criticisms of Piaget’s work = =
Children’s from this stage remain egocentric for the most part but to begin to internalize representations. (Piaget, 1999). Concrete operational stage is children to age seven to eleven. They develop the ability to categorize objects and how they relate to one another. A child’s become more mastered in math by adding and subtracting. If a child eat one brownie out of a jar containing six. By doing the math there would be 5 brownies left by counting the remaining brownies left in the jar because they are able to model the jar in their
“The influence of Piaget’s ideas in developmental psychology has been enormous. He changed how people viewed the child’s world and their methods of studying children. He was an inspiration to many who came after and took up his ideas. Piaget's ideas have generated a huge amount of research which has increased our understanding of cognitive development.” (McLeod 2009). Piaget purposed that we move through stages of cognitive development. He noticed that children showed different characteristics throughout their childhood development. The four stages of development are The Sensorimotor stage, The Preoperational Stage, The Concrete operational stage and The Formal operational stage.
The preoperational stage last from two to seven years. In this stage it becomes possible to carry on a conversation with a child and they also learn to count and use the concept of numbers. This stage is divided into the preoperational phase and the intuitive phase. Children in the preoperational phase are preoccupied with verbal skills and try to make sense of the world but have a much less sophisticated mode of thought than adults. In the intuitive phase the child moves away from drawing conclusions based upon concrete experiences with objects. One problem, which identifies children in this stage, is the inability to cognitively conserve relevant spatial
“{No theory of cognitive development has had more impact than the cognitive stages presented by Jean Piaget. Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, suggested that children go through four separate stages in a fixed order that is universal in all children. Piaget declared that these stages differ not only in the quantity of information acquired at each, but also in the quality of knowledge and understanding at that stage. Piaget suggested that movement from one stage to the next occurred when the child reached an appropriate level of maturation and was exposed to relevant types of experiences. Without experience, children were assumed incapable of reaching their highest cognitive ability. Piaget's four stages are known as the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.
Piaget’s Cognitive theory represents concepts that children learn from interactions within the world around them. He believed that children think and reason at different stages in their development. His stages of cognitive development outline the importance of the process rather the final product. The main concept of this theory reflects the view th...
middle of paper ... ... (1958), as cited in ‘Children’s Cognitive and Language Development, Gupta, P and Richardson, K (1995), Blackwell Publishers Ltd in association with the Open University. Light P and Oates, J (1990) ‘ The development of Children’s Understanding’ in Roth, I (Ed) Introduction to Psychology, Vol 1, Hove, East Sussex, Psychology Press in association with the Open University.
Piaget described four major stages leading to the capacity for adult thought. Each stage is a prerequisite for the following stage, but the rate at which different children move through different stages varies with their hered...