JEAN PIAGET

PIAGET'S THEORY ON CONSTUCTIVISM
Jean Piaget 1896-1980

“The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers”

Over a period of six decades, influenced by the disciplines of both biology and philosophy, Jean Piaget conducted a program of naturalistic research that has profoundly affected our understanding of child development. Up until this time children were regarded as little adults.
Piaget asked 'how does knowledge grow?'

“It is with children that we have the best chance of studying the development of logical knowledge, mathematical knowledge, physical knowledge, and so forth.”

Through observation of his own children, Piaget postulated that the growth of knowledge is a progressive construction of logically embedded structures superseding one another. Piaget advocated a process of inclusion of lower less powerful logical means into higher and more powerful ones up to adulthood. Therefore, children's logic and modes of thinking are initially entirely different from those of adults. Learning can occur in Piagetian terms only when the inner structures mature. Then children can assimilate what the environment presents to them.It is said today only 35% of the nation actually grow into the last stage of higher order thinking!

“Every acquisition of accommodation becomes material for assimilation, but assimilation always resists new accommodations.”

JEAN PIAGET'S STAGE THEORY

Piaget believed there were four major stages of development.

1.Sensorimotor Period 0-2

2.Preoperational Thought 2-7

3.Concrete operations 7-12

4.Formal Operations 12-Adult

Piaget recognized that the child only gradually develops the capacity to acquire reversibility, conservation and the ability to reason about concrete matters.
Piaget emphasised the importance of play in children’s learning. He maintained that play enables children to develop their perceptual ability and intelligence and provides them with opportunity for socialization and experimentation with everyday reality. Prehaps the major area that Piaget overlooked was that although his deductions were based on child observations, they were fundermentally limited in that the control group for his research were his own children ,who were isolated from other children.