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Jean Piaget's Influence On Child Development

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Recommended: Critically evaluate piaget's stage theory of cognitive development

Swiss psychologist and developmental theorist Jean Piaget’s constructivist cognitive theory continues to have substantial impact on our understanding of child development. Piaget interpreted child development as an active process, in which children actively interact with and discover phenomenons of the external environment (Shaffer, David R. Social and Personality Development. Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2009, Print, 52). As an active theory, children were labeled as ‘constructivists’ whom construct schemas in order to raise their understanding of the external environment (McLeod, Saul. “Saul McLeod.” Cognitive Theory | Simply Psychology, 1 Jan. 1970). Piaget illustrated how the process of child development consists of four unique stages, …show more content…

Despite the maturation of my schema, it did not necessarily aid in my subsequent learning and understanding of the world. Dwelling in the ‘Preoperational Stage’, my thinking process was dominated by what Piaget called ‘Intuitive Thought’, the tendency to classify objects based on their predominant physical features (Shaffer, 59). With the absence of intellectual and logical reasoning capabilities, I distinguished other policemen purely based on their physical and perceptual image, leading to multiple misinterpretations. I only understood the fallacies within my thinking process during mid-elementary school, and it forced me to digress from intuitive thought and onto a more rational thinking process, characterized by the tendency to focus on multiple aspects of a problem instead of the most salient one and the deviation from appearance directed conclusions (Shaffer, 61). This led to my transference from the ‘Preoperational Stage’ to the ‘Concrete Operational …show more content…

The mechanism of accommodation however could not be initiated involuntary, instead a repudiation has to occur in order to provoke a modification of a schema, Piaget labelled these repudiations as ‘disequilibriums’, implicating the “imbalances or contradictions between one’s thought processes and environmental events” (Shaffer, 53). The disequilibrium I faced during math class in year 5 was quite ineffaceable, perpetuating a accommodation in my mathematical calculation schema that remains unchanged till this

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Piaget’s theory of cognitive development Piaget asserts, children are born with inherited scripts, called schema, these schema are building blocks for cognitive development. As a child grows, he acquires more of these building blocks; moreover, these building blocks become more complex as the child progresses through different stages in development (Huitt, Hummel 2003). Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development are as follows. First, The sensorimotor stage where an infant has rudimentary motor skills, and can eventually

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During assimilation, learners absorb fresh experiences into an already –present mental structure. The other process, accommodation, occurs when a learner’s existing mental structure is reframed to satisfy new experiences (Hein, 1991). Piaget’s theory allows students to experience and explore concepts, then reflect on those experiences through these

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Introduction Developmental psychology makes an attempt to comprehend the types and sources of advancement in children’s cognitive, social, and language acquisition skills. The child development theories put forward by both Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson have had substantial impacts on contemporary play therapy. In this essay, I aim to highlight the contribution of these two theorists in their study of various developmental stages, the differences and similarities in their theories, and their contributions to the theory and practice of play therapy. Jean Piaget

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Question One (4 marks) Identify which of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development Mollie and her friends are in. Describe some key characteristics of children in this stage of cognitive development. Describe two examples from the chapter that illustrate characteristics of this stage of cognitive development. “Developmental psychology studies the way human develop and change over time.”

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The famous Swiss developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget in his theory also become our main source of theory to study about child development and changed the way we think about how children develop. His theory was important because he saw children as an active participants in their own learning. Between the four stages that have been stated in this Piaget theory, it is important to know which are the main stage that playing a crucial role because from there we know which one is shaping the most of development of a child. 1.1 The influence of nature versus nurture on child development.

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Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who regarded cognitive development as a maturational process (Martin, Carlson & Buskist, 2010). Piaget constructed his conclusions through the observation of his own children and children at his Centre of Genetic Epistemology in Geneva. Piaget observed that children depend on an altered type of thinking when compared to the way in which adults think. A child’s thinking is qualitatively different than an adult’s thinking. Through his study, Piaget found that children of a similar age are inclined to behave in a similar manner and make similar mistakes when problem-solving.

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Jean Piaget, a Swiss-born Psychologist, was one who was particularly interested in how children perceive their environment. So engrossed was he by this process, that Piaget used his own children as scientific models in his experiments, in establishing his theory of Cognitive Development. After analyzing the behaviors of his children in their early development, Piaget concluded that there are four main stages of human cognitive maturation:- The Sensorimotor Stage, the Preoperational Stage, the Concrete Operational Stage and the Formal Operational Stage. This essay seeks to outline and examine Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory, and to illustrate how this theory can influence the learning and teacher pedagogy in classes within the Caribbean region.

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My play observation took place at Mill 180 Park in Easthampton, Massachusetts on February 17, 2018 between the hours of 12:15 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. This is an indoor urban hydroponic park where children can enjoy a variety of different games, food, and an open play area to interact with others. While I was at the park, I observed two school-aged Caucasians engaging in unstructured play. The children were siblings, with the boy being ten years old and his sister eight years old. When I first observed these children, they were not interacting with one another.

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Behaviourism: Behaviourism assumes that a learner is fundamentally flaccid, replying to environmental incentives. Behaviour theorists states learning as nothing more than the attainment of new behaviour. In this theory Language acquisition is the result of stimulus-response activities where factors that facilitate are imitation, replication, reward and reinforcement. Cognitivism Cognitivists are related with ‘cognition’ and how it marks individual ‘learning’.

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Piaget developed a stage theory of intellectual development that included four distinct stages: the sensorimotor stage, from birth to age 2; the preoperational stage, from age 2 to about age 7; the concrete operational stage, from age 7 to 11; and the formal operational stage, which begins in adolescence and spans into adulthood. He believed that there were four necessary ingredients for cognitive development which included: “maturation of the nervous system, experiences gained through interaction with physical world, social environment, and child’s active participation in adapting to environment & constructing knowledge from experience.” (Sullivan, 2014, Slide 3) The sensorimotor stage occurs between birth and age 2. Infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and handling objects.

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(refer to Figure 1 in Appendix 1). All of them focus on the development of complex thinking skills. First at all, Piaget’s cognitive development theory is the most essential theory among others (Müller et al., 2009 and Scholnick et al., 1999 as cited in Lourenço, 2002, pp.281-295). This theory aims to explain the mechanisms and processes of children in understanding and discovering the world. There are 3 basic elements in theory of cognitive development which are schema, assimilation and accommodation.

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Brief History Jean Piaget was a Twentieth century Swiss psychologist and was the first psychologist to systematically study the cognitive development of children. Thomas (2005) wrote that early in Piaget’s career he worked with children and his observations and interactions with the students led him to the theory that a young person's cognitive processes are inherently different from those of adults (pp. 188-9). According to Ahmad, et al. (2005) , Piaget showed that when compared to adults, young children think in differently and he then came to the conclusion that cognitive development was an ongoing process which occurred due to maturation and interaction with the environment (p. 72).

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One of the most well known theories in cognitive development is Piaget 's theory. The psychologist Jean Piaget theorized that as children 's minds development, they pass through distinct stages marked by transitions in understanding followed by stability. Piaget describes four different stages of development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operation, and formal operations. Each stage describes the thinking patterns of a child depending on his or her age. In order to compare the thinking processes of a three-year old and a nine-year old using Piaget 's theory, you must compare two sequential stages of cognitive development: preoperational and concrete operations.

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Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development Cognition is a process where different aspects of the mind are working together that lead to knowledge. Piaget’s cognitive development theory is based on stages that children go through as they grow that lead them to actively learn new information. Cognitive change occurs with schemes that children and adults go through to make sense of what is happening around them. The change that occurs is activity based when the child is young and later in life correlates to mental thinking. Piaget’s stages of cognitive development start from birth to adulthood

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The reason for this is that ‘wrong’ is like pain, alerting the individual to the need for intervention or correction. Like pain, being ‘wrong’ indicates a necessity for an appropriate ‘cure’. Learning is the continuum of two poles, which Piaget (18) and other child experts have pointed out, is often related to a transition from concrete to abstract thinking and proceeds through trial - and - error method, rather than through a child instantly knowing what is ‘right’. The child, who developmentally, has not learned how to look at a problem from various viewpoints, is unlikely to have ready useful referents internalised in his mental schema to make him ready for instant ‘right’ comprehension; a comprehension based very often on teacher expectations,

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