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PIAGET THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

During the past half-century, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget devised a model describing how human go about making sense of their world by gathering and organising information. He began his study of child development which the observation of his own three children from beginning, his investigations resulted in the publication of a large number of papers and books with are often quoted by eminent psychologist and other thinkers on education.

Piaget assert that all children progress through four stages in fixed order. According to his theory, human intellect is constructed over time as the individual experiences progressively more complex interactions with the environment.

Following are the four stages of cognitive development:

Sensorimotor
Pre-operational
Concrete operational
Formal operational

Piaget asserts that all children progress through all the these stages in a fixed order. According to his theory, human intellect is constructed over time as the individual experiences progressively more complex interaction with the environment.

Two Processes

In Piaget’s system, two processes -organisation and adaptation - actively operation during each of the four stages.

Organisation is the process by which different elements within a system, maintain communication e.g we have a tendency to organise basic sensory information ( such as image and other experiences ) in order to form more complex ideas and thoughts.

Adaptation consists of complementary process of assimilation and accommodation. These two processes are basis for cognitive growth.

Assimilation : ‘Assimilation’ implies incorporation of something from the environment. New ideas concepts and stimuli are taken in and incorporation into one’s ‘existing set of schemes ‘ . A scheme is the organised pattern of behaviour which the child develops when he is engaged in any activity for e.g when a child is engaged in sucking, there is a certain pattern of movements of the cheeks, lips and hands. When a child is confronted with a new object by assimilating it. His old scheme doesn’t change a process.

Accommodation : ‘Accommodation’ involves modification or change of some element of an old scheme or learning a new scheme which is more appropriate for the new object. A baby who has already got a scheme of sucking mother’s breast accommodate to the object placed in the mouth-finger, nipple, pencil a toy - depending on its shape, from and the size The baby develops a new scheme or a modified scheme. This is called accommodation.

Thus, a baby assimilated when he understand and perceives the new in light of his old perceptions. A baby forms a new scheme when he modifies or changes his old perception to suit the new. This implies adjusting or accommodating. In this way a baby forms new structures or new schemes and consequently develops cognivity.

SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

There are six steps at this stage.

During the first month of file, the babies are unaware of themselves and the object around them e.g. they do not realise that bottle they suck and the bottle they grasp are one and the same thing. The infant has a lack of what Piaget called object performance.
Between 4 to 8 months, the infant's attempt to control and manipulated the objects which are often conical. They may hear an interesting noise but since they do not know what cause it, they try to make noise reoccur by repeating whatever they were doing when they heard the noise. The baby at this stage also realises that objects exist when they are out of sight.
During 8 to 12 months, thinking gives way to more instrumental activity. The child has achieved object permanent. He has developed some internal image of the object to help him recall it and its location - he displays sense of space and time - but the child is limited intellectually.
12 to 14 months : The child is able to locate the hidden toys. Piaget seen much of the cognitive growth as the formation of increasingly complex hypotheses in the light of the experiences.
18 to 24 months : During this period the child can infer what the moving hand holds holds. This last stage is important because it represents the beginning of the child’s ability to represent normally objects that are no longer physically present. In essence, it is the start of abstract thought.

PRE-OPERATIONAL STAGE

The major advance made during this period is the ability to represent the external world mentally by means of arbitrary symbols that stand for objects. This is the period in which language develops and begins to reflect the child’s cognitive abilities and limitations. The pre-operational period is transitional period. The perspective of the child on the words is expanding rapidly, but the child is still confusing in the use of physical concepts and in evaluations of cause and effect. During this phase, the child makes appropriate generalisations and attribute his feelings to inanimate objects- assuming, e.g. that clouds ‘cry’ to make rain. Alternate perspectives are not imaged by child. This is also known as stage of preoperational thought.

CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

This period is characterised by the emergence of operations such as conservation. Conservation is Piaget’s term for the idea that a property or attribute of an object remains the same despite some transformation that change the appearance of the object. Piaget found that when a child at a child at pre-operational stage is shown two identical balls of clay and then sees one rolled into a saucer he may claim that the saucer contains less clay because it is thinner than ball. The child is taking only one aspect (shape) into account. The child does not know that the saucer has taken shape from the same ball.

At about age 7, the child grasps the solution to conservation problems by development three concepts that characterise concrete operations. This first is compensation - sausage is thinner but that change is balanced by its increase in length. The second is reversibility - if you role the sausage back, you get the same ball you started with, the third is identity - nothing has been added to or subtract from the clay. So, the sausage and the ball contain same amount of clay.

Children at the level of concrete operations are able to consider two aspects of a problem simultaneously. In their social interpretations, they consider not only what they are saying but also listen to others.

FORMAL OPERATIONS STAGE

Here the youth begins and the nature of thought undergoes a change. The compex abstract and mature logic of adult begins to manifest it self during adolescence with the systematic analysis, exploration and solution of problems.

During this period, this period, thinking is purely abstract and hypothetical. Piaget has been most concerned with the capacity to reason with represent problems, concepts of geometry, language, space, time, number,order etc.

During the teenage years young people realise that thoughts are private and that no one else knows what they are thinking. They value friendship and sincerity and spend much time trying. The value friendship and sincerity and spend much time trying to discharge real motives. The adult is more sensitive to the discrepancy between reality and ideals. Teenager has knowledge of the rule and his knowledge is different forms that of small children.

Lastly, during this period ( formal operations ), the crystallization of personality development takes place. Forming of social and ideation at position is closely linked with the acquisition of moral values.

At this stage, the individual has reached his intellectual maturity

Stages	Approximate Age	characteristics -
Sensorimotor	0-2 year	-Begins to make use of imitation,memory & thought -Begins to recognise that object do not cease to exist when they are hidden -Move from reflex actions to goal- directed activity
Pre-operational	2 to 7 year	-Gradually development use of language & ability to think in symbolic form -Able to think operations logically in one direction -Has different seeing another person’s point of view.
Concrete Operational	7 to 11 year	-Able to solve concrete (hands-fashion) problem in logical fashion -understand law of conservation & is able to classify & seriate -Understands reversibility
Formal Operational	11 to adult	-Able to solve abstract problems in thinking -Develops concerns about social social issues, identity

EDUCATION IMPLICATIONS OF PIAGET'S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

The child is learning by himself, the teacher occupies a secondary position. The child discovers things actively. Infants explore the world knowledge should not be imposed.
It is the duty of the school, teachers and parents to provide materials to children to sharpen their interests. Let the child explore and solved the problems. The classrooms in early grades might be arranged in a series of counters stocked with intriguing materials to arouse children’s curiosity. Children should be allowed to manipulate things and see results.
Instruction should be geared to the level of the child. As. the level of the child.As the level of the child change at each stage, the level of instruction or exploratory activities should also change.

The knowledge of cognitive stage of growth of a child does help the teacher in more then one way. There teacher should be sensitive to understand the child’s actions and be guided by his spontaneous interests.
Social interaction have a great education value for Piaget. Positive social actions, therefor, should be encouraged.

He did not make specific education recommendations. He was more interested in understanding children’s thinking. He did express some general ideas about educational philosophy, however, he believed that the main goal of education should be to help children learn how to learn how to learn and that education should “form not furnish” the minds of students even though Piagent did not design programmers of education based on his ideas, many other people have e.g. the National Association for The Education of Young Children has guidelines for developmentally appropriate education that incorporate Piaget findings. Piaget has taught us that we can learn a great deal about how children think by listening carefully, If we understand children’s thinking we will better able to match teaching methods to children abilities.

The student in any class will vary greatly greatly in both their level of cognitive development and their and their academic knowledge . As a teacher, we can determine whether student’s are having trouble because they simply have not learned the basic facts at level. The student are the best sources of information about their own thinking abilities. “Student must be neither bored by work that is simple nor left behind by teaching they cannot understand”.

According to Hunt, disequilibrium must be kep “just right” to encourage growth. Setting up Situations that lead to errors can help create an appropriate level of disequilibrium when student experience some conflict between what they think should happen ( a pieces of wood should sink because it is big and what actually happen ( it floats ) they may rethink the situation and new knowledge may develop.

Also Read : Physical Motor Development Meaning and Characters of Different Stages

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