Jean Piaget in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His
theory of cognitive developmentPiaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence first developed by Jean Piaget. It is primarily known as a developmental stage theory, but in fact, it deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans come gradually to...
and epistemological view are together called "
genetic epistemologyGenetic epistemology is a study of the origins of knowledge . The discipline was established by Jean Piaget.The goal of genetic epistemology is to link the validity of knowledge to the model of its construction. In other words, it shows that the method in which the knowledge was obtained/created...
".
Discussion
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I am convinced that there is no sort of boundary between the living and the mental or between the biological and the psychological. From the moment an organism takes account of a previous experience and adapts to a new situation, that very much resembles psychology.
Interview with Jean Claude Bringuier (1969)
As you know, Henri Bergson|Bergson pointed out that there is no such thing as disorder but rather two sorts of order, geometric and living. Mine is clearly living. The folders I need are within reach, in the order of frequency with which I use them. True, it gets tricky to locate a folder in the lower levels. But if you have to find it, you look for it. That takes less time than putting them away every day.
Conversations with Jean Piaget (1980) by Jean Claude Bringuier
Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society... But for me, education means making creators... You have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists.
Conversations with Jean Piaget (1980) by Jean Claude Bringuier
The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.
As quoted in Education for Democracy, Proceedings from the Cambridge School Conference on Progressive Education (1988) edited by Kathe Jervis and Arthur Tobier
From the point of view of the practice or application of rules four successive stages can be distinguished.
A first stage of a purely motor and individual character, during which the child handles the marbles at the dictation of his desires and motor habits. This leads to the formation of more or less ritualized schemas, but since play is still purely individual, one can only talk of motor rules and not of truly collective rules.
Jean Piaget in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His
theory of cognitive developmentPiaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence first developed by Jean Piaget. It is primarily known as a developmental stage theory, but in fact, it deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans come gradually to...
and epistemological view are together called "
genetic epistemologyGenetic epistemology is a study of the origins of knowledge . The discipline was established by Jean Piaget.The goal of genetic epistemology is to link the validity of knowledge to the model of its construction. In other words, it shows that the method in which the knowledge was obtained/created...
".
Piaget placed great importance on the education of children. As the Director of the
International Bureau of EducationThe International Bureau of Education is a UNESCO center specializing in education, whose goal is to facilitate the provision of quality education throughout the world.-History:...
, he declared in 1934 that "only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or gradual."
Piaget created the International Center for Genetic
Epistemology in
GenevaGeneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
in 1955 and directed it until 1980. According to
Ernst von GlasersfeldErnst von Glasersfeld was a philosopher, and Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Georgia, Research Associate at the Scientific Reasoning Research Institute, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst...
, Jean Piaget is "the great pioneer of the
constructivist theory of knowingConstructivism is a theory of knowledge that argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas. During infancy, it was an interaction between human experiences and their reflexes or behavior-patterns. Piaget called these systems of...
."
Biography
Piaget was born in 1896 in
Neuchâtel, in the Francophone region of Switzerland. His father, Arthur Piaget, was a professor of
medieval literatureMedieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages . The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works...
at the
University of NeuchâtelThe University of Neuchâtel is a French-speaking university in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The University has five faculties and more than a dozen institutes, including arts and human sciences, natural sciences, law, economics and theology. The Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences is the largest...
. Piaget was a precocious child who developed an interest in biology and the natural world. He was educated at the University of Neuchâtel, and studied briefly at the
University of ZürichThe University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 25,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new faculty of philosophy....
. During this time, he published two philosophical papers that showed the direction of his thinking at the time, but which he later dismissed as adolescent thought. His interest in
psychoanalysisPsychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, at the time a burgeoning strain of psychology, can also be dated to this period. Piaget moved from Switzerland to Paris, France after his graduation and he taught at the Grange-Aux-Belles Street School for Boys. The school was run by
Alfred BinetAlfred Binet was a French psychologist who was the inventor of the first usable intelligence test, known at that time as the Binet test and today referred to as the IQ test. His principal goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum...
, the developer of the Binet intelligence test, and Piaget assisted in the marking of Binet's intelligence tests. It was while he was helping to mark some of these tests that Piaget noticed that young children consistently gave wrong answers to certain questions. Piaget did not focus so much on the fact of the children's answers being wrong, but that young children consistently made types of mistakes that older children and adults did not. This led him to the theory that young children's cognitive processes are inherently different from those of adults. Ultimately, he was to propose a global theory of cognitive developmental stages in which individuals exhibit certain common patterns of cognition in each period of development. In 1921, Piaget returned to Switzerland as director of the
Rousseau InstituteRousseau Institute is a private school in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1912, Édouard Claparède created an institute to turn educational theory into a science...
in
GenevaGeneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
.
In 1923, he married Valentine Châtenay; together, the couple had three children, whom Piaget studied from infancy. In 1929, Jean Piaget accepted the post of Director of the International Bureau of Education and remained the head of this international organization until 1968. Every year, he drafted his “Director's Speeches” for the IBE Council and for the International Conference on Public Education in which he explicitly addressed his educational credo.
In 1964, Piaget was invited to serve as chief consultant at two conferences at
Cornell UniversityCornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
(March 11–13) and
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
(March 16–18). The conferences addressed the relationship of cognitive studies and curriculum development and strived to conceive implications of recent investigations of children's cognitive development for curricula.
In 1979 he was awarded the
Balzan PrizeThe International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organisations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the brotherhood of man.-Rewards and assets:Each year the...
for Social and Political Sciences.
History
Henry Beilin described Jean Piaget's theoretical
research programA research program is a coordinated set of projects undertaking related research, often at national or even international level, with government funding....
as consisting of four phases:
- the sociological model of development,
- the biological model of intellectual development,
- the elaboration of the logical model of intellectual development,
- the study of figurative thought.
The resulting theoretical frameworks are sufficiently different from each other that they have been characterized as representing different "Piagets." More recently, Jeremy Burman responded to Beilin and called for the addition of a phase before his turn to psychology: "the zeroeth Piaget."
Zeroeth Piaget: Piaget before Psychology
Before Piaget became a psychologist, he trained in
natural historyNatural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
and
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. He received his doctorate in 1918 from the
University of NeuchatelThe University of Neuchâtel is a French-speaking university in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The University has five faculties and more than a dozen institutes, including arts and human sciences, natural sciences, law, economics and theology. The Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences is the largest...
. He then undertook post-doctoral training in Zurich (1918–1919), and Paris (1919–1921). The theorist we recognize today only emerged when he moved to Geneva, to work for
Edouard ClaparedeÉdouard Claparède was a Swiss neurologist and child psychologist.Studies of science and medicine, later of psychology under Théodore Flournoy; 1897 MD from the University of Geneva; 1897-98 at La Salpêtrière hospital in Paris; 1901 foundation of the Archives de psychologie with Flournoy, which he...
as director of research at the
Rousseau InstituteRousseau Institute is a private school in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1912, Édouard Claparède created an institute to turn educational theory into a science...
, in 1922.
First Piaget: The Sociological Model of Development
Piaget first developed as a psychologist in the 1920s. He investigated the hidden side of children’s minds. Piaget proposed that children moved from a position of
egocentrismEgocentrism is a personality trait which has the characteristic of regarding oneself and one's own opinions or interests as most important or valid...
to sociocentrism. For this explanation he combined the use of psychological and clinical methods to create what he called a semiclinical
interviewAn interview is a conversation between two people where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee.- Interview as a Method for Qualitative Research:"Definition" -...
. He began the interview by asking children standardized questions and depending on how they answered, he would ask them a series of nonstandard questions. Piaget was looking for what he called “spontaneous conviction” so he often asked questions the children neither expected nor anticipated. In his studies, he noticed there was a gradual progression from intuitive to scientific and socially acceptable responses. Piaget theorized children did this because of the social interaction and the challenge to younger children’s ideas by the ideas of those children who were more advanced.
This work was used by
Elton MayoGeorge Elton Mayo was an Australian psychologist, sociologist and organization theorist.He lectured at the University of Queensland from 1911 to 1923 before moving to the University of Pennsylvania, but spent most of his career at Harvard Business School , where he was professor of industrial...
as the basis for the famous
Hawthorne ExperimentsThe Hawthorne effect is a form of reactivity whereby subjects improve or modify an aspect of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they know they are being studied, not in response to any particular experimental manipulation.The term was coined in 1950 by...
. For Piaget, it also led to an honorary doctorate from Harvard in 1936.
Second Piaget: The Sensorimotor/Adaptive Model of Intellectual Development
In this stage, Piaget described intelligence as having two closely interrelated parts. The first part, which is from the first stage, was the content of children's thinking. The second part was the process of intellectual activity. He believed this process of thinking could be regarded as an extension of the biological process of adaptation. Adaptation has two pieces: assimilation and accommodation. To test his theory, Piaget observed the
habitHabits are routines of behavior that are repeated regularly and tend to occur subconsciously. Habitual behavior often goes unnoticed in persons exhibiting it, because a person does not need to engage in self-analysis when undertaking routine tasks...
s in his own children. He argued infants were engaging in an act of assimilation when they sucked on everything in their reach. He claimed infants transform all objects into an object to be sucked. The children were assimilating the objects to conform to their own mental structures. Piaget then made the assumption that whenever one transforms the world to meet individual needs or conceptions, one is, in a way, assimilating it. Piaget also observed his children not only assimilating objects to fit their needs, but also modifying some of their mental structures to meet the demands of the environment. This is the second division of adaption known as accommodation. To start out, the infants only engaged in primarily reflex actions such as sucking, but not long after, they would pick up actual objects and put them in their mouths. When they do this, they modify their reflex response to accommodate the external objects into reflex actions. Because the two are often in conflict, they provide the impetus for intellectual development. The constant need to balance the two triggers intellectual growth.
Third Piaget: The Elaboration of the Logical Model of Intellectual Development
In the model Piaget developed in stage three, he argued the idea that intelligence develops in a series of stages that are related to age and are progressive because one stage must be accomplished before the next can occur. For each stage of development the child forms a view of reality for that age period. At the next stage, the child must keep up with earlier level of mental abilities to reconstruct concepts. Piaget concluded intellectual development as an upward expanding spiral in which children must constantly reconstruct the ideas formed at earlier levels with new, higher order concepts acquired at the next level.
It is primarily the Third Piaget that was incorporated into American psychology when Piaget's ideas were "rediscovered" in the 1960s.
Fourth Piaget: The Study of Figurative thought
Piaget studied areas of intelligence like
perceptionPerception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
and
memoryIn psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
that aren’t entirely logical. Logical concepts are described as being completely reversible because they can always get back to the starting point. The perceptual concepts Piaget studied could not be manipulated. To describe the figurative process, Piaget uses pictures as examples. Pictures can’t be separated because contours cannot be separated from the forms they outline. Memory is the same way. It is never completely reversible. During this last period of work, Piaget and his colleague Inhelder also published books on perception, memory, and other figurative processes such as learning during this last period.
Theory
Jean Piaget defined himself as a 'genetic'
epistemologist, interested in the process of the qualitative development of knowledge. As he says in the introduction of his book
Genetic Epistemology (ISBN 978-0-393-00596-7): "What the genetic epistemology proposes is discovering the roots of the different varieties of knowledge, since its elementary forms, following to the next levels, including also the scientific knowledge."
He believed answers for the epistemological questions at his time could be answered, or better proposed, if one looked to the genetic aspect of it, hence his experimentations with children and adolescents. Piaget considered cognitive structures development as a differentiation of biological regulations. In one of his last books,
Equilibration of Cognitive Structures: The Central Problem of Intellectual Development (ISBN 978-022666781), he intends to explain knowledge development as a process of equilibration using two main concepts in his theory, assimilation and accommodation, as belonging not only to biological interactions but also to cognitive ones.
Stages
The four development stages are described in Piaget's theory as:
- Sensorimotor stage: from birth to age 2. Children experience the world through movement and senses (use five senses to explore the world). During the sensorimotor stage children are extremely egocentric, meaning they cannot perceive the world from others' viewpoints. The sensorimotor stage is divided into six substages: "(1) simple reflexes; (2) first habits and primary circular reactions; (3) secondary circular reactions; (4) coordination of secondary circular reactions; (5) tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity; and (6) internalization of schemes."
Simple reflexes is from birth to 1 month old. At this time infants use reflexes such as rooting and sucking.
First habits and primary circular reactions is from 1 month to 4 months old. During this time infants learn to coordinate sensation and two types of scheme (habit and circular reactions). A primary circular reaction is when the infant tries to reproduce an event that happened by accident (ex: sucking thumb).
The third stage, secondary circular reactions, occurs when the infant is 4 to 8 months old. At this time they become aware of things beyond their own body; they are more object oriented. At this time they might accidentally shake a rattle and continue to do it for sake of satisfaction.
Coordination of secondary circular reactions is from 8 months to 12 months old. During this stage they can do things intentionally. They can now combine and recombine schemes and try to reach a goal (ex: use a stick to reach something). They also understand
object permanenceObject permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched. It is acquired by human infants between 8 and 12 months of age via the process of logical induction to help them develop secondary schemes in their sensori-motor coordination...
during this stage. That is, they understand that objects continue to exist even when they can't see them.
The fifth stage occurs from 12 months old to 18 months old. During this stage infants explore new possibilities of objects; they try different things to get different results.
During the last stage they are 18 to 24 months old. During this stage they shift to symbolic thinking.
Some followers of Piaget's studies of infancy, such as
Kenneth KayeKenneth Kaye is an American psychologist, writer, and business consultant whose research, books, and articles connect the fields of human development, family relationships and conflict resolution....
argue that his contribution was as an observer of countless phenomena not previously described, but that he didn't offer explanation of the processes in real time that cause those developments, beyond analogizing them to broad concepts about biological adaptation generally.
- Preoperational stage: from ages 2 to 7 (magical thinking
Magical thinking is causal reasoning that looks for correlation between acts or utterances and certain events. In religion, folk religion, and superstition, the correlation posited is between religious ritual, such as prayer, sacrifice, or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or...
predominates. Acquisition of motor skills). EgocentrismEgocentrism is a personality trait which has the characteristic of regarding oneself and one's own opinions or interests as most important or valid...
begins strongly and then weakens. Children cannot conserve or use logical thinking.
- Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 11 (children begin to think logically but are very concrete in their thinking). Children can now conserve and think logically but only with practical aids. They are no longer egocentric.
- Formal operational stage: from age 11-16 and onwards (development of abstract reasoning). Children develop abstract thought and can easily conserve and think logically in their mind.
The developmental process
Piaget provided no concise description of the development process as a whole. Broadly speaking it consisted of a cycle:
- The child performs an action which has an effect on or organizes objects, and the child is able to note the characteristics of the action and its effects.
- Through repeated actions, perhaps with variations or in different contexts or on different kinds of objects, the child is able to differentiate and integrate its elements and effects. This is the process of "reflecting abstraction" (described in detail in Piaget 2001).
- At the same time, the child is able to identify the properties of objects by the way different kinds of action affect them. This is the process of "empirical abstraction".
- By repeating this process across a wide range of objects and actions, the child establishes a new level of knowledge and insight. This is the process of forming a new "cognitive stage". This dual process allows the child to construct new ways of dealing with objects and new knowledge about objects themselves.
- However, once the child has constructed these new kinds of knowledge, he or she starts to use them to create still more complex objects and to carry out still more complex actions. As a result, the child starts to recognize still more complex patterns and to construct still more complex objects. Thus a new stage begins, which will only be completed when all the child's activity and experience have been re-organized on this still higher level.
This process may not be wholly gradual, but new evidence shows that the passage into new stages is more gradual than once thought. Once a new level of organization, knowledge and insight proves to be effective, it will quickly be generalized to other areas
if they exist. As a result, transitions between stages can seem to be rapid and radical, but oftentimes the child has grasped one aspect of the new stage of cognitive functioning but not addressed others. The bulk of the time spent in a new stage consists of refining this new cognitive level however it is not always happening quickly. For example, a child may learn that two different colors of Play-Doh have been fused together to make one ball, based on the color. However if sugar is mixed into water or iced tea, then the sugar "disappeared" and therefore does not exist. These levels of one concept of cognitive development are not realized all at once, giving us a gradual realization of the world around us.
It is because this process takes this
dialecticDialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
al form, in which each new stage is created through the further differentiation, integration, and synthesis of new structures out of the old, that the sequence of cognitive stages are logically necessary rather than simply empirically correct. Each new stage emerges only because the child can take for granted the achievements of its predecessors, and yet there are still more sophisticated forms of knowledge and action that are capable of being developed.
Because it covers both how we gain knowledge about objects and our reflections on our own actions, Piaget's model of development explains a number of features of human knowledge that had never previously been accounted for. For example, by showing how children progressively enrich their understanding of things by acting on and reflecting on the effects of their own previous knowledge, they are able to organize their knowledge in increasingly complex structures. Thus, once a young child can consistently and accurately recognize different kinds of animals, he or she then acquires the ability to organize the different kinds into higher groupings such as "birds", "fish", and so on. This is significant because they are now able to know things about a new animal simply on the basis of the fact that it is a bird – for example, that it will lay eggs.
At the same time, by reflecting on their own actions, the child develops an increasingly sophisticated awareness of the "rules" that govern in various ways. For example, it is by this route that Piaget explains this child's growing awareness of notions such as "right", "valid", "necessary", "proper", and so on. In other words, it is through the process of
objectificationObjectification is the process by which an abstract concept is made as objective as possible in the purest sense of the term. It is also treated as if it is a concrete thing or physical object...
,
reflectionIntrospection is the self-observation and reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. It is a conscious and purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one's own thoughts, feelings, and, in more spiritual cases, one's soul...
and
abstractionAbstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....
that the child constructs the principles on which action is not only effective or correct but also
justified.
One of Piaget's most famous studies focused purely on the discriminative abilities of children between the ages of two and a half years old, and four and a half years old. He began the study by taking children of different ages and placing two lines of sweets, one with the sweets in a line spread further apart, and one with the same number of sweets in a line placed more closely together. He found that, “Children between 2 years, 6 months old and 3 years, 2 months old correctly discriminate the relative number of objects in two rows; between 3 years, 2 months and 4 years, 6 months they indicate a longer row with fewer objects to have "more"; after 4 years, 6 months they again discriminate correctly” (
Cognitive Capacity of Very Young Children, p. 141). Initially younger children were not studied, because if at four years old a child could not conserve quantity, then a younger child presumably could not either. The results show however that children that are younger than three years and two months have quantity conservation, but as they get older they lose this quality, and do not recover it until four and a half years old. This attribute may be lost due to a temporary inability to solve because of an overdependence on perceptual strategies, which correlates more candy with a longer line of candy, or due to the inability for a four year old to reverse situations.
By the end of this experiment several results were found. First, younger children have a discriminative ability that shows the logical capacity for cognitive operations exists earlier than acknowledged. This study also reveals that young children can be equipped with certain qualities for cognitive operations, depending on how logical the structure of the task is. Research also shows that children develop explicit understanding at age 5 and as a result, the child will count the sweets to decide which has more. Finally the study found that overall quantity conservation is not a basic characteristic of humans' native inheritance.
Genetic epistemology
According to Jean Piaget,
genetic epistemologyGenetic epistemology is a study of the origins of knowledge . The discipline was established by Jean Piaget.The goal of genetic epistemology is to link the validity of knowledge to the model of its construction. In other words, it shows that the method in which the knowledge was obtained/created...
"attempts to explain knowledge, and in particular scientific knowledge, on the basis of its history, its sociogenesis, and especially the psychological origins of the notions and operations upon which it is based"[5]. Piaget believed he could test
epistemological questions by studying the development of thought and action in children. As a result Piaget created a field known as genetic epistemology with its own methods and problems. He defined this field as the study of
child developmentChild development stages describe theoretical milestones of child development. Many stage models of development have been proposed, used as working concepts and in some cases asserted as nativist theories....
as a means of answering epistemological questions.
Schemas
A Schema is a structured cluster of concepts, it can be used to represent objects, scenarios or sequences of events or relations. The original idea was proposed by philosopher Immanuel Kant as innate structures used to help us perceive the world.
A schema (pl. schemata) is the mental framework that is created as children interact with their physical and social environments. For example, many 3-year-olds insist that the sun is alive because it comes up in the morning and goes down at night. According to Piaget, these children are operating based on a simple cognitive schema that things that move are alive. At any age, children rely on their current cognitive structures to understand the world around them. Moreover, younger and older children may often interpret and respond to the same objects and events in very different ways because cognitive structures take different forms at different ages.
Piaget (1953) described three kinds of intellectual structures: behavioural (or sensorimotor) schemata, symbolic schemata, and operational schemata.
- Behavioural schemata: organized patterns of behaviour that are used to represent and respond to objects and experiences.
- Symbolic schemata: internal mental symbols (such as images or verbal codes) that one uses to represent aspects of experience.
- Operational schemata: internal mental activity that one performs on objects of thought.
According to Piaget, children use the process of assimilation and accommodation to create a schema or mental framework for how they perceive and/or interpret what they are experiencing. As a result, the early concepts of young children tend to be more global or general in nature.
Similarly, Gallagher and Reid (1981) maintained that adults view children’s concepts as highly generalized and even inaccurate. With added experience, interactions, and maturity, these concepts become refined and more detailed. Overall, making sense of the world from a child’s perspective is a very complex and time-consuming process.
Schemata are:
- Critically important building block of conceptual development
- Constantly in the process of being modified or changed
- Modified by on-going experiences
- A generalized idea, usually based on experience or prior knowledge.
These schemata are constantly being revised and elaborated upon each time the child encounters new experiences. In doing this children create their own unique understanding of the world, interpret their own experiences and knowledge, and subsequently use this knowledge to solve more complex problems. In a neurological sense, the brain/mind is constantly working to build and rebuild itself as it takes in, adapts/modifies new information, and enhances understanding.
The physical microstructure of “schemes”
In his
Biology and Knowledge (1967+ / French 1965), Piaget tentatively hinted at possible physical embodiments for his abstract “scheme” entities. At the time, there was much talk and research about RNA as such an agent of learning, and Piaget considered some of the evidence. However he did not offer any firm conclusions, and confessed that this was beyond his area of expertise. Piaget died in 1980, and by then the RNA theory had lost its appeal.
Research methods
Piaget wanted to revolutionize the way research methods were conducted. Although he started researching with his colleagues using a traditional method of data collection, he was not fully satisfied with the results and wanted to keep trying to find new ways of researching using a combination of data, which included:
naturalistic observationNaturalistic observation is a research tool in which a subject is observed in its natural habitat without any manipulation by the observer. During naturalistic observation researchers take great care to avoid interfering with the behavior they are observing by using unobtrusive methods...
,
psychometricsPsychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, personality traits, and educational measurement...
, and the psychiatric clinical examination, in order to have a less guided form of research that would produce more genuine results.
As Piaget developed new research methods, he wrote a book called
The Language and Thought of the Child, which aimed to synthesize the methods he was using in order to study the conclusion children drew from situations and how they arrived to such conclusion. The main idea was to observe how children responded and articulated certain situations with their own reasoning, in order to examine their thought processes(Mayer, 2005).
Piaget administered a test in 15 boys with ages ranging from 10–14 years-old in which he asked participants to describe the relationship between a mix bouquet of flowers and a bouquet with flowers of the same color. The purpose of this study was to analyze the thinking process the boys had and to draw conclusions about the logic processes they had used, which was a psychometric technique of research. Piaget also used the psychoanalytic method initially developed by Sigmund Freud. The purpose of using such method was to examine the unconscious mind, as well as to continue parallel studies using different research methods. Psychoanalysis was later rejected by Piaget, as he thought it was insufficiently empirical (Mayer, 2005).
Piaget argued that children and adults used speech for different purposes. In order to confirm his argument, he experimented analyzing a child’s interpretation of a story. In the experiment, the child listened to a story and then told a friend that same story in his/her own words. The purpose of this study was to examine how children verbalize and understand each other without adult intervention. Piaget wanted to examine the limits of naturalistic observation, in order to understand a child’s reasoning. He realized the difficulty of studying children's thoughts, as it is hard to know if a child is pretending to believe their thoughts or not. Piaget was the pioneer researcher to examine children’s conversations in a social context - starting from examining their speech and actions - where children were comfortable and spontaneous(Kose, 1987).
Issues and possible solutions
After conducting many studies, Piaget was able to find significant differences in the way adults and children reason; however, he was still unable to find the path of logic reasoning and the unspoken thoughts children had, which could allow him to study a child’s intellectual development over time (Mayer, 2005).
In his third book,
The Child’s Conception of the World, Piaget recognized the difficulties of his prior techniques and the importance of psychiatric clinical examination. The researcher believed that the way clinical examinations were conducted influenced how a child’s inner realities surfaced. Children would likely respond according to the way the research is conducted, the questions asked, or the familiarity they have with the environment. The clinical examination conducted for his third book provides a thorough investigation into a child’s thinking process. An example of a question used to research such process was: “Can you see a thought?” (Mayer, 2005, p. 372).
The Development of new methods
Piaget recognized that psychometric tests had its limitations, as children were not able to provide the researcher with their deepest thoughts and inner intellect. It was also difficult to know if the results of child examination reflected what children believed or if it is just a pretend situation. For example, it is very difficult to know with certainty if a child who has a conversation with a toy believes the toy is alive or if the child is just pretending.
Soon after drawing conclusions about psychometric studies, Piaget started developing the clinical method of examination. The clinical method included questioning a child and carefully examining their responses -in order to observe how the child reasoned according to the questions asked - and then examine the child’s perception of the world through their responses. Piaget recognized the difficulties of interviewing a child and the importance of recognizing the difference between “liberated" versus “spontaneous” responses (Mayer, 2005, p. 372).
Criticism of Piaget's research methods
"The developmental theory of Jean Piaget has been criticized on the grounds that it is conceptually limited, empirically false, or philosophically and epistemologically untenable." (Lourenço & Machado, 1996, p. 143) Piaget responded to criticism by acknowledging that the vast majority of critics did not understand the outcomes he wished to obtain from his research (Lourenço & Machado, 1996).
As Piaget believed development was a universal process, his initial sample sizes were inadequate, particularly in the formulation of his theory of infant development . Piaget’s theories of infant development were based on his observations of his own three children. While this clearly presents problems with the sample size, Piaget also probably introduced confounding variables and social desirability into his observations and his conclusions based on his observations. It is entirely possible Piaget conditioned his children to respond in a desirable manner, so, rather than having an understanding of object permanence, his children might have learned to behave in a manner that indicated they understood object permanence. The sample was also very homogenous, as all three children had a similar genetic heritage and environment. Piaget did, however, have larger sample sizes during his later years.
Development of research methods
Piaget wanted to research in environments that would allow children to connect with some existing aspects of the world. The idea was to change the approach described in his book
The Child’s Conception of the World and move away from the vague questioning interviews. This new approach was described in his book
The Child’s Conception of Physical Causality, where children were presented with dilemmas and had to think of possible solutions on their own.
Later, after carefully analyzing previous methods, Piaget developed a combination of naturalistic observation with clinical interviewing in his book
Judgment and Reasoning in the Child, where a child's intellect was tested with questions and close monitoring. Piaget was convinced he had found a way to analyze and access a child’s thoughts about the world in a very effective way. (Mayer, 2005)
Piaget’s research provided a combination of theoretical and practical research methods and it has offered a crucial contribution to the field of developmental psychology (Beilin, 1992).
"Piaget is often criticized because his method of investigation, though somewhat modified in recent years, is still largely clinical". He observes a child's surroundings and behavior. He then comes up with a hypothesis testing it and focusing on both the surroundings and behavior after changing a little of the surrounding. (Phillips, 1969)
Influence
Despite his ceasing to be a fashionable
psychologistPsychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
, the magnitude of Piaget's continuing influence can be measured by the global scale and activity of the Jean Piaget Society, which holds annual conferences and attracts very large numbers of participants. His
theory of cognitive developmentPiaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence first developed by Jean Piaget. It is primarily known as a developmental stage theory, but in fact, it deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans come gradually to...
has proved influential in many different areas:
- Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...
- Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
and MoralityMorality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
- Historical studies of thought and cognition
- Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
- Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
- Primatology
Primatology is the scientific study of primates. It is a diverse discipline and researchers can be found in academic departments of anatomy, anthropology, biology, medicine, psychology, veterinary sciences and zoology, as well as in animal sanctuaries, biomedical research facilities, museums and zoos...
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Developmental psychology
Piaget is without doubt one of the most influential developmental psychologists, influencing not only the work of
Lev VygotskyLev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of cultural-historical psychology, and the leader of the Vygotsky Circle.-Biography:...
and of
Lawrence KohlbergLawrence Kohlberg was a Jewish American psychologist born in Bronxville, New York, who served as a professor at the University of Chicago, as well as Harvard University. Having specialized in research on moral education and reasoning, he is best known for his theory of stages of moral development...
but whole generations of eminent academics. Although subjecting his ideas to massive scrutiny led to innumerable improvements and qualifications of his original model and the emergence of a plethora of neo-Piagetian and post-Piagetian variants, Piaget's original model has proved to be remarkably robust (Lourenço and Machado 1996).
Education and development of morality
During the 1970s and 1980s, Piaget's works also inspired the transformation of European and American
educationEducation in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, including both theory and practice, leading to a more ‘child-centered’ approach. In
Conversations with Jean Piaget, he says: "Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society . . . but for me and no one else, education means making creators. . . . You have to make inventors, innovators—not conformists" (Bringuier, 1980, p. 132).
Piaget's influence is strongest in early education and moral education.
His
theory of cognitive developmentPiaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence first developed by Jean Piaget. It is primarily known as a developmental stage theory, but in fact, it deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans come gradually to...
can be used as a tool in the
early childhoodEarly childhood education is the formal teaching and care of young children by people other than their family or in settings outside of the home. 'Early childhood' is usually defined as before the age of normal schooling - five years in most nations, though the U.S...
classroom. According to Piaget, children developed best in a classroom with interaction.
Piaget believed in two basic principles relating to moral education: that children develop moral ideas in stages and that children create their conceptions of the world. According to Piaget, "the child is someone who constructs his own moral world view, who forms ideas about right and wrong, and fair and unfair, that are not the direct product of adult teaching and that are often maintained in the face of adult wishes to the contrary" (Gallagher, 1978, p. 26). Piaget believed that children made moral judgments based on their own observations of the world.
Piaget's theory of
moralityMorality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
was radical when his book, The Moral Judgment of the Child, was published in 1932 for two reasons: his use of philosophical criteria to define morality (as universalizable, generalizable, and obligatory) and his rejection of equating
cultural normsSocial norms are the accepted behaviors within a society or group. This sociological and social psychological term has been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit...
with moral norms. Piaget, drawing on
KantianImmanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
theory, proposed that morality developed out of peer interaction and that it was autonomous from authority mandates. Peers, not parents, were a key source of moral concepts such as equality, reciprocity, and justice.
Piaget attributed different types of psychosocial processes to different forms of social
relationshipsAn interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring. This association may be based on limerence, love, solidarity, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitment. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the...
, introducing a fundamental distinction between different types of said relationships. Where there is constraint because one participant holds more power than the other the relationship is asymmetrical, and, importantly, the
knowledgeKnowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
that can be acquired by the dominated participant takes on a fixed and inflexible form. Piaget refers to this process as one of social transmission, illustrating it through reference to the way in which the elders of a
tribeA tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states.Many anthropologists use the term tribal society to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship, especially corporate descent groups .Some theorists...
initiate younger members into the patterns of beliefs and practices of the group. Similarly, where adults exercise a dominating influence over the growing child, it is through social transmission that children can acquire knowledge. By contrast, in
cooperativeA cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
relations, power is more evenly distributed between participants so that a more symmetrical relationship emerges. Under these conditions, authentic forms of intellectual exchange become possible; each partner has the freedom to project his or her own thoughts, consider the positions of others, and defend his or her own point of view. In such circumstances, where children’s thinking is not limited by a dominant influence, Piaget believed "the reconstruction of knowledge", or favorable conditions for the emergence of constructive solutions to problems, exists. Here the knowledge that emerges is open, flexible and regulated by the logic of argument rather than being determined by an external authority. In short, cooperative relations provide the arena for the emergence of operations, which for Piaget requires the absence of any constraining influence, and is most often illustrated by the relations that form between peers (for more on the importance of this distinction see Duveen & Psaltis, 2008; Psaltis & Duveen, 2006, 2007). This distinction acquired central importance in
Jürgen HabermasJürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
' writings on
communicative actionCommunicative action is a concept associated with the German philosopher-sociologist Jürgen Habermas. Habermas uses this concept to describe cooperative action undertaken by individuals based upon mutual deliberation and argumentation...
.
Historical studies of thought and cognition
Historical changes of thought have been modeled in Piagetian terms. Broadly speaking these models have mapped changes in morality, intellectual life and cognitive levels against historical changes (typically in the complexity of social systems).
Notable examples include:
- Michael Horace Barnes' study of the co-evolution of religious and scientific thinking
- Peter Damerow's theory of prehistoric and archaic thought
- Kieran Egan's stages of understanding
The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding is a 1997 book on educational theory by Kieran Egan.- Criticism of previous education theories :...
- James W. Fowler
Dr. James W. Fowler III ) Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University, was director of both the Center for Research on Faith and Moral Development and the Center for Ethics until he retired in 2005...
's stages of faith developmentA series of stages of faith development was proposed by Professor James W. Fowler, a developmental psychologist at Candler School of Theology, in the book Stages of Faith...
- Suzy Gablik's stages of art history
- Christopher Hallpike's studies of changes in cognition and moral judgment in pre-historical, archaic and classical periods ... (Hallpike 1979, 2004)
- Lawrence Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg was a Jewish American psychologist born in Bronxville, New York, who served as a professor at the University of Chicago, as well as Harvard University. Having specialized in research on moral education and reasoning, he is best known for his theory of stages of moral development...
's stages of moral developmentLawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development constitute an adaptation of a psychological theory originally conceived of by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget...
- Don Lepan's theory of the origins of modern thought and drama
- Charles Radding's theory of the medieval intellectual development
- Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
's reworking of historical materialismHistorical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx as "the materialist conception of history". Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans...
.
Non human development
Neo-Piagetian stages have been applied to the maximum stage attained by various animals. For example
spiderSpiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...
s attain the circular sensory motor stage, coordinating actions and perceptions. Pigeons attain the sensory motor stage, forming concepts.
Origins
The origins of human intelligence have also been studied in Piagetian terms. Wynn (1979, 1981) analysed Acheulian and Oldowan tools in terms of the insight into spatial relationships required to create each kind. On a more general level, Robinson's
Birth of Reason (2005) suggests a large-scale model for the emergence of a Piagetian intelligence.
Primatology
Piaget's models of cognition have also been applied outside the human sphere, and some primatologists assess the development and abilities of primates in terms of Piaget's model.
Philosophy
Some have taken into account of Piaget's work. For example, the philosopher and social theorist
Jürgen HabermasJürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
has incorporated Piaget into his work, most notably in
The Theory of Communicative ActionThe Theory of Communicative Action was published in 1981 in two volumes, the first subtitled Reason and the Rationalization of Society , the second, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason...
. The philosopher
Thomas KuhnThomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift," which has since become an English-language staple.Kuhn...
credited Piaget's work with helping him to understand the transition between modes of thought which characterized his theory of
paradigm shiftA Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...
s. Yet, that said, it is also noted that the implications of his later work do indeed remain largely unexamined. Shortly before his death (September, 1980), Piaget was involved in a debate about the relationships between innate and acquired features of language, at the Centre Royaumont pour une Science de l'Homme, where he discussed his point of view with the linguist
Noam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
as well as
Hilary PutnamHilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...
and
Stephen ToulminStephen Edelston Toulmin was a British philosopher, author, and educator. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to the analysis of moral reasoning. Throughout his writings, he sought to develop practical arguments which can be used effectively in evaluating the ethics behind...
.
Artificial intelligence
Piaget also had a considerable effect in the field of
computer scienceComputer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
and
artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
.
Seymour PapertSeymour Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language....
used Piaget's work while developing the Logo programming language.
Alan KayAlan Curtis Kay is an American computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design, and for coining the phrase, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."He is the president of the Viewpoints Research...
used Piaget's theories as the basis for the
DynabookThe Dynabook concept, created by Alan Kay in 1968, described what is now known as a laptop computer or a tablet or slate computer with nearly eternal battery life and software aimed at giving children access to digital media...
programming system concept, which was first discussed within the confines of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, or
Xerox PARCPARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and co-development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems....
. These discussions led to the development of the Alto prototype, which explored for the first time all the elements of the
graphical user interfaceIn computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
(GUI), and influenced the creation of user interfaces in the 1980s and beyond.
- Gary Drescher
Gary L. Drescher is a scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , author of the book Made-Up Minds: A Constructivist Approach to Artificial Intelligence....
's Made-Up Minds: A Constructivist Approach to Artificial Intelligence
Challenges
Piaget's theory, however vital in understanding child psychology, did not go without scrutiny. A main figure whose ideas contradicted Piaget's ideas was the Russian psychologist
Lev VygotskyLev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of cultural-historical psychology, and the leader of the Vygotsky Circle.-Biography:...
. Vygotsky stressed the importance of a child's cultural background as an effect to the stages of development. Because different cultures stress different social interactions, this challenged Piaget's theory that the hierarchy of learning development had to develop in succession. Vygotsky introduced the term
Zone of proximal development“The zone of proximal development defines functions that have not matured yet, but are in a process of maturing. The zone of proximal development , often abbreviated ZPD, is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help...
as an overall task a child would have to develop that would be too difficult to develop alone.
Also, the so called
neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive developmentJean Piaget's theory of cognitive development has been criticized on many grounds. One criticism is concerned with the very nature of development itself. It is suggested that Piaget's theory does not explain why development from stage to stage occurs. The theory is also criticized for ignoring...
maintained that Piaget's theory does not do justice either to the underlying mechanisms of
information processingInformation processing is the change of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process which describes everything which happens in the universe, from the falling of a rock to the printing of a text file from a digital computer system...
that explain transition from stage to stage or individual differences in cognitive development. According to these theories, changes in information processing mechanisms, such as speed of processing and
working memoryWorking memory has been defined as the system which actively holds information in the mind to do verbal and nonverbal tasks such as reasoning and comprehension, and to make it available for further information processing...
, are responsible for ascension from stage to stage. Moreover, differences between individuals in these processes explain why some individuals develop faster than other individuals (Demetriou, 1998).
Curiously, Piaget had published a novel at the age of 20, before he'd begun any research in psychology, in which he stated what would later be the "conclusions" from decades of studying the development of intelligence in children.
Over time, alternative theories of Child Development have been put forward, and empirical findings have done a lot to undermine Piaget's theories. For example Esther Thelen and colleagues found that babies would not make the
A-not-B errorA-not-B error is a phenomenon uncovered by the work of Jean Piaget in his theory of cognitive development of children. The A-not-B error is a particular error made by infants during substage 4 of their sensorimotor stage.A typical task goes like this: An experimenter hides an attractive toy under...
if they had small weights added to their arms during the first phase of the experiment that were then removed before the second phase of the experiment. This minor change should not impact babies' understanding of object permanence, so the difference that this makes to babies' performance on the A-not-B task cannot be explained by Piagetian theory. Thelen and colleagues also found that various other factors also influenced performance on the A-not-B task (including strength of memory trace, salience of targets, waiting time and stance), and proposed that this could be better explained using a dynamic systems theory approach than using Piagetian theory.
Alison GopnikAlison Gopnik , daughter of Myrna Gopnik, is an American Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her work in the areas of cognitive and language development, specializing in causal learning and theory of mind...
and Betty Repacholi found that babies as young as 18 months old can understand that other people have desires, and that these desires could be very different to their own desires. This strongly contradicts Piaget's view that children are very egocentric at this age.
List of major works
In the list below, the following definitions have been used:
- Exemplar
Exemplar, in the sense developed by philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn, is a well known usage of a scientific theory.According to Kuhn, scientific practice alternates between periods of normal science and extraordinary/revolutionary science...
s: More than 5,000 citations in Google Scholar
- Super-Classics: More than 2,500 citations in Google Scholar
- Classics: More than 1,000 citations in Google Scholar
- Major Works: More than 500 citations in Google Scholar
- Works of Significance: More than 250 citations in Google Scholar
The references have been presented in order of their impact according to Google Scholar.
Exemplars
- The Origins of Intelligence in Children (New York: International University Press, 1952) [La naissance de l'intelligence chez l'enfant (1936), also translated as The Origin of Intelligence in the Child (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953)].
- The Moral Judgment of the Child (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1932) [Le jugement moral chez l'enfant (1932)].
Super-classics
- The construction of reality in the child (New York: Basic Books, 1954) [La construction du réel chez l'enfant (1950), also translated as The Child's Construction of Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955)].
- Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood (New York: Norton, 1962) [La formation du symbole chez l'enfant; imitation, jeu et reve, image et représentation (1945)].
- The Language and Thought of the Child (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962) [Le Langage et la pensée chez l'enfant (1923)] .
- With Inhelder, B., The Psychology of the Child (New York: Basic Books, 1962) [La psychologie de l'enfant (1966, orig. pub. as an article, 1950)].
- With Inhelder, B., The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence (New York: Basic Books, 1958) [De la logique de l'enfant à la logique de l'adolescent (1955)].
- The Child's Conception of the World (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1928) [La Représentation du monde chez l'enfant (1926, orig. pub. as an article, 1925)].
- The Psychology of Intelligence (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951) [La psychologie de l'intelligence (1947)].
Classics
- With Inhelder, B., The Child's Conception of Space (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967).
- "Piaget's theory" in P. Mussen (ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol. 1. (4th ed., New York: Wiley, 1983).
- The Child's Conception of Number (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952) [La genese du nombre chez l'enfant (1941)].
- Structuralism (New York: Harper & Row, 1970) [Le Structuralisme (1968)].
- Genetic epistemology (New York: W.W. Norton, 1971).
- The early growth of logic in the child (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964) [La genese des structures logiques elementaires (1959)].
Major Works
- Biology and Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971) [Biologie et connaissance ; essai sur les relations entre les régulations organiques et les processus cognitifs (1967)].
- Science of education and the psychology of the child (New York : Orion Press, 1970) [Psychologie et pédagogie (1969)].
- The child's conception of physical causality (London: Kegan Paul, 1930) [La causalite physique chez l'enfant (1927)].
- Intellectual evolution from adolescence to adulthood (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977) [L'evolution intellectuelle entre l'adolescence et l'age adulte (1970)].
- Six psychological studies (New York: Random House, 1967) [Six études de psychologie (1964)].
- The Equilibration of Cognitive Structures: The Central Problem of Intellectual Development (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) [L'equilibration des structures cognitives (1975), previously translated as The development of thought: Equilibration of cognitive structures (1977)].
- Child's Conception of Geometry (New York, Basic Books, 1960) [La Géométrie spontanée de l'enfant (1948)].
- Development and learning.
- To understand is to invent: The future of education (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973) [tr. of Ou va l'education (1971) and Le droit a l'education dans le monde actuel (1948)].
- Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (ed.), Language and learning: the debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980) [Theories du language, theories de l'apprentissage (1979)].
- The Principles of Genetic Epistemology (New York: Basic Books, 1972) [L'épistémologie génétique (1950)].
Works of significance
- The Grasp of Consciousness: Action and concept in the young child (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977) [La prise de conscience (1974)].
- The Mechanisms of Perception (New York: Basic Books, 1969) [Les mécanismes perceptifs: modèles probabilistes, analyse génétique, relations avec l'intelligence (1961)].
- Psychology and Epistemology: Towards a Theory of Knowledge (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972) [Psychologie et epistémologie (1970).
- The Child's Conception of Time (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969) [Le développement de la notion de temps chez l'enfant (1946)]
- Logic and Psychology (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953).
- Memory and intelligence (New York: Basic Books, 1973) [Memoire et intelligence (1968)]
- The Origin of the Idea of Chance in Children (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975) [La genèse de l'idée de hasard chez l'enfant (1951)].
- Mental imagery in the child: a study of the development of imaginal representation (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971) [L'image mentale chez l'enfant : études sur le développement des représentations imaginées (1966)].
- Intelligence and Affectivity. Their Relationship during Child Development (Palo Alto: Annual Reviews, 1981) [Les relations entre l'intelligence et l'affectivité dans le développement de l'enfant (1954)].
- With Garcia, R. Psychogenesis and the History of Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989) [Psychogenèse et histoire des sciences (1983).
- With Beth, E. W.,Mathematical Epistemology and Psychology (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1966) [Épistémologie mathématique et psychologie: Essai sur les relations entre la logique formelle et la pensée réelle] (1961).
- The Growth of the Mind
New translations
- Piaget, J. (1995). Sociological Studies. London: Routledge.
- Piaget, J. (2001). Studies in Reflecting Abstraction. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
Major commentaries and critiques
Piaget inspired innumerable studies and even new areas of inquiry. The following is a list of the major critiques and commentaries, organized using the same citation-based method as the list of his own major works (above). These represent the most important and influential post-Piagetian writings in their respective sub-disciplines.
Exemplars
- Vygotsky, L.
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of cultural-historical psychology, and the leader of the Vygotsky Circle.-Biography:...
(1963). Thought and language. [12630 citations]
Classics
- Papert, S.
Seymour Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language....
(1980). Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful IdeasMindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas , published by Basic Books, is a book by Seymour Papert. He proposes a unique computer-based learning environment called the Microworld. His primary belief about the Microworld's design is that it compliments the natural knowledge building...
. [4089]
- Minsky, M.
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
(1988). The society of mindThe Society of Mind is both the title of a book and the name of a theory of natural intelligence as written and developed by Marvin Minsky.-Minsky's model:...
. [3950]
- Kohlberg, L.
Lawrence Kohlberg was a Jewish American psychologist born in Bronxville, New York, who served as a professor at the University of Chicago, as well as Harvard University. Having specialized in research on moral education and reasoning, he is best known for his theory of stages of moral development...
(1969). Stage And Sequence: The Cognitive-Developmental Approach To Socialization. [3118]
- Flavell, J.
John H. Flavell is an American developmental psychologist specializing in children's cognitive development. Through the discovery of new developmental phenomena and analysis of the theories of Jean Piaget, Flavell shifted the direction of developmental psychology in the United States.In 1955,...
(1963). The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. [2333]
- Gibson, E. J.
Eleanor J. Gibson was an American psychologist. Among her contributions to psychology, the most important are the study of perception in infants and toddlers...
(1973). Principles of perceptual learning and development. [1903]
- Hunt, J. McV.
J. McVicker Hunt was a prominent American educational psychologist and author. He promoted and researched pioneering concepts related to the malleable nature of child intelligence that eventual led to the theory of learning centered on the concept an information-processing system.- References :*...
(1961). Intelligence and Experience. [617+395+384+111+167+32=1706]
- Meltzoff, A. N.
Andrew N. Meltzoff is an American psychologist and an internationally recognized expert on infant and child development. His discoveries about infant imitation greatly advanced the scientific understanding of early cognition, personality and brain development.-Background:Meltzoff received a B.A....
& Moore, M. K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. [1497]
- Case, R. (1985). Intellectual development: Birth to adulthood. [1456]
- Fischer, K. W. (1980). A theory of cognitive development: The control and construction of hierarchies of skills. [1001]
Major works
- Bates, E.
Elizabeth Bates was a Professor of psychology and cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego...
(1976). Language and context: The acquisition of pragmatics. [959]
- Ginsberg, H. P.
Herbert P. Ginsburg is Jacob H. Schiff Foundation Professor of Psychology & Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.He is a leading interpreter of children's understanding of mathematics, with research and teaching interests in intellectual development, mathematics education, and testing...
& Opper, S. (1969). Piaget's theory of intellectual development. [931]
- Singley, M. K. & Anderson, J. R. (1989). The transfer of cognitive skill. [836]
- Duckworth, E.
Eleanor Ruth Duckworth is a cognitive psychologist, educational theorist and constructivist educator. A former student, colleague, leading translator and interpreter of Jean Piaget as well as renowned Professor of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, she is one of the leading...
(1973). The having of wonderful ideas. [775]
- Youniss, J. (1982). Parents and peers in social development: A Sullivan-Piaget perspective. [763]
- Pascual-Leone, J. (1970). A mathematical model for the transition rule in Piaget's developmental stages. [563]
- Schaffer, H. R. & Emerson, P. E. (1964). The development of social attachments in infancy. [535]
Works of significance
- Shatz, M. & Gelman, R.
Rochel Gelman is a psychology professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Science.- Biography :...
(1973). The Development of Communication Skills: Modifications in the Speech of Young Children as a Function of Listener. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 38(5), pp. 1–37.[470]
- Broke, H. (1971). Interpersonal perception of young children: Egocentrism or Empathy? Developmental Psychology, 5(2), pp. 263–269.[469]
- Wadsworth, B. J. (1989). Piaget's theory of cognitive and affective development [421]
- Karmiloff-Smith, A.
Annette Karmiloff-Smith is a professorial research fellow at the Developmental Neurocognition Lab at Birkbeck, University of London. Before moving to Birbeck, she was Head of the Neurocognitive Development Unit at Institute of Child Health, University College, London...
(1992). Beyond Modularity. [419]
- Bodner, G. M. (1986). Constructivism: A theory of knowledge. [403]
- Shantz, C. U. (1975). The Development of Social Cognition. [387]
- Diamond, A.
Adele Diamond is one of the founders of the field of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. She holds the Canada Research Chair Tier 1 Professorship in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia , Vancouver...
& Goldman-Rakic, P. S. (1989). Comparison of human infants and rhesus monkeys on Piaget's AB task: evidence for dependence on dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Experimental Brain Research, 74(1), pp. 24–40. [370]
- Gruber, H.
Howard E. Gruber, , an American psychologist, was a pioneer of the psychological study of creativity. Howard E. Gruber earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University and went on to a distinguished academic career. He worked with Jean Piaget in Geneva and later co-founded the Institute for Cognitive...
& Voneche, H. (1982). The Essential Piaget. [348]
- Walkerdine, V. (1984). Developmental psychology and the child-centred pedagogy: The insertion of Piaget into early education. [338]
- Kamii, C.
Dr. Constance Kamii is a Professor, Early Childhood Education ProgramDepartment of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.-Overview:...
& DeClark, G. (1985). Young children reinvent arithmetic: Implications of Piaget's theory [335]
- Riegel, K. F. (1973). Dialectic operations: The final period of cognitive development [316]
- Bandura, A.
Albert Bandura is a psychologist and the David Starr Jordan Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University...
& McDonald, F. J. (1963). Influence of social reinforcement and the behavior of models in shaping children's moral judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(3), pp. 274–281. [314]
- Karplus, R.
Robert Karplus was a theoretical physicist and leader in the field of science education.-Early life:Robert Karplus was born in Vienna, where he lived until the German occupation of Austria in 1938. He emigrated with his mother and brother to escape the Anschluss...
(1980). Teaching for the development of reasoning. [312]
- Brainerd, C. (1978). The stage question in cognitive-developmental theory. [311]
- Brainerd, C. (1978). Piaget's theory of intelligence. [292]
- Gilligan, C.
Carol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work with and against Lawrence Kohlberg on ethical community and ethical relationships, and certain subject-object problems in ethics. She is currently a Professor at New York University and a Visiting Professor...
(1997). Moral orientation and moral development [285]
- Diamond, A.
Adele Diamond is one of the founders of the field of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. She holds the Canada Research Chair Tier 1 Professorship in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia , Vancouver...
(1991). Neuropsychological insights into the meaning of object concept development [284]
- Braine, M. D. S., & Rumain, B. (1983). Logical reasoning. [276]
- John-Steiner, V. (2000). Creative collaboration. [266]
- Pascual-Leone, J. (1987). Organismic processes for neo-Piagetian theories: A dialectical causal account of cognitive development. [261]
- Hallpike, C. R. (1979). The foundations of primitive thought [261]
- Furth, H.
Hans G. Furth , was a Professor emeritus in the Faculty of Psychology of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., at the time of his death aged 78.-Early Life in Europe:...
(1969). Piaget and Knowledge [261]
- Gelman, R.
Rochel Gelman is a psychology professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Science.- Biography :...
& Baillargeon, R.Renee Baillargeon is Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.-Life:She specializes in the development of cognition in infancy. Baillargeon is perhaps best known for her research that has shown that infants have an intuitive awareness of physical...
(1983). A review of some Piagetian concepts. [260]
- O'Loughlin, M. (1992). Rethinking science education: Beyond piagetian constructivism. Toward a sociocultural model of teaching and learning. [252]
Appointments
- 1921-25 Research Director (Chef des travaux), Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Geneva
- 1925-29 Professor of Psychology, Sociology and the Philosophy of Science, University of Neuchatel
- 1929-39 Professeur extraordinaire of the History of Scientific Thought, University of Geneva
- 1929-67 Director, International Bureau of Education, Geneva
- 1932-71 Director, Institute of Educational Sciences, University of Geneva
- 1938-51 Professor of Experimental Psychology and Sociology, University of Lausanne
- 1939-51 Professor of Sociology, University of Geneva
- 1940-71 Professeur ordinaire of Experimental Psychology, University of Geneva
- 1952-64 Professor of Genetic Psychology, Sorbonne, Paris
- 1954-57 President, International Union of Scientific Psychology
- 1955-80 Director, International Centre for Genetic Epistemology, Geneva
- 1971-80 Emeritus Professor, University of Geneva
Honorary Doctorates
- 1936 Harvard
- 1946 Sorbonne
- 1949 University of Brazil
- 1949 Bruxelles
- 1953 Chicago
- 1954 McGill
- 1958 Warsaw
- 1959 Manchester
- 1960 Oslo
- 1960 Cambridge
- 1962 Brandeis
- 1964 Montreal
- 1964 Aix-Marseille
- 1966 Pennsylvania
- 1966? Barcelona
- 1970 Yale
Quotations
- "Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do."
- "Intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself."
- "The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done."
See also
- Active learning
Active learning is an umbrella term that refers to several models of instruction that focus the responsibility of learning, on learners. Bonwell and Eison popularized this approach to instruction . This "buzz word" of the 1980s became their 1990s report to the Association for the Study of Higher...
- Cognitive acceleration
Cognitive acceleration describes a lesson style originally developed by Michael Shayer and Philip Adey at King's College London which is designed to promote student's thinking from "concrete" to "formal", abstract thinking....
- Constructivist epistemology
Constructivist epistemology is an epistemological perspective in philosophy about the nature of scientific knowledge. Constructivists maintain that scientific knowledge is constructed by scientists and not discovered from the world. Constructivists claim that the concepts of science are mental...
- Developmental psychology
Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...
- Fluid and crystallized intelligence
In psychology, fluid and crystallized intelligence are factors of general intelligence originally identified by Raymond Cattell...
- Inquiry-based learning
Inquiry-based learning or inquiry-based science describes a range of philosophical, curricular and pedagogical approaches to teaching....
- Kohlberg's stages of moral development
Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development constitute an adaptation of a psychological theory originally conceived of by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget...
- Psychosocial development
- Water-level task
The water-level task is an experiment in developmental and cognitive psychology developed by Jean Piaget.The experiment attempts to assess the subject's reasoning ability in spatial relations...
Collaborators
- Leo Apostel
Leo Apostel was a Belgian philosopher and professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Universiteit Gent. Apostel was an advocate of interdisciplinary research and the bridging of the gap between exact science and humanities.- Biography :Leo Apostel was born Antwerp in 1925...
- Edgar Ascher
- Evert Beth
- Magali Bovet
- Guy Cellérier
- :fr:Paul Fraisse
- Rolando Garcia
Rolando García is a Paraguayan footballer currently playing for Defensa y Justicia of the Primera B Nacional in Argentina.-External links:* Profile at* Profile at...
- Pierre Gréco
- Jean-Blaise Grize
- Gil Henriques
- Bärbel Inhelder
Bärbel Inhelder was a Swiss developmental psychologist, the most famous co-worker of Jean Piaget. She was born in St. Gall, Switzerland and moved to Geneva in 1932 where she studied at the University of Geneva Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau...
- Benoit Mandelbrot
Benoît B. Mandelbrot was a French American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child...
- Albert Morf
- Pierre Oléron
- Seymour Papert
Seymour Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language....
- Maurice Reuchlin
- Hermina Sinclair de-Zwart
- Alina Szeminska
- Huê Vinh-Bang
External links