Child development is a critical stage in Human Development.

This essay attempts to describe the

stages of Child Development according to Jean Piaget and give their educational implications.
The essay will start by clearly defining the key terms, before chronologically describing the
stages of Child Development according to Jean Piaget and finally giving their educational
implications.

The concept of Child development is synonymous to the concept of cognitive development. To

Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes resulting
from biological maturation and environmental experience. Accordingly, he believed that children
construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies between
what they already know and what they discover in their environment (Berger, 2008).

Piaget's theory of cognitive development focusses on the nature and development of human
intelligence. It was first developed by a Swiss developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget (1896–
1980). Learning to Piaget is a gradual process that involves assimilation and accommodation.
Assimilation meant integrating external elements into structures of lives or environments, or
those we could have through experience. Accommodation on the other hand is the process of
taking new information in one's environment and altering pre-existing schemas in order to fit in
the new information. According to Piaget, the developmental ideal is a balance between
assimilation and accommodation, which is also known as equilibrium a comfortable state
(Berger, 2008).

Piaget proposed four stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete
operational and formal operational period. The sensorimotor stage has five sub stages. In the first
sub-stage (birth to six weeks) the child develops the coordination of sensation and action through
reflexes. For example sucking of objects; following moving objects with the eyes; and grasping
of objects. In the mid stages of the sensorimotor stage, the actions of the child are more object
oriented and less self-preoccupied; the child is able to intentionally grasp objects desired, they
are able to differentiate between ends and means. This stage could actually be referred to as the
dawn of logic. Towards the end of the mid stages the infant develops the logic to coordination
between means and ends. Basically the child develops an understanding of what they want and
how they can get it. In the later stages, the child then breaks into a discovery stage where they

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are intrigued by the many properties of an object and the many thing they can do and make
happen to an object. They also begin to experiment new behavior. Jean here referred to infants as
‘young scientists.’ They are able to discover new means to meet objectives. The child finally
develops the ability to use primitive symbols and forms enduring mental representations. The
stage marks the beginning of true creativity (Berger, 2008).

The second stage of Human development is the Pre-occupational stage. This stage is between the
ages of two to seven years. Here a child does not yet understand concrete logic and cannot
mentally manipulate information (Baldwin, 2005). Children mostly practice playing and
pretending in this stage. Thinking in this stage is still egocentric, meaning the child has difficulty
seeing the viewpoint of others. The stage is split into two sub stages: symbolic function, and the
intuitive thought sub stages. The forma sub stage is when children are able to understand,
represent, remember, and picture objects in their mind without having the object in front of them
(Baldwin, 2005). They are more social and can assign roles. However cognitive development at
this stage is still hindered by egocentrism and “pre-casual thinking.” For example, the child may
think the stone that they bumped in and fell was mad that’s why it made them fall. Or that it is
dark at night because someone switched of the sun. The intuitive thought sub stage is when
children tend to propose the questions of "why?" and "how come?" Various concepts come up in
this stage. Concepts like centration, conservation, irreversibility, class inclusion and transitive
inference (Berger, 2008). This essay however will just explain the first three in the following
example. When one presents a child with two equal glasses with equal amounts of juice they can
choose either of them to drink because they understand that the content is equal. However if the
juice from one glass is poured into a slimmer but taller glass, the child will opt to take the slim
glass because they perceive the juice to be more, (centration) without realizing that the content
remains the same (conservation). The child is not able to realize that before the juice was poured
into the slimmer cup it was equal to the juice contained in the first cup (irreversibility).

The concrete operational stage is the third stage of Piaget's theory of cognitive development
(between the ages of 7 and 11 years). The important processes here are logic and the elimination
of egocentrism. It is characterized by the appropriate use of logic. Children are able to
incorporate inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning involves drawing inferences from
observations in order to make a generalization. They however struggle with deductive reasoning,

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which involves using a generalized principle in order to try to predict the outcome of an event.
During this stage, the child acquires the ability to view things from another individual's
perspective, even if they think that perspective is incorrect. Children in this stage can, however,
only solve problems that apply to actual objects or events, and not abstract concepts. Adolescents
also are changing cognitively by the way that they think about social matters. Adolescent
egocentrism governs the way that adolescents think about social matters, and is the heightened
self-consciousness in them as they are, which is reflected in their sense of personal uniqueness
and invincibility (Santrock, 2008).

The final stage is known as the formal operational stage (roughly between ages 11 to
approximately 15-20): Intelligence is demonstrated through the logical use of symbols related to
abstract concepts. This form of thought includes “assumptions that have no necessary relation to
reality.” At this point, the person is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning. During this
time, people develop the ability to think about abstract concepts. This type of thinking involves
hypothetical "what-if" situations that are not always rooted in reality. It is often required in
science and mathematics. Children tend to think very concretely and specifically in earlier
stages, and begin to consider possible outcomes and consequences of actions. The ability to
systematically solve a problem in a logical and methodical way emerges (Berger, 2008).

This theory has the following implications on education: firstly, children cannot merely copy and
store what their teachers say, but they must act upon the world, first literally, by grasping it and
sucking it, then symbolically, through language, and, finally, logically, through a combination of
testing, experimenting, questioning, and reasoning, first with the concrete world and then with
the formal logic. Secondly, Piaget’s theory is also a hierarchical stage theory. Each stage
represents a qualitatively different, progressively more complex and abstract form of thought that
is built on the stages that necessarily must come before it (Tuckman and Monetti, 2010). It
therefore calls for teachers to structure the learning process in a similar manner, taking into
consideration the various aspects of each developmental stage. The theory also implies that
contradiction speeds development and widens the ‘‘grasp of consciousness.’’ Using the concepts
of assimilation, accommodation, equilibrium and disequilibrium, the teacher must find a way in
which the student is kept developing. A child who is so focused on counting to learn addition,
can skip the step later in adding 2 + 3 and can later grab groups of 3’s or 2’s in multiplication.

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The grasp has widened from 1 by 1 to three 3’s. Later, in algebra (formal operations), the
variable x can stand for any number at all. Lastly, but not the least, we can deduce from this
theory that children progress through the same major stages but not at the same rates, depending
upon experience and skill of educators, but that is not all that matters. The teacher must guide
(steer wild inventions away from blind alleys) and challenge (contradict to gently point out
illogic) and explain (because the child wants and needs explanation for active understanding).
According to Piaget, children do not discover properly or efficiently on their own (Tuckman and
Monetti, 2010).

In conclusion, this essay has achieved its objective by clearly defining the key terms, before
chronologically describing the stages of Child Development according to Jean Piaget and finally
giving their educational implications.

REFERENCES

Baldwin, J. (2005). Jean Piaget. In Key Thinkers in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language.
Retrieved from http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=/login?
qurl=http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/edinburghthinkl/jean_piaget/0 (Baldwin,
2005).

Berger, K. S (2008). The developing person through the life span (7th ed.). Worth. p. 44.
ISBN 9780716760801 (Berger, 2008).

Tuckman, B. W., and Monetti D. M..(2010) Educational Psychology. Belmont, Wadsworth

Print, CA. (Tuckman and Monetti, 2010)

Santrock, J.W. (2008). A Topical Approach To Life-Span Development (pp.211-216). New York,
NY: McGraw-Hill (Santrock, 2008).