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Stages in child development
Psychology essays on Jean Piaget's theory
Psychology essays on Jean Piaget's theory
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The Theories of Jean Piaget This essay is about Jean Piaget's theory. Piaget's theory has two main strands: first, an account of the mechanisms by which cognitive development takes place; and second, an account of the four main stages of cognitive development through which children pass. Piaget suggested that there are four main stages in the cognitive development of children. In the first two years, children pass through a sensory-motor stage during which they progress from cognitive structures dominated by instinctual drives and undifferentiated emotions to more organized systems of concrete concepts, differentiated emotions, and their first external affective fixations. At this stage, children's outlook is essentially self-centred as they are unable to take into account others' points of view. The second stage of development lasts until around seven years of age. Children begin to use language to make sense of reality. They learn to sort objects using different criteria and to influence numbers. Children's increasing linguistic skills open the way for greater socialization of action and communication with others. From the ages of seven to twelve years, children begin the develop logic, although they can only perform logical operations on concrete objects and events. In adolescence, children enter the formal operational stage, which continues throughout the rest of their lives. Children develop the ability to perform abstract intellectual operations, and reach affective and intellectual maturity. Most importantly, children develop the ability to appreciate others' points of view as well as their own. Looking at Piaget's... ... middle of paper ... ...er. The forth and final stage is the formal-operational stage. From age 12 to adult, learners are able to think abstractly about real objects. They also use reasoning and logic to think abstractly about those objects. In this highest of the stage of development learners start to use complex language forms such as metaphors and the like. There are some weak points of Piaget's theory. The first is that Piaget underestimated children's capabilities. Most children mover through the first two stages much faster than Piaget said they would. On the other hand the last two stages Piaget overestimated the abilities of humans to master the stage. We must realize that because of the other biological factors each child will go through each stage in their own time, so at a given age not all children are at the same cognitive stage.
Jean Piaget became fascinated with the reasons behind why children cannot correctly answer questions that require logical thinking. Piaget was the first psychologist to conduct an organized study of the intellectual advancement in children. Before Piaget’s study, many believed children were merely less efficient thinkers than adults. Due to his study, however, Piaget proved children think in remarkably different ways than adults. Children are born with a very primitive mental complex that is genetically inherited and learned on which all the following knowledge and learning is based (McLeod, 2015).
Although he identified himself as a genetic epistemologist, Jean Piaget was a psychologist from Switzerland. When he was just eleven years old Piaget started to take steps in starting his research career without even realizing it when he wrote a brief paper over an Albino Sparrow (Bringuier, 1980). He originally studied natural sciences and was involved in the branch of philosophy that was focused on origin, nature and the extents and limits of human knowledge. But as he progressed in his studies he realized that he was also interested in how thought develops and wanted to understand how genetics impacted the process (Mayer, 2005).
Being the second oldest of eight children, there was never a dull moment in our house. Personality differences were common but the love we had for each other was obvious. With this being said, I am the only child out of those eight that has not only graduated high school but I am now working towards my Bachelor Degree in Elementary Education. We were a poor family and education was not on the top of the list of priorities. The first four of us were like stair-steps and seven years later came another set of stair-step children. My closest sister, Evie, was deaf and my mother sent us both to a school for the hearing impaired to ensure someone could communicate with her. I have fond memories of this school and the time Evie and I were able
I am a firm believer that as a child, there are stages you go through to become the person you are today. Many theorists have developed their own propositions as to how we are who we are and why. Jean Piaget, a swiss psychologist, was one of the few who believed that all individuals progress through a set of fixed stages of cognitive development. Cognitive development is the building of thought processing or in simpler words known as remembering, problem solving, and decision making. He believed that you not only increase knowledge in every stage, but that your ability to understand increases as well. Piaget focused his research mostly on the change in cognition from childhood to adulthood using the stages Sensorimotor, Preoperational, 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 (1896-1980) was an influential experimenter and theorist in the field of development psychology and cognitive theory. Jean Piaget developed highly influential theories on the mental stages of children. He is best known for his pioneering work in child development.
Both Piaget and Vygotsky agreed that children's cognitive development took place in stages. (Jarvis, Chandler 2001 P.149). However they were distinguished by different styles of thinking. Piaget was the first t reveal that children reason and think differently at different periods in their lives. He believed that all children progress through four different and very distinct stages of cognitive development. This theory is known as Piaget’s Stage Theory because it deals with four stages of development, which are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. (Ginsburg, Opper 1979 P. 26).
Piaget believed that young children’s cognitive processes are intrinsically different from adults and that when they moved from a position of egocentrism to sociocentrism (during adolescence) that they had reached their potential in cognition.
The father of the cognitive epistemology is Jean Piaget. This men born in Switzerland in 1896 and die on 1980. His parents were Arthur Piaget, who was Swiss and Rebecca Jackson who was French. Piaget develop an education theory in which one he suggest the children past by 4 different stages on their mental development and explains the way to understand and acquire the knowledge.
3. Concrete operations · Children continue to learn through their experiences with real objects. · They access information (using language) to make sense of their immediate and wider environment. 4. Formal operations · Children and adults learn to make use of abstract thinking.
The theory of cognitive development was created by Jean Piaget. Piaget can be classified as both a constructivist and a developmental theorist. This theory describes how the quality of children’s thinking changes over time, and how a child makes a mental model of the world. Piaget disagreed with the idea that intelligence is a fixed trait. Piaget believed that a child’s cognitive development was a process, and that there were four factors that affect the quality of children’s thinking as they grow; as well as four stages of qualitatively different types of thinking through which children progress towards adulthood.
Jean Piaget is best known for his cognitive development. Piaget had three children of his own, and through them he started making observations on his own children which eventually became the basis of his many future theories. In the 1920’s, he began to observe every day actions of infants and children to draw inferences about the thinking children do and underline their behaviors and why they act the way they do. Piagets’ theory went deeper than any psychologists or philosophers before him, and his theory is what shaped how we look and see children still in today’s time. Piaget discovered the fact that children have trouble learning new concepts when just being told or instructed, but do better
The Critique of Piaget's Theories Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) was a constructivist theorist. He saw children as constructing their own world, playing an active part in their own development. Piaget’s insight opened up a new window into the inner working of the mind and as a result he carried out some remarkable studies on children that had a powerful influence on theories of child thought. This essay is going to explain the main features and principles of the Piagetian theory and then provide criticism against this theory. Cognitive development refers to way in which a person’s style of thinking changes with age.
“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.
Piaget believes functions of language develops over four stages which are, the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. To briefly explain each of these children develop the sensorimotor stage from ages 0 – 2 years, Piaget sees language at this stage as more physical where children experiment with their mouths and learn to repeat parents sounds. The pre-operational stage from ages 2 – 7 years, is when children talk more and have the ability to solve problems about stories on specific and concrete facts. The concrete operational stage begins at about age 6 or 7 when children can work things out in their mind and explain their reasoning. The formal operational stage begins at 11 or 12 years when children use abstract reason and can use language to express and discuss things found in subjects such as mathematics or philosophy. Piaget highlights the roles of language in children’s lives by describing the functions of language. (McDevitt, Ormrod, Cupit, Chandler and Aloa, 2013, p. 209 –