Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

Background

• His theory came out late 60’s and was at odds bc behaviorism was in

  • He said that children think differently than adults

• Children create knowledge on purpose as they manipulate and explore the world

  • nobody believed this before him apparently???

• Believed that all children go through all four of his stages

  • The stages are based on biology, specifically our biological age

HIS THEORY

• Focused on intellectual development

  • Thought, judgment, and knowledge

*Critical: method of transition from one stage to the next, and you have to complete one stage before you move on- NO SKIPPING >:(

• You also don’t go backwards

• Each stage is marked by new abilities

  • You can go through more complex understanding

• How he studied children:

  • He observed his own infant children

    • Presented his children with problems and observed how they solved them

Before Piaget

• Before Piaget, children were seen as mini-adults

  • Now we have childhood, and it’s a very unique and important part of development

• Children would work either in a farm or would be, like, wives

  • Education was not mandatory

• we love his theory, thank piaget

Schema 🙂

• Units of knowledge organized in a specific way-building blocks of knowledge

• It’s the image that pops up into your head when you hear a word

• Children view the world through schemas, so 

  • That’s how we interpret the world

    • It stays the same until the definition is challenged

  • We are always enlarging schemas throughout our lived

    • There are active schemas

      • Like “run” or “lie”

    • And now passive schemas

      • “Dog” or “human”

• We were born with three innate schemas!

  • The three innate schemas:

    • Grasping

      • They do that on purpose, they want to feel

    • Sucking

      • We do not have to be taught to suck :,)

    • Rooting

      • Shjkshfjsahjkhqe

      • Searching for the nipple cuz they’re hungry

Adaptation of Schemas

• Used to change and learn cognitively

  • Can be done in two ways:

    • Assimilation: widening the schema

      • Incorporating new experiences in existing schemas

      • Assimilation in high school: when you first meet somebody, you assimilate them into a schema that you already have

    • Accommodation: creating a new schema

      • Guy with the cane

  • Equilibration

    • When everything makes sense

      • When Norah shaves her head

        • Then you can use assimilation

      • When Norah becomes Norman (ERUEIHJKH I RLY HATE THAT NAME FHSJKF)

        • Then you use accommodation

Piaget’s Key Parts!

• Development MUST precede learning- the EXACT OPPOSITE OF VYGOTSKY

• Movement from one stage to another based on biological maturation

  • Must be cognitively ready to do the next stage

• He says children learn best through discovery learning- doing and exploring

  • Let them create their own learning

    • Also the exact opposite of Vygotsky

      • Neither of them are totally right

• Cognitive development always follows all four stages in order

  • Each stage has distinct ways of thinking

    • !! One of the best ways to learn is to seek the knowledge yourself !!

      • Learning through mistakes

THE STAGES

Stage 1: Sensorimotor (0-1)

-you learn by looking, touching, sucking

-learn cause-and-effect relationships

-What characterizes this stage?

-children are only aware of what’s immediately in front of them

-What do they focus on?

-their five senses

-physical interaction

-feeling, being talked to, a LOT of smelling

-at 9 months, children get object permanence

-even if something can’t be seen or touched, at 9 months old they know it’s still there

-A not B: when a child has object permanence but goes to the original hiding place for the item

Preoperational:

-ages 0-2

-child uses language and symbols, including letters and numbers, to represent objects and ideas- symbolic play

-egocentrism

-they cannot look at the world through anyone’s eyes but their own

-Have object permanence

-do NOT understand concept of conservation (next stage)

-Representational thought (IMAGINATION)

-intellectual ability of a child to picture something in their mind

-E.G.- child witnesses another child throwing a tantrum, throws one the next day

-E.G.- cardboard boxes becoming a castle or racecar

-kids are gonna start figuring out symbolic meaning

-stop sign means stop

-they get memory and imagination

-also you get past and future

-you’re not automatically aware of things that happened in the past and things that will happen in the future before this

Concrete operational:

-2nd-5th grade

-concepts

-conservation

-a quantity remains the same even if there are changes in its appearance

-heheheheheheh graham crackers

-reversibility

- 4+3=7 and 3+4=7

-serial ordering

- 0,5,10,15,20

-pattern

-cause and effect

-TJ will need an umbrella if it rains

-if u have an intuition about something, you’re making a prediction

-imagination and intuition are strong at this stage

Formal operational:

-12+

-looking at things more deeply

-once ur 12 and older, u know everything (NO)

-abstract reasoning

-manipulate objects in our minds without seeing them

-hypothesis testing

-Trial and error

-metacognition (thinking about thinking)

-the civil war is about slavery vs. the civil war was a something something north and ignorance and something something south and something more

-deductive reasoning

-comparison 

-classification

-logic

-real math

-you can write a bit better

-SOME ADULTS DON’T EVEN GET THERE

Owwwowowowww period crampssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN

• Piaget’s theory is constructivist

  • Children construct meaning and understanding from interactions to build knowledge??

• Children actively build meaning and understanding of reality through experiences and interactions

• Children actively construct knowledge by assimilating and accommodating new information

• Always be building knowledge… it’s weird that it ends at twelve

Strengths

• Huge thing that we now have educational philosophies with discovery learning

Weaknesses

• Stages seem contrived-age ranges are not scientific

• Progress to formal operational stage not guaranteed

• Failure to consider social environmental factors

• Methods are biased and not scientifically based (literally his own children)

• Lack of changes after adolescence

NEO-PIAGETISTS- take Piaget’s theory and works on it a bit

• Child’s ability to operate at a stage depends on the tasks involved

• Social interactions accelerate development

• Culture does matter

Discontinuous

Nature