Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

“The principal 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.”

Background:
 Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Theory of Development is truly classic in the field of educational
psychology. This theory fueled other researches and theories of development and
learning.
 Its focus is on how individuals construct knowledge.
 For sixty years, Jean Piaget conducted research on cognitive development. His research
method involved observing a small number of individuals as they respond to cognitive
tasks that he assigned. These tasks were later known as Piagetian tasks.
 Piaget called his general theoretical framework “genetic epistemology” because he was
interested in how knowledge developed in human organisms.
 Piaget was initially into biology and he also had a background in philosophy. Knowledge
from both these disciplines influenced his theories and research of child development.
Out of his researches, Piaget came up with the stages of cognitive development.
 Piaget examined the implications of cognition but also to intelligence and moral
development. His theory has been applied widely to teaching and curriculum design
especially in the preschool and elementary curricula.

Basic Cognitive Concepts

1. SCHEMA
 Piaget used the term “schema” to refer to the cognitive structures by which
individuals intellectually adapt to and organize their environment.
 It is an individual’s way to understand or create meaning about a thing or
experience. It is like the mind has a filing cabinet and each drawer has folders that
contain files of things he has had an experience with.
 For instance, if a child sees a dog for the first time, he creates his own schema of
what a dog is. It has four legs and a tail. It barks. It’s fury. The child then “puts this
description of a dog “on file” in his mind. When he sees another similar dog, he
“pulls” out the file (his schema of a dog) in his mind, looks at the animal, and says,
“four legs, tail, barks, furry… that’s a dog!”
2. ASSIMILATION
 This is the process of fitting a new experience into an existing or previously created
cognitive structure or schema.
  If the child sees another dog, this time a little smaller one, he would make sense
of what he is seeing by adding this new information (a different looking dog) into
his schema of a dog.
3. ACCOMMODATION
 This is the process of creating a new schema.
 If the same child now sees another animal that looks a little bit like a dog, but
somehow different. He might try to fit it into his schema of a dog, and say, “Look
mommy, what a funny looking dog. Its bark is funny too!” Then the mommy
explains. “That’s not a funny looking dog. That’s a goat!” With mommy’s further
descriptions, the child will now create a new schema, that of a goat. He now adds
a new file in his filing cabinet.
4. EQUILIBRATION
 Piaget believed that the people have the natural need to understand how the
world works and to find order, structure and predictability in their life.
 Equilibration is achieving proper balance between assimilation and
accommodation. When our experiences do not match our schemata (plural of
schema) or cognitive structures, we experience cognitive disequilibrium. This
means there is a discrepancy between what is perceived and what is understood.
We then exert effort through assimilation and accommodation to establish
equilibrium once more.
 Cognitive development involves a continuous effort to adapt to the environment
in terms of assimilation and accommodation. In this sense, Piaget’s theory is
similar in nature to other constructivist perspectives of learning like Bruner and
Vygotsky.

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

1. STAGE 1: Sensori-motor Stage (from birth to infancy)

 The stage when a child who is initially reflexive in grasping, sucking and reaching
becomes more organized in his movement and activity.
 The term sensori-motor focuses on the prominence of the senses and muscle
movement through which the infant comes to learn about himself and the world.
 In working with children in the sensori-motor stage, teachers should aim to
provide a rich and stimulating environment with appropriate objects to play with.
Objective permanence: This is the ability of the child to know that an object still
exists even when out of sight. This ability is attained in sensory motor stage.
2. STAGE 2: Pre-operational Stage (two to seven years)
 Intelligence at this stage is intuitive in nature.
 At this stage, child can now make mental representations and is able to pretend,
the child is now ever closer to the use of symbols. This stage is highlighted by the
following:

Symbolic function: This is the ability to represent objects and events. A symbol is
a thing that represents something else. A drawing, a written word, or a spoken
word comes to be understood as representing a real object like a real MRT train.
Symbolic function gradually develops in the period between 2 to 7 years.
Examples: Riel, a two-year old may pretend that she is drinking from a glass
which is really empty. Though she already pretends the presence of water, the
glass remains to be a glass. At around four years of age, Nico, may after
pretending to drink from an empty glass, turns the glass into a rocket ship or a
telephone. By the age of 6 or 7 the child can pretend play with objects that exist
only in his mind. Enzo, who is six, can do a whole ninja turtle routine without any
costume nor “props”. Tria, who is 7 can pretend to host an elaborate princess
ball only in her mind.

Egocentrism: This is the tendency of the child to only see his point of view and to
assume that everyone also has his same point of view. The child cannot take the
perspective of others. You see this in five year-old boy who buys a toy truck for
his mother’s birthday. Or a three year old girl who cannot understand why her
cousins call her daddy “uncle” and not daddy.

Centration: This refers to the tendency of the child to only focus on one aspect
of a thing or event and exclude other aspects.
Example: When a child is presented with two identical glasses with the same
amount of water, the child will say they have the same amount of water.
However, once water from one of the glasses is transferred to an obvious taller
but narrower glass, the child might say that there is more water in the taller
glass. The child only focused or “centered” only one aspect of the new glass