Cognitive Development

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
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Abstract
Jean Piaget was a leading academician in the area of cognitive growth. He made a choice, to learn scientifically, the method in which broods develop knowledge. Piaget was the first individual to note that broods were not miniature copies of grownups but were different, particularly on how they thought about and understood the world. This paper, explains in details on Piaget’s research and conclusion about cognitive development. The paper start by defining the four most important terms in the research, which include schema, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration. Piaget suggested the broods cognitive growth could be divided into four important stages. This paper highlights on this stages which include, sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and operational phases. Apart from the stages, this paper also discusses various issues that Piaget emphasized about which include, egocentrism, animism, and conservation. These important terms are used in defining the various stages that children undergo during cognitive development. Lastly, the paper highlights various ways in which Piaget’s theory influences education.
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Cognitive development mentions to the development of human thinking capacity. Piaget conducted various research on cognitive development especially to young children, and he came to believe that everybody was born with a set of the schema which is building blocks of knowledge.

In his theory, Piaget stated that as the young children grew so do their schema. Also, children develop cognitive structures to assist them to make sense of their world, a process known as assimilation (Oakley, 2004). Also, children can revise an existing schema due to the occurrence of new experience, a process which is known as accommodation. Lastly, children continually try to interpret and comprehend the world while encountering new experiences. This process is known as equilibration.
Piaget established a stage model, where each stage followed from the preceding one and exhibited growth in thinking and understanding. The first stage is known as sensorimotor and comprises children between the ages of 0-2 years. This is a phase of rapid development, where children change from a fairly helpless new-born baby to a walking and talking toddler. The second phase is known as the pre-operational stage and occurs in children between the ages of 2-6 years. This phase is alienated into two sub-stages. The preconceptual period which occurs in children between 2-6 years is the first sub-stage. This stage is featured with an increase in language improvement, continuance of symbolic and the growth of imaginative play. The second sub-stage is known as the intuitive period which occurs between 4-6 years. This phase is characterized by the improvement of mental ordering and classification. The third phase of Piaget stage model is the concrete operational stage which occurs in children between 7-12 years (Oakley, 2004). This stage is characterized by the growth of plans and rules for understanding and examining the youngster’s world. The last stage is known as the formal operational stage which occurs between the ages of 12-16 years. In this stage, the dependence on real objects reduces and the broods can resolve hypothetical glitches that they are unable to see.
Apart from the four stages, Piaget also discussed on important terms such as egocentrism, animism, and conservation. The term egocentrism is used to mean that the children can only view the world from their perception and finds it hard to comprehend any other perspective. Animism refers to the propensity to attribute feelings and meanings to inanimate objects. Lastly, Conservation denotes to the understanding that quantity does not change when anything has been increased or removed away from an object. Piaget stated that young children were unable to comprehend the notions of reversibility and compensation (Oakley, 2004). Piaget tested children’s capability to conserve volume, mass, liquid and number. From the test, young children in the pre-operational stage were incapable of answering correctly, but older broods in the concrete operational phase were able to conserve, hence showing growth in thinking.
In conclusion, Piaget’s research heavily influenced the educational theories and practice. Before Piaget, the tutor’s responsibility was to impart knowledge while the children were the receiver of this information. Piaget presented child-centred learning, whereby the tutor had to take into account the development stages of the child. Piaget also introduced the idea that children needed to be ready so as to learn a new concept. Piaget believed that children did not engross information, but they learned by being vigorously involved in the procedure. Therefore, he introduced the idea that good learning process requires a contribution. Piaget brought about important ideas that influenced education, for example, the idea of learning from a mistake, peer interaction and the use of real materials. All these ideas changed the manner in which children were imparted with knowledge by the tutors.
References
Oakley, L. (2004). Cognitive development. Routledge.