The slide cover all the aspects of the Jean Piaget's theory which is one of the important theory of child development.

1. Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive
development
By-Anu Shree Varshney

2. • Piaget was one of the first psychologists to construct a systematic
understanding of cognitive development – how do we learn? How do we
gain intelligence?
• He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed trait, and regarded
cognitive development as a process which occurs due to biological
maturation and interaction with the environment.
• Stages of Development
Piaget's four stages of intellectual (or cognitive) development are:
1. Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)
2. Pre-operational stage (from age 2 to age 7)
3. Concrete operational stage (from age 7 to age 11)
4. Formal operational stage (age 11+ - adolescence and adulthood).

4. Stages of Development

5. I. Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)
• It has 6 sub stage in which child learn and experience the world by using
their sense (sight, touch , smell and taste).
• The core idea for the sensorimotor stage is object permanence.
• The child is egocentric and believe that the world and the people in it
revolve around him/her.
• During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers
acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects.
A child's entire experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through
basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.
• It is during the sensorimotor stage that children go through a period of
dramatic growth and learning.
.

6. II. Pre-operational stage (from age 2 to age 7)
• The foundations of language development may have been laid during the
previous stage, but it is the emergence of language that is one of the major
hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development.
• Thinking begins moving towards symbolical stages during the pre-
operational period.
• Children start to develop imagination and things can start having more
meaning.
• The pre-operational stage is still controlled by egocentric thoughts. This
means you would find it difficult to see another person’s viewpoint and
illogical thinking can still occur.

7. III. Concrete operational stage (from age 7 to age 11)
• According to Piaget’s theory, this is when the child starts showcasing
logical or operational thought.
• While the developmental stage sees more logic in thinking, the thought
patterns continue to be rigid.
• Another important aspect is the diminishing of egocentric thinking.
• Children begin to understand their thoughts, feelings and ideas are unique
and other’s might think and feel differently.

8. IV. Formal operational stage (age 11+ - adolescence and
adulthood
• The final stage for Piaget was about the ability to increase logical thinking,
using deductive reasoning and understanding abstract ideas.
• The ability to thinking about abstract ideas and situations is the key
hallmark of the formal operational stage of cognitive development
• The final stage for Piaget was about the ability to increase logical thinking,
using deductive reasoning and understanding abstract ideas.
• The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about
hypothetical situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this
stage

10. Cognitive Process

11. Schema
• A schema is a description of both the mental and physical actions required
in understanding and knowing
• Schemas provide you a way to organize your knowledge, creating units of
objects, actions and abstract concepts.
• A schema is a cognitive structure that represents knowledge about
everything that we know about the world, including oneself, others, events,
etc.
• A schema is important because it allows us to quickly make sense of a
person, situation, event, or a place on the basis of limited information. So,
when a schema is activated, it “fills in” missing details.
• Piaget thought schemas to have this ability to change as people process
more experiences.
• According to his theory, a child would modify, add or change the existing
schemas as new information or experiences occur.

12. Assimilation
• When you take in new information regarding your existing
schema, you are assimilating.i.e. using an existing schema to deal
with a new object or situation.
Accommodation
• Accommodation happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not
work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation.
• In accommodation, you try to modify your existing schemas and ideas,
with the process giving you a new experience or knowledge and often
resulting in the birth of new schemas

14. Equilibrium
• Finally, you have the idea of equilibrium, which Piaget believed to be the
child’s attempt to strike a balance between the two mechanisms:
assimilation and accommodation.
• Piaget believed it to be the mechanism children use in order to move from
one stage of thought to the other.
• The process involves the child applying previous knowledge (assimilation)
and changing the behavior if the knowledge is not aligned with the new
knowledge (accommodation).

15. Educational Implications Of Piaget theory
• Piaget (1952) did not explicitly relate his theory to education, although
later researchers have explained how features of Piaget's theory can be
applied to teaching and learning.
• APPLYING JEAN PIAGET IN THE CLASSROOM:
▫ Use props and other aids to support learning. Since development is an
active experience, you want to engage the person learning.
▫ Make instructions relatively short, using actions as well as words.
▫ Be sensitive to the possibility that students may have different meanings
for the same word or different words for the same meaning. Students
may also expect everyone to understand words they have invented.
▫ Give children a great deal of hands-on practice with the skills that serve
as building blocks for more complex skills like reading comprehension.
▫ Provide a wide range of experiences in order to build a foundation for
concept learning and language

16. The main teaching implications drawn from Piaget theory as follows:
1. A focus on the process of children’s thinking, not just its products. In
addition to checking the correctness of children’s answers, teachers must
understand the processes children use to get to the answer.
2. Recognition of the crucial role of children’s self-initiated, active
involvement in learning activities. In a Piagetian classroom the
presentation of ready-made knowledge is deemphasized, and children are
encouraged to discover for themselves through spontaneous interaction
with the environment.
3. Acceptance of individual differences in developmental progress. Piaget’s
theory assumes that all children go through the same developmental
sequence but that they do so at different rates. Therefore, teachers must
make a special effort to arrange classroom activities for individuals and
small groups of children rather than for the total class group

17. Critics of Piaget theory
• Piaget’s theory is criticized for its emphasis of biological maturation. The
theory sees development as a genetic and biological process and therefore
leaves out the impact of culture or social setting.
• While Piaget didn’t think these stages occur at a specific age, he
nonetheless suggested you move from one stage to another. According to
scientist who find this problematic are Lev Vygotsky and Bruner, who
believed development to be a fully continuous process. Instead of moving
from a single stage to another, they feel cognitive development is never
ending process that doesn’t transform in its essence.
• Vygotsky, also disagreed with Piaget’s notion that language is secondary to
action. Piaget believed thoughts always precede language, while Vygotsky
thought the origin of human reasoning to be rooted in our ability to
communicate rather than interacting with the material world.