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Piaget's Stages Of Child Development-B.Ed Notes

by Ekramul Hoque 11 months ago

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget’s is Swiss-born psychologist who was the first to make a systematic study of the acquisition of understanding in children.
He was Zoologist by profession, He was started working with Alfred Binet on Intelligence test and because of his interest, he also
studied child development with a focus on cognitive development. Piaget is also known as radical Constructivist

Piaget has explained and discussed the different stages of cognitive development. He believed that cognitive development takes place
through four fundamental stages. All children have to pass through these stages to reach the next higher level of cognitive thinking.

Jean Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development are divided into four Major stages are:

1. Sensory Motor Stage: (0—2 Years)

2. Preoperational stage: (2—7 Years)
3. Concrete Operational Stage: (7—11 Years)
4. Formal Operational Stage: (11 Years —Adulthood)

A diagrammatically representation of Piaget’s four stage of cognitive Development Theory

The Sensory Motor Stage

Ages: Birth to 2 years

The main characteristic of this stage of development are:

It involves the senses and motor activities.

Children do reflexive activities such as sucking and grasping.
The child observes and imitates his or her surroundings. Thought and memory also start to develop systematically.
Children learn to recognise objects and understand that objects have their separate permanent existence
As infants grow older, they learn that even if an object is not in front of them, it still exists. Piaget called it to object permanence.
It is also known as ‘out of sight, out of mind

Children also learn to work in a particular direction. Catching a particular thing which they are asked to catch, playing with puzzles and
so on are common activities they learn to do. They move from simple to complex logical action and thinking. This goal-directed

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thinking helps them to progress to a higher level scheme to achieve a goal.

The Sensory Motor Stage is further divided into six sub-stages

There are six sub-stages of the first stage given by Piaget:

1. Stages of Reflex Activities (0—1 month): Inborn reflexes (sucking and looking) help the child to understand the
surrounding.
2. Primary Circular Reactions (1—4 months): Sensations and schemas get coordinated in this stage. Whatever children do in
this stage, they tend to do it repeatedly as they derive pleasure from doing so. For example, if a child starts sucking thumb, he or
she will continue with this action because it gives the child a soothing feeling.
3. Secondary Circular Reactions (4—8 months): younger Children become more focussed on doing actions. They repeat their
actions to get a response from the environment.

For example, they put things in their mouth and repeat the same action with many objects.

4.Coordination of Reactions (8—12 months): In this stage, children learn to make a difference between goal and means. They
also develop ways to achieve their goals. They also try to generalise the learning and try to use it from one situation to another.

5. Tertiary Circular Reactions (12—18 months): This is a stage of trial and error. Children explore the things around them. They
make mistakes and also tend to repeat these mistakes. This stage is very important as children learn to be confident in this particular
stage. They repeat many actions because they want attention from their caregiver.

6. Early Representational Thought (18—24 months): Children start focusing more on mental activities rather than physical
actions and they start thinking about objects. At this age, they show the ability to recognise object permanence. They search for the toy
even if it is not in their sight.

The Preoperational stage

Ages: 2 to 7 Years

The Main Characterstics of the stage involves:

Children begin to process their thoughts at this stage although in a manner that is far less efficient than the logical thought-
processing of adults.
Their vocabulary expands and develops during this time because they change their working style and habits and start behaving
like little adults
This stage is known as a pre-operational stage of cognitive development. It is called ‘pre’ because, in this stage, children cannot
perform a logical operation.
This stage is categorised in two parts. pre-conceptual stage (2-4) and intuitive stage (4-7).
Their vocabulary expands and develops during this time because they change their working style and habits and start behaving
like little adults.

Some of the othe important characterstics are:

Ego-centrism is one of the main characteristics of pre-operational. Children focus on their perspective and feel that they are correct.
They also believe that others also share the same perspective because they think that it is the only perspective which exists. But
gradually they understand that there are many perspectives and Piaget called it ‘decentering: They start believing that they are not at
the centre of everything.

Animism is also a characteristic of the pre-operational stage. It is a characteristic by which children believe that all objects or things
are living and has some consciousness. An example of this is that children often believe that a table also feels pain if it is hit or kicked; a
car does not get started because it is tired and so on. A child believes that everyone is like him or her.

Children also develop the ability to use symbols, language, pictures, signs or gestures to represent actions or objects mentally. Piaget
called this semiotic function or symbolism. Along with this, their ideas of right and wrong are governed by the people around them.

They generally focus on one aspect at a time and cannot think of any Other possible situation. This is called moral realism. This
moral realism makes them believe and respect rules and authority. children are not equipped for certain functions at this stage.

For example, they cannot do reversible thinking. While children can do simple logical operations, they face difficulty in understanding
reverse counting, extended family relation tree and so on. Along with reversibility, they also face difficulty in the conservation of
various concepts such as height and width. Conservation is a principle according to which some characteristics of an object remain the
same despite the change in its appearance.

A famous example of conservation is that regarding the conservation of volume, where children said the glass with more height has
more water than the other glass, although the volume of water was same in both the glasses. Such examples show that children can
think only in one direction and face difficulty in the conservation of various concepts

The Concrete Operational Stage

Ages: 7 to 11 years

The main characteristic of Concerete Operational stage are:

Children can do operations on concrete objects and situations. However, they will find it hard to solve abstract problems and
have difficulty with words like ‘assume’ that relate to mental conjecture.

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They can do logical thinking if they are allowed to manipulate objects. By comparison, however, it is seen that thoughts can be
manipulated and the presence of the object is not necessary for the thought to take place in the formal operations stage.
They start thinking more like mature persons and rarely believe in animism and ego-centrism.

However, there may be a few exceptions where some children continue to hold on to these fixations as do some people who carry them
well into their adulthood. During the concrete operational stage, children gradually develop the ability to conserve or learn that objects
are not always the way that they appear to be. They start taking many perspectives about concepts. They begin to develop the ability to
Understand identity, compensation and reversibility.

Once children have learned to conserve, they also learn that objects remain the same even after changes in colours, etc.

For example, they learn that if they spread out the pencils on the floor, there are still as many as there were before, even though they
look different!

Children learn many things in this stage concerning conservation such as classification, grouping objects into categories, seriation,
arranging of objects in sequential order according to one aspect, such as size, weight or volume

The Formal Operational Stage

Ages: 11 years to Adulthood

The main Characterstics of formal operational stage are:

This is the final stage of Piaget’s cognitive development in this stage

Children become capable of abstract thinking and can understand the combination and coordination of numbers and variables.
Developed formal operational thought.
Children move ahead from concrete objects to abstract concepts
They develop a logical system of intelligence and try to incorporate all possible solutions while working on a problem.
They also learn to coordinate between different variables.

Children in this stage use the formal operations problem-solving strategy in which an individual begins by identifying all the factors
that might affect a problem and then deduces systematically. Piaget called it hypothetico-deductive reasoning.

This stage permits adolescents to reason beyond a world, of concrete reality to a world of possibilities. Sometimes, they just live in a
world of imaginations with no concern about the real world.

Piaget believes that children overcome egocentrism, but they still tend to believe that everyone shares similar thoughts, feeling and
concerns. They wonder why people do not understand their need and perspective and therefore, they develop adolescent ego-centrism.
They feel that everyone notice them, what they do, how they walk, how they talk and so on.

Piaget said, children, develop an imaginary audience and think they are being observed by people. They spend a long time in front of
the mirror before they go out

Some of the Important concepts of Piaget’s theory

Some of the important factors that influence how children learn and grow:

Schema: Schema describes both the physical and actions involved in understanding and knowing. According to Piaget’s we have a
system for organising information in our mind and we do organise information and experiences in our mental system under different
categories. The Mental System and the categories are known as schema

Adaptation: According to Piaget how we adjust with the environment and called this process adaptation. Adaption has two sub
process these are:

Assimilation: The process of taking new information and fit the new knowledge or information into into the existing schema

Accommodation: It involves changing or altering existing schema for the light of new information. Sometimes we see that existing
schema does not support new information. In such a situation, we generally do two things. Firstly we alter the existing schema and
secondly, we create a new schema. This process is known as Accommodation

Equilibration: The ongoing process through which a child tries to create a balance between Assimilation and Accommodation. This
process is known as equilibration

In Conclusion, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is one of the most important theories of child development. This theory helps
the teacher to know the ability of children and their mental ability with the help of this theory teacher can develop effective curriculum
and Methods of teaching according to their ability and interest. however, Many of the psychologists criticize Piaget’s cognitive
development theory.

Reference:
Kumar, S. (2019). CTET-Central Teacher Eligibility Test: Child Development and Pedagogy. (6th ed., pp. 36-43). Uttar Pradesh,
India: Pearson India Education Service Pvt. Ltd.

Frequently Ask Question (FAQ)

What are the 4 stages of cognitive development?

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