PIAGET'S THEORY

Piaget's Theory

Piaget's Theory

Introduction

No other theory in educational and cognitive psychology is as popular as Piaget's theory of cognitive development. As children, we all grow to understand this world only after a certain stage. For instance, a two or three year old child does not have enough intelligence to understand this world. A child can only relate to the world through his parents and care takers. Cognitive and intelligence development are a long process that occurs gradually in children (Amann-Gainotti and Ducret, 1992). During child development phase, a child's mind, Intelligence Quotient (IQ), maturity, Emotional Intelligence (EI) and other faculties of the personality develop steadily over a period of years. So Jean Piaget's theory, in essence, provides a deep and thorough study of the cognitive development of human intelligence.

Jean Piaget (9 August 1896 - 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist whose domain of research and study included understanding cognitive development of human intelligence in children. Piaget's views and theories are regarded to be one of the greatest works by a psychologist, when it comes to understanding child development. Piaget suggested that children, irrespective of geographical restrictions, adapt to an unfamiliar environment and learn new things, in a same pattern. As per Piaget's theory of cognitive development stages, there are four major stages through which all children go through in their development to adulthood.

As far as my opinion is concerned, when I was studying the behavior of 6 years old child, he was perfectly falling in the preoperational stage as defined by Piaget. The details of the observation are as follows, but before the discussion of the observation, it is important to mention the concept of Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development.

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

As per Piaget's view, a child can only develop his cognitive abilities to highest levels, if he ...