My Piaget Essay's

Piaget’s Theory of Child Development

Jean Piaget a Swiss scholar (1896-1980) became most famous for his theory that children pass through four stages of cognitive development.

The sensori-motor stage is the basis for zero to two year olds. Here babies begin to build up schemas as they adapt to their surroundings, although at a very early age their behaviour consists simply of reflex responses. They are believed to be extremely ego-centric and are unable to perceive object permanence until eight months of age. Symbolic functions and language begin developing towards the end of this stage.

The pre-operational stage is the basis for two to seven year olds, which Piaget divides again into two periods; the pre-conceptual period, for two to four year olds, and the intuitive period, for four to seven year olds. He suggests children are unable to envisage multiple dimensions and have difficulty focusing on more than one characteristic of objects. Children’s symbolic thinking and language skills are developing rapidly but they are still unable to think logically and prefer visual references to problem solve. Piaget believed this was due to their ego-centrism, which in turn was assumed a possible key factor in children’s animism. Towards the end of this stage they do however begin to think operationally and logically as they are continually assimilating and accommodating existing schemas and adapting new schemas to enable them to achieve a state of equilibrium.

The concrete operational stage is the basis for seven to eleven year olds where their ego-centrism disbands. Operational thinking is consolidated and conservation fully attained. The formal operational stage is basis for eleven year olds to adults. At this level individuals are able to use logical thinking and reasoning and can think abstractly.

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Expected Classroom Observations about Piaget’s work

I have been able to secure a placement with Leesland Junior School, where I will be assisting the year three teacher with her class of seven to eight years olds. At this age children are in the earliest period of the concrete operational stage according to Piaget’s cognitive development theory.

I believe the children will have lost or are beginning to lose their ego-centrism and therefore be able to decentre and appreciate the views of their class mates, while in open discussions. Language will be well developed and children will be concentrating on fine-tuning this, by learning to speak, spell and write words outside their vocabulary. Since Piaget believed dis-equilibrium would be experienced as unpleasant the children may find this activity reasonably challenging.

Children should be well practised in mental reversal by now according to Piaget and therefore should easily consolidate and fully attain conservation. They will also be able to conserve numbers, but may still have trouble with mass at this stage. They will probably begin problem solving without visual references to encourage them to enhance operational thinking, but when given a visual problem will be able to solve it easily.

Number of words 198

These scored me a nice 77% equating to a grade B - I'll have to try harder next time!