Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget
Western Philosophy
20th-century philosophy
Jean Piaget.jpg
Full name Jean Piaget
Birth August 9, 1896
Death September 16, 1980
School/tradition Constructivism
Notable ideas Constructivist epistemology, Theory of cognitive development

Jean Piaget [ʒɑ̃ pjaʒɛ] (August 9, 1896 – September 16, 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental theorist, well known for his work studying children, his theory of cognitive development and for his epistemological view called "genetic epistemology."

The very great importance he attached to the education of children made him declare in 1934 in his role as Director of the International Bureau of Education that ‘only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or gradual’[1].

In 1955 he created the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva and directed it until 1980. According to Ernst von Glasersfeld, Jean Piaget is "the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing."[2]

Contents

Biography

Piaget was born in 1896 in Neuchâtel in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. His father, Arthur Piaget, was a professor of medieval literature at the University of Neuchâtel. Piaget was a precocious child who developed an interest in biology and the natural world, particularly molluscs, and even published a number of papers before he graduated from high school. In fact, his long career of scientific research began when he was just eleven, with the 1907 publication of a short paper on the albino sparrow. Over the course of his career, Piaget wrote more than sixty books and several hundred articles. Piaget received a Ph.D. in natural science from the University of Neuchâtel, and also studied briefly at the University of Zürich. During this time, he published two philosophical papers which showed the direction of his thinking at the time, but which he later dismissed as adolescent work. His interest in psychoanalysis, a strain of psychological thought burgeoning at that time, can also be dated to this period. He then moved from Switzerland to Paris, France, where he taught at the Grange-Aux-Belles street school for boys run by Alfred Binet, the developer of the Binet intelligence test. It was while he was helping to mark some instances of these intelligence tests that Piaget noticed that young children consistently gave wrong answers to certain questions. Piaget did not focus so much on the fact of the children's answers being wrong, but that young children kept making the same pattern of mistakes that older children and adults did not. This led him to the theory that young children's thought or cognitive processes are inherently different from those of adults. (Ultimately, he was to propose a global theory of developmental stages stating that individuals exhibit certain distinctive common patterns of cognition in each period in their development.) In 1921, Piaget returned to Switzerland as director of the Rousseau Institute in Geneva.

In 1923, he married Valentine Châtenay, one of his students; together, the couple had three children, whom Piaget studied from infancy. In 1929, Jean Piaget accepted the post of Director of the International Bureau of Education and remained the head of this international organization until 1968. Every year, he drafted his “Director's Speeches” for the IBE Council and for the International Conference on Public Education in which he explicitly expressed his educational credo.

The stages of cognitive development

Also the 'Four levels of development', these are (1) infancy, (2) preschool, (3) childhood, and (4) adolescence. Each stage is characterized by a general cognitive structure that affects all of the child's thinking (a structuralist view influenced by philosopher Immanuel Kant). Each stage represents the child's understanding of reality during that period, and each but the last is an inadequate approximation of reality. Development from one stage to the next is thus caused by the accumulation of errors in the child's understanding of the environment; this accumulation eventually causes such a degree of cognitive disequilibrium that thought structures require reorganizing.

The four development stages are described in Piaget's theory as:

  1. Sensorimotor stage: from birth to age 2. Children experience the world through movement and senses (use five senses to explore the world). During the sensorimotor stage children are extremely egocentric, meaning they cannot perceive the world from others viewpoints and explore using senses. The sensorimotor stage is divided into six substages: "(1) simple reflexes; (2) first habits and primary circular reactions; (3) secondary circular reactions; (4) coordination of secondary circular reactions; (5) tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity; and (6) internalization of schemes." [3]

    Simple reflexes is from birth to 1 month old. At this time infants use reflexes such as rooting and sucking.

    First habits and primary circular reactions is from 1 month to 4 months old. During this time infants learn to coordinate sensation and two types of scheme (habit and circular reactions). A primary circular reaction is when the infant tries to reproduce an event that happened by accident (ex: sucking thumb).

    The third stage, secondary circular reactions, occurs when the infant is 4 to 8 months old. At this time they become aware of things beyond their own body; they are more object oriented. At this time they might accidentally shake a rattle and continue to do it for sake of satisfaction.

    Coordination of secondary circular reactions is from 8 months to 12 months old. During this stage they can do things intentionally. They can now combine and recombine schemes and try to reach a goal (ex: use a stick to reach something). They also understand object permanence during this stage. That is, they understand that objects continue to exist even when they can't see them.

    The fifth stage occurs from 12 months old to 18 months old. During this stage infants explore new possibilities of objects; they try different things to get different results.

    During the last stage they are 18 to 24 months old. During this stage they shift to symbolic thinking. During the sensorimotor stage children are extremely egocentric, meaning they cannot perceive the world from others viewpoints and explore using senses. [4]
  2. Preoperational stage: from ages 2 to 7 (magical thinking predominates. Acquisition of motor skills) Egocentricism begins strongly and then weakens. Children cannot conserve or use logical thinking.
  3. Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 11 (children begin to think logically but are very concrete in their thinking) Children can now conserve and think logically but only with practical aids. They are no longer egocentric.
  4. Formal operational stage: after age 11 (development of abstract reasoning). Children develop abstract thought and can easily conserve and think logically in their mind.

The developmental process

Piaget provided no concise description of the development process as a whole. Broadly speaking it consisted of a cycle:

This process is not wholly gradual, however. Once a new level of organization, knowledge and insight proves to be effective, it will quickly be generalized to other areas. As a result, transitions between stages tend to be rapid and radical, and the bulk of the time spent in a new stage consists of refining this new cognitive level. When the knowledge that has been gained at one stage of study and experience leads rapidly and radically to a new higher stage of insight, a "gestalt" is said to have occurred.

It is because this process takes this dialectical form, in which each new stage is created through the further differentiation, integration, and synthesis of new structures out of the old, that the sequence of cognitive stages are logically necessary rather than simply empirically correct. Each new stage emerges only because the child can take for granted the achievements of its predecessors, and yet there are still more sophisticated forms of knowledge and action that are capable of being developed.

Because it covers both how we gain knowledge about objects and our reflections on our own actions, Piaget's model of development explains a number of features of human knowledge that had never previously been accounted for. For example, by showing how children progressively enrich their understanding of things by acting on and reflecting on the effects of their own previous knowledge, they are able to organize their knowledge in increasingly complex structures. Thus, once a young child can consistently and accurately recognize different kinds of animals, he or she then acquires the ability to organize the different kinds into higher groupings such as ‘birds’, ‘fish’, and so on. This is significant because they are now able to know things about a new animal simply on the basis of the fact that it is a bird – for example, that it will lay eggs.

At the same time, by reflecting on their own actions, the child develops an increasingly sophisticated awareness of the ‘rules’ that govern in various ways. For example, it is by this route that Piaget explains this child's growing awareness of notions such as ‘right’, ‘valid’, ‘necessary’, ‘proper’, and so on. In other words, it is through the process of objectification, reflection and abstraction that the child constructs the principles on which action is not only effective or correct but also justified.

One of Piaget's most famous studies focused purely on the discriminative abilities of children between the ages of two and a half years old, and four and a half years old. He began the study by taking children of different ages and placing two lines of M&M's, one with the M&M's in a line spread further apart, and one with the same number of M&M's in a line placed more closely together. He found that, “Children between 2 years, 6 months old and 3 years, 2 months old correctly discriminate the relative number of objects in two rows; between 3 years, 2 months and 4 years, 6 months they indicate a longer row with fewer objects to have "more"; after 4 years, 6 months they again discriminate correctly” (Cognitive Capacity of Very Young Children, p. 141). Initially younger children were not studied, because if at four years old a child couldn’t conserve quantity, how could a child that is younger? The results show however that children that are younger than three years and two months have quantity conservation, but as they get older they lose this quality, and don’t recover it until four and a half years old. This attribute may be lost due to a temporary inability to solve because of an overdependence on perceptual strategies, which correlates more candy with a longer line of candy, or due to the inability for a four year old to reverse situations.

By the end of this experiment several results were found. First, younger children have a discriminative ability that shows the logical capacity for cognitive operations exists earlier than acknowledged. This study also reveals that young children can be equipped with certain qualities for cognitive operations, depending on how logical the structure of the task is. Research also shows that children develop explicit understanding at age 5 and as a result, the child will count the M&M's to decide which has more. Finally the study found that overall quantity conservation is not a basic characteristic of man's native inheritance.

Challenges

Piaget's theory, however vital in understanding child psychology, did not go without scrutiny. A main figure in the ratification of Piaget's ideas was the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky stressed the importance of a child's cultural background as an effect to the stages of development. Because different cultures stress different social interactions, this challenged Piaget's theory that the hierarchy of learning development had to develop in succession. Vygotsky introduced the term zone of proximal development as an over all task a child would have to develop that would be too difficult to develop alone.

Genetic epistemology

According to Jean Piaget, genetic epistemology "attempts to explain knowledge, and in particular scientific knowledge, on the basis of its history, its sociogenesis, and especially the psychological origins of the notions and operations upon which it is based"[5]. Piaget believed he could test epistemological questions by studying the development of thought and action in children. As a result Piaget created a field known as genetic epistemology with its own methods and problems. He defined this field as the study of child development as a means of answering epistemological questions. His exploration of genetic epistemology is divided into four different stages: (1) the sociological model of development, (2) the biological model of intellectual development, (3) the elaboration of the logical model of intellectual development, and (4) the study of figurative thought.

Stage 1: The Sociological Model of Development

•Piaget first developed this stage in the 1920’s. He investigated the hidden side of children’s minds. Piaget proposed that children moved from a position of egocentrism to sociocentrism. For this explanation he combined the use of psychological and clinical methods to create what he called a semiclinical interview. He began the interview by asking children standardized questions and depending on how they answered, he would ask them a series of nonstandard questions. Piaget was looking for what he called “spontaneous conviction” so he often asked questions the children neither expected nor anticipated. In his studies, he noticed there was a gradual progression from intuitive to scientific and socially acceptable responses. Piaget theorized children did this because of the social interaction and the challenge to younger children’s ideas by the ideas of those children who were more advanced.

Stage 2: The Biological Model of Intellectual Development

•In this state, Piaget described intelligence as having two closely interrelated parts. The first part, which is from the first stage, was the content of children’s thinking. The second part was the process of intellectual activity. He believed this process of thinking could be regarded as an extension of the biological process of adaptation. Adaptation has two pieces: assimilation and accommodation. To test his theory, Piaget observed the habits in his own children. He argued infants were engaging in an act of assimilation when they sucked on everything in their reach. He claimed infants transform all objects into an object to be sucked. The children were assimilating the objects to conform to their own mental structures. Piaget then made the assumption whenever one transforms the world to meet individual needs or conceptions; one is, in a way, assimilating it. Piaget also observed his children not only assimilation stimuli to fit their needs, but also modifying some of their mental structures to meet the demands of the environment. This is the second division of adaption known as accommodation. To start out, the infants only engaged in primarily reflex actions such as sucking, but not long after, they would pick up actual objects and put them in their mouths. When they do this, they modify their reflex response to accommodate the external objects into reflex actions. Because the two are often in conflict, they provide the power for intellectual development. There is a constant need to balance the two out triggering the intellectual growth.

Stage 3: The Elaboration of the Logical Model of Intellectual Development

•In the model Piaget developed in stage three, he argued the idea that intelligence develops in a series of stages that are related to age and are progressive because one stage must be accomplished before the next can occur. For each stage of development the child forms a view of reality for that age period. At the next stage, the child must keep up with earlier level of mental abilities to reconstruct concepts. Piaget concluded intellectual development as an upward expanding spiral in which children must constantly reconstruct the ideas formed at earlier levels with new, higher order concepts acquired at the next level.

Stage 4: The Study of Figurative thought

•Piaget studied areas of intelligence like perception and memory that aren’t entirely logical. Logical concepts are described as being completely reversible because they can always get back to the starting point. The perceptual concepts Piaget studied could not be manipulated. To describe the figurative process, Piaget uses pictures as examples. Pictures can’t be separated because contours cannot be separated from the forms they outline. Memory is the same way. It is never completely reversible. During this last period of work, Piaget and his colleague Inhelder also published books on perception, memory, and other figurative processes such as learning during this last period. [5] [6] <ref<Valsiner, Jaan. Society, Jan/Feb2005, Vol. 42 Issue 2, p57-61, 5p/ref>

Recently, Jonathan Tsou argued that Piaget's later epistemological works could serve as a remedy for the flaws in Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions.[7] However, this criticism missed some of the history between them, as well as the existence of a "lost manuscript" by Kuhn (currently held at the University of Chicago) that was to address his critics' concerns.[8] It is noted, however, that the implications of his later work remain largely unexamined.

Influence

Despite ceasing to be a fashionable psychologist, the magnitude of Piaget's continuing influence can be measured by the global scale and activity of the Jean Piaget Society, which holds annual conferences and attracts very large numbers of participants. His theory of cognitive development has proved influential in many different areas:

Developmental psychology

Piaget is without doubt one of the most influential developmental psychologists, influencing not only the work of Lev Vygotsky and of Lawrence Kohlberg but whole generations of eminent academics. Although subjecting his ideas to massive scrutiny led to innumerable improvements and qualifications of his original model and the emergence of a plethora of neo-Piagetian and post-Piagetian variants, Piaget's original model has proved to be remarkably robust (Lourenço and Machado 1996).

Education and development of morality

During the 1970s and 1980s, Piaget's works also inspired the transformation of European and American education, including both theory and practice, leading to a more ‘child-centred’ approach. In Conversations with Jean Piaget, he says: "Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society . . . but for me and no one else, education means making creators. . . . You have to make inventors, innovators—not conformists" (Bringuier, 1980, p.132).

Mainly, Piaget influenced two parts of education: early education and moral education.

In early education, teachers use his theory of cognitive development as a tool in the classroom. According to Piaget, children developed best in a classroom with interaction. Using this idea, teachers in elementary schools or pre-school can make use of classroom time better using peer interaction.

In moral education, Piaget believed in two basic principles. The first one is the fact that children develop moral ideas in stages. The other is that children make their idea of the world: "The child is someone who constructs his own moral world view, who forms ideas about right and wrong, and fair and unfair, that are not the direct product of adult teaching and that are often maintained in the face of adult wishes to the contrary" (Gallagher, 1978, p.26). The idea is that children observe the world, and then decide what is morally correct. So in today's education, we have started to bring moral education into education, such as talking about cheating and what is morally correct in today's society, dealing with crime and morals in politics.

Piaget's theory of morality was radical in 1932 when his book, The Moral Judgment of the Child, was published, due to his use of philosophical criteria to define morality (as universalizable, generalizable, and obligatory), and his rejection of equating cultural norms and moral norms. Piaget, drawing on Kantian theory, proposed that morality developed out of peer interaction, and that it was autonomous from authority mandates. Peers, not parents, were a key source of moral concepts, such as equality, reciprocity, and justice.

In his account of the development of moral judgment Piaget (1932) introduced a fundamental distinction between different types of social relationship, or more specifically he attributed different types of psychosocial processes to different forms of social relationship. Where there is constraint because one participant holds more power than the other the relationship is asymmetrical, and, importantly, the knowledge that can be acquired by the dominated participant takes on a fixed and inflexible form. Piaget refers to this process as one of social transmission, and he refers to the way in which the elders of a tribe initiate younger members into the patterns of beliefs and practices of the group. Similarly where adults exercise a dominating influence over the growing child, it is through social transmission that children can acquire knowledge. By contrast, in cooperative relations, power is more evenly distributed between participants so that a more symmetrical relationship emerges. Under these conditions authentic forms of intellectual exchange become possible, since each partner has the freedom to project his or her own thoughts, consider the positions of others, and defend his or her own point of view. In such circumstances, where children’s thinking is not limited by a dominant influence, the conditions exist for the emergence of constructive solutions to problems, or what Piaget refers to as the reconstruction of knowledge rather than social transmission. Here the knowledge that emerges is open, flexible and regulated by the logic of argument rather than being determined by an external authority. In short, cooperative relations provide the arena for the emergence of operations, which for Piaget requires the absence of any constraining influence, and is most often illustrated by the relations that form between peers (for more on the importance of this distinction see Duveen & Psaltis, in press; Psaltis & Duveen, 2006,2007).

Historical studies of thought and cognition

Historical changes of thought have been modeled in Piagetian terms. Broadly speaking these models have mapped changes in morality, intellectual life and cognitive levels against historical changes (typically in the complexity of social systems).

Notable examples include:

Evolution

Neo-Piagetian stages have been applied to the maximum stage attained by various animals. For example spiders attain the circular sensory motor stage, coordinating actions and perceptions. Pigeons attain the sensory motor stage, forming concepts.

The origins of human intelligence have also been studied in Piagetian terms. Wynn (1979, 1981) analysed Acheulian and Oldowan tools in terms of the insight into spatial relationships required to create each kind. On a more general level, Robinson's Birth of Reason (2005) suggests a large-scale model for the emergence of a Piagetian intelligence.

Primatology

Piaget's models of cognition have also been applied outside the human sphere, and some primatologists assess the development and abilities of primates in terms of Piaget's model.[15]

Philosophy

Some have taken account of Piaget's work. For example, the philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas has incorporated Piaget into his work, most notably in The Theory of Communicative Action. The philosopher Thomas Kuhn credited Piaget's work in helping him understand the transition between modes of thought which characterized his theory of paradigm shifts. Shortly before his death (October 1975), Piaget was involved in a debate about the relationships between innate and acquired features of language, at the Centre Royaumont pour une Science de l'Homme, where he discussed his point of view with the linguist Noam Chomsky as well as Hilary Putnam and Stephen Toulmin.

Artificial intelligence

Piaget also had a considerable effect in the field of computer science and artificial intelligence. Seymour Papert used Piaget's work while developing the Logo programming language. Alan Kay used Piaget's theories as the basis for the Dynabook programming system concept, which was first discussed within the confines of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, or Xerox PARC. These discussions led to the development of the Alto prototype, which explored for the first time all the elements of the graphical user interface (GUI), and influenced the creation of user interfaces in the 1980s and beyond.

Major works and achievements

Major works

Other works

Appointments

Piagetian and post-Piagetian stage theories

Quotations

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ (in An Exposition of Constructivism: Why Some Like it Radical, 1990)
  3. ↑ Santrock, John W.. Children. 9. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
  4. ↑ Santrock, John W.. Children. 9. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
  5. ↑ Guthrie, James W. "Piaget, Jean (1896-1980)." Encyclopedia of Education. 2nd ed. Vol. 5. New York, NY: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003. 1894-898.
  6. ↑ "Piaget, Jean." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 3 Nov. 2008 <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9059885>.
  7. ↑ Tsou, J. (2006). Genetic Epistemology and Piaget's Philosophy of Science: Piaget vs. Kuhn on Scientific Progress. Theory & Psychology, 16(2), 203-224.
  8. ↑ Burman, J. T. (2007). Piaget No `Remedy' for Kuhn, But the Two Should be Read Together: Comment on Tsou's `Piaget vs. Kuhn on Scientific Progress'. Theory & Psychology, 17(5), 721-732.
  9. ↑ Barnes, Michael Horace (2000). Stages of thought: the co-evolution of religious thought and science. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513389-7. 
  10. ↑ Damerow, P. (1998). "Prehistory And Cognitive Development". Piaget, Evolution, and Development. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&id=haCAIME9vnEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA247&dq=Prehistory+and+cognitive+development&ots=w85O84G02I&sig=xjIAua5wWEkuq7J1AQ-iFSAJXZc. Retrieved on 2008-03-24. 
  11. ↑ Kieran Egan (1997). The educated mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-19036-6. 
  12. ↑ Gablik, Suzi (1977). Progress in art. New York: Rizzoli. ISBN 0847800822.. 
  13. ↑ LePan, Don (1989). The cognitive revolution in Western culture. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-45796-X. 
  14. ↑ Radding, Charles (1985). A world made by men: cognition and society, 400-1200. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-1664-7. 
  15. ↑ McKinney, Michael L.; Parker, Sue Taylor (1999). Origins of intelligence: the evolution of cognitive development in monkeys, apes, and humans. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6012-1. 
  16. ↑ La Construction du Réel Chez l'Enfant by Jean Piaget (1937)
  17. ↑ http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jean_piaget.html

References

External links

Genetic Epistemology by Jean Piaget (1968)

Human development: biological - psychological - Overview table
Pre- and perinatal
Prenatal development • Pre- and perinatal psychology
Infancy
Infant and child development (stages) • Infancy
Childhood
Child development (stages)
Toddlerhood • Preadolescence
Adolescence
Youth development • Puberty
Adulthood
Early adulthood • Middle adulthood • Late adulthood • Ageing & Senescence
Theorists-theories
John Bowlby-attachment • Urie Bronfenbrenner-ecological systems • Erik Erikson-psychosocial • Sigmund Freud-psychosexual • Lawrence Kohlberg-moral • Jean Piaget-cognitive • Lev Vygotsky-cultural-historical
Attachment theory
Theory
Affectional bond • Attachment in adults • Attachment in children • Attachment disorder • Attachment measures • Attachment parenting • Attachment theory • Human bonding • Maternal deprivation • Object relations theory • Reactive attachment disorder
Notable Theorists
Mary Ainsworth • John Bowlby • Erik Erikson • Sigmund Freud • Harry Harlow • Jerome Kagan • Melanie Klein • Konrad Lorenz • Tinbergen • Rene Spitz
Controversy
Attachment therapy • Candace Newmaker
Clinical Applications
Attachment-based therapy (children) • Attachment-based psychotherapy
Psychology
History · Portal · Psychologist
Research
Affective  · Biological · Clinical · Cognitive · Cognitive neuroscience · Comparative · Developmental · Emotion · Evolutionary · Experimental · Mathematical · Neuropsychology · Personality · Physiological · Positive · Psycholinguistics · Psychopathology · Psychophysics · Psychophysiology · Qualitative research · Quantitative research · Social
 Psi
Applied
Assessment · Clinical · Counseling · Educational · Forensic · Health · Industrial/organizational · Legal · Media · Military · Occupational health · Psychometrics · Relationship counseling · School · Sport · Systems
Orientations
Analytical · Behaviorism · Cognitive behavioral therapy · Cognitivism · Descriptive · Ecological Systems Theory · Existential therapy · Family therapy · Feminist therapy · Gestalt therapy · Humanistic · Narrative therapy · Psychoanalysis · Psychodynamic psychotherapy · Rational emotive behavior therapy · Transpersonal
Eminent
psychologists
B. F. Skinner · Jean Piaget · Sigmund Freud · Albert Bandura · Leon Festinger · Carl Rogers · Stanley Schachter · Neal E. Miller · Edward Thorndike · Abraham Maslow · Gordon Allport · Erik Erikson · Hans Eysenck · William James · David McClelland · Raymond Cattell · John B. Watson · Kurt Lewin · Donald O. Hebb · George A. Miller · Clark L. Hull · Jerome Kagan · Carl Jung · Ivan Pavlov
Lists
Counseling topics · Important publications in psychology · Psychological research methods · Psychological schools · Psychologists · Psychology disciplines · Psychology organizations · Psychology topics · Psychotherapies · Timeline of psychology
Wiktionary definition · Wikisource · Wikimedia Commons · Wikiquote · Wikinews · Wikibooks
Persondata
NAME Piaget, Jean
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Swiss philosopher; developmental psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuchâtel, Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 1980
PLACE OF DEATH Switzerland

lauren s