ASSIGNMENT 1 POST 4- Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 – September 16, 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental psychologist, well known for his work studying children and his theory of cognitive development.

Piaget is best known for reorganising cognitive development theory into a series of stages. Each stage is characterised by a general cognitive structure that effects all of the child's thinking. Each stage represents the child's understanding of reality during that period. 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 reorganising.

The four development stages are described in Piaget's theory as
Sensorimotor stage: from birth to age 2 years (children experience the world through movement and senses and learn object permanence)
Preoperational stage: from ages 2 to 7 (acquisition of motor skills)
Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 11 (children begin to think logically about concrete events)
Formal operational stage: after age 11 (development of abstract reasoning).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget

Piaget believed there is a biological inevitability to how children develop. Piaget's theory has had a major impact on educators and schooling because of the insights he has provided:

• children think differently (in qualitative terms) at various stages of their development. Their movement through these stages depends on the quality of their experiences.
• learning requires active involvement, physically and mentally, between the child and the environment
• children build their own cognitive structures.
• children think differently to adults and their thinking levels vary at different stages.

- Marsh, Colin Becoming a Teacher - Knowledge, Skills and Issues 3rd edition pp. 17-18

CRITICAL REFLECTION
Piaget's theory was one of the first theories we studied in first year, and I think that is for good reason. I believe that the points he makes are very important. Am I teaching a student at a level above the stage they are operating at? I think it is important that as a teacher we promote ultimate learning potential for our students, and this will only happen if we present learning material when developmentally and cognitively they are ready to learn it.
As a teacher, it will become important for me to observe and listen carefully to what my students say and do in order to analyse how they think. This can be a difficult process, but it is essential in order to further develop a student's thinking. I need to be aware of thr pact of learning, as well as matching strategies to abilities. Piaget's theory has help me realise that all children develop at different speeds, and there is no one universal or uniform way to teach a lesson - I need to satisfy all the different learnign abilities in my classroom.