http://tip.psychology.org/piaget.html
Principles:
1. Children will provide different explanations of reality at different stages of cognitive development.
2. Cognitive development is facilitated by providing activities or situations that engage learners and require adaptation (i.e., assimilation and accomodation).
3. Learning materials and activities should involve the appropriate level of motor or mental operations for a child of given age; avoid asking students to perform tasks that are beyond their currrent cognitive capabilities.
4. Use teaching methods that actively involve students and present challenges.
Scope/Application:
Piaget explored the implications of his theory to all aspects of cognition, intelligence and moral development. Many of Piaget's experiments were focused on the development of mathematical and logical concepts. The theory has been applied extensively to teaching practice and curriculum design in elementary education (e.g., Bybee & Sund, 1982; Wadsworth, 1978). Piaget's ideas have been very influential on others, such as Seymour Papert (see computers).
http://www.piaget.org/biography/biog.html
His researches in developmental psychology and genetic epistemology had one unique goal: how does knowledge grow? His answer is that the growth of knowledge is a progressive construction of logically embedded structures superseding one another by a process of inclusion of lower less powerful logical means into higher and more powerful ones up to adulthood. Therefore, children's logic and modes of thinking are initially entirely different from those of adults.
Piaget's oeuvre is known all over the world and is still an inspiration in fields like psychology, sociology, education, epistemology, economics and law as witnessed in the annual catalogues of the Jean Piaget Archives. He was awarded numerous prizes and honorary degrees all over the world.
http://www.crystalinks.com/piaget.html
Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 - September 16, 1980), a professor of psychology at the University of Geneva from 1929 to 1954, was a French Swiss developmental psychologist who is most well known for organizing cognitive development into a series of stages.
For example, he outlines four stages of cognitive development:
1. Sensorimotor
2. Preoperational
3. Concrete Operational
4. Formal Operational
These four stages have the following characteristics:
1. invariant sequence
2. universal (not culturally specific)
3. related to cognitive development
4. generalizable to other functions
5. stages are logically organized wholes
6. hierarchical nature of stage sequences (each successive stage incorporates elements of previous stages, but is more differentiated and integrated)
7. stages represent qualitative differences inmodes of thinking, not merely quantitative differences
Piaget's theory supposes that people develop schemas (conceptual models) by either assimilating or accommodating new information.
These concepts can be explained as fitting information in to existing schemas, and altering existing schemas in order to accommodate new information, respectively.
http://www.sk.com.br/sk-piage.html
A central component of Piaget's developmental theory of learning and thinking is that both involve the participation of the learner. Knowledge is not merely transmitted verbally but must be constructed and reconstructed by the learner. Piaget asserted that for a child to know and construct knowledge of the world, the child must act on objects and it is this action which provides knowledge of those objects (Sigel, 1977); the mind organizes reality and acts upon it. The learner must be active; he is not a vessel to be filled with facts. Piaget's approach to learning is a readiness approach. Readiness approaches in developmental psychology emphasize that children cannot learn something until maturation gives them certain prerequisites (Brainerd, 1978). The ability to learn any cognitive content is always related to their stage of intellectual development. Children who are at a certain stage cannot be taught the concepts of a higher stage.
Intellectual growth involves three fundamental processes: assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration. Assimilation involves the incorporation of new events into preexisting cognitive structures. Accommodation means existing structures change to accommodate to the new information. This dual process, assimilation-accommodation, enables the child to form schema. Equilibration involves the person striking a balance between himself and the environment, between assimilation and accomodation. When a child experiences a new event, disequilibrium sets in until he is able to assimilate and accommodate the new information and thus attain equilibrium. There are many types of equilibrium between assimilation and accomodation that vary with the levels of development and the problems to be solved. For Piaget, equilibration is the major factor in explaining why some children advance more quickly in the development of logical intelligence than do others (Lavatelli, 40).
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/piaget_jean.html
Some anthropological terms coined by Piaget:
Egocentrism- the belief that others experience the world in the same way that you do;
Classification- grouping objects into categories;
Seriation- arranging objects in sequential order according to one aspect such as size, weight, or volume.
http://www.funderstanding.com/piaget.cfm
Definition
Swiss biologist and psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is renowned for constructing a highly influential model of child development and learning. Piaget's theory is based on the idea that the developing child builds cognitive structures--in other words, mental "maps," schemes, or networked concepts for understanding and responding to physical experiences within his or her environment. Piaget further attested that a child's cognitive structure increases in sophistication with development, moving from a few innate reflexes such as crying and sucking to highly complex mental activities.
Discussion
Piaget's theory identifies four developmental stages and the processes by which children progress through them. The four stages are:
- Sensorimotor stage (birth - 2 years old)--The child, through physical interaction with his or her environment, builds a set of concepts about reality and how it works. This is the stage where a child does not know that physical objects remain in existence even when out of sight (object permanance).
- Preoperational stage (ages 2-7)--The child is not yet able to conceptualize abstractly and needs concrete physical situations.
- Concrete operations (ages 7-11)--As physical experience accumulates, the child starts to conceptualize, creating logical structures that explain his or her physical experiences. Abstract problem solving is also possible at this stage. For example, arithmetic equations can be solved with numbers, not just with objects.
- Formal operations (beginning at ages 11-15)--By this point, the child's cognitive structures are like those of an adult and include conceptual reasoning.
Piaget outlined several principles for building cognitive structures. During all development stages, the child experiences his or her environment using whatever mental maps he or she has constructed so far. If the experience is a repeated one, it fits easily--or is assimilated--into the child's cognitive structure so that he or she maintains mental "equilibrium." If the experience is different or new, the child loses equilibrium, and alters his or her cognitive structure to accommodate the new conditions. This way, the child erects more and more adequate cognitive structures.
How Piaget's Theory Impacts Learning
Curriculum--Educators must plan a developmentally appropriate curriculum that enhances their students' logical and conceptual growth.
Instruction--Teachers must emphasize the critical role that experiences--or interactions with the surrounding environment--play in student learning. For example, instructors have to take into account the role that fundamental concepts, such as the permanence of objects, play in establishing cognitive structures.