MODULE 7: DEVELOPMENTAL THEORISTS AND THEORIES (Continuation)

B. Intellectual Development
• Jean Piaget

WEEK: 7

TIME ALLOTMENT: 3 Hours

OBJECTIVE/ LEARNING OUTCOMES:

At the end of the period, the students will be able to describe Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.

DEVELOPMENTAL THEORISTS AND THEORIES

Introduction

Jean Piaget: Intellectual Development (1896-1980)

Swiss biologist, psychologist, and educator
Became interested in the scientific study of intellect when his three children were born – used his children
to observe and make scientific notes on intellectual development

Discussion

How Piaget Developed the Theory

Piaget was born in Switzerland in the late 1800s and was a precocious student, publishing his first
scientific paper when he was just 11 years old. His early exposure to the intellectual development of children
came when he worked as an assistant to Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon as they worked to standardize their
famous IQ test.
Much of Piaget's interest in the cognitive development of children was inspired by his observations of
his own nephew and daughter. These observations reinforced his budding hypothesis that children's minds
were not merely smaller versions of adult minds.
Up until this point in history, children were largely treated simply as smaller versions of adults. Piaget
was one of the first to identify that the way that children think is different from the way adults think.
Instead, he proposed, intelligence is something that grows and develops through a series of stages.
Older children do not just think more quickly than younger children, he suggested. Instead, there are both
qualitative and quantitative differences between the thinking of young children versus older children.
Based on his observations, he concluded that children were not less intelligent than adults, they simply
think differently. Albert Einstein called Piaget's discovery "so simple only a genius could have thought of it."
Piaget's stage theory describes the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development involves
changes in cognitive process and abilities. In Piaget's view, early cognitive development involves processes
based upon actions and later progresses to changes in mental operations.
Piaget was the first person to study children scientifically, through real-life observations and obsessive note-
taking. He discovered that ALL children’s intellectual development progressed through four stages,
beginning in infancy and are completed by adolescence. Thinking becomes more and more complex as the
child ages. Each stage of thinking causes the child to see the world in a different way. He indicated that a child
must ‘master’ one stage before they can move onto the next stage. If they cannot master a stage, they will
never reach their full potential.
Piaget believed that intellectual development controls every other aspect of development.

Basic Cognitive Concepts

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 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 had an experience with.
Assimilation. This is the process of fitting a new experience into an existing or previously created
cognitive structure or schema.
Accommodation. This is the process of creating a new schema.
 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

Stage 1. Sensorimotor Stage (Birth – 2 years)
Children develop an understanding of the world through their 5 senses and muscles–learn by doing. Learns
basic shapes, textures, and object permanence (ability of the child to know that an object still exists
even when out of sight) through touching, grasping, hearing and ‘tasting’ objects. 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.
Stage 2. Preoperational Stage (2 – 7 years)
Intelligence at this stage is intuitive in nature. Children develop an understanding through language and
images - learn through their own actions, thoughts, and feelings. Knowledge is based on their own personal
feelings, not reality. No logical thinking. They make use of mental representations and is able to pretend,
more closer to the use of symbols. This is highlighted by the following:
Symbolic Function. 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.
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.
Centration. This refers to the tendency of the child to only focus on one aspect of a thing or event and
exclude other aspects.
Irreversibility. Pre-operational children still have the inability to reverse their thinking.
Animism. This is the tendency of children to attribute human like traits or characteristics to inanimate
objects.
Transductive reasoning. This refers to the preoperational child’s type of reasoning that is neither
inductive nor deductive. Reasoning appears to be from particular to particular.
Stage 3. Concrete Operational Stage (7 – 12 yrs)
Children can think logically (only in terms of concrete objects) and empathetically but still learn best
through experience. Children begin to understand patterns, other people’s feelings and points of view.
The concrete operational stage is marked by the following:
Decentering. This refers to the ability of the child to perceive the different features of objects and
situations.
Reversibility. During the stage of concrete operations, the child can now follow that certain operations
can be done in reverse.
Conservation. This is the ability to know certain properties of objects like number, mass, volume, or
area do not change even if there is a change in appearance.
Seriation. This refers to the ability to order or arrange things in a series based on one dimension.
Stage 4. Formal Operational Stage (13 – adult)
In this final stage, thinking becomes more logical. They can now solve abstract problems and can
hypothesize. This stage is characterized by the following:
Hypothetical Reasoning. This is the ability to come up with different hypothesis about a problem and to
gather and weigh data in order to make final decision or judgment. This can be done in the absence of
concrete objects. The individuals can now deal with “what if” questions.
Analogical Reasoning. This is the ability to perceive the relationship in one instance and then use that
relationship in one instance and then use that relationship to narrow down possible answers in another
similar situation or problem.
Deductive Reasoning. This is the ability to think logically by applying a general rule to a particular
instance or situation.

From Piaget’s findings and comprehensive theory, we can derive the following principles:
 1. Children will provide different explanations of reality at different stages of cognitive development.
2. Cognitive development is facilitated by providing activities or situations that engage learners and
require adaptation (assimilation and accommodation).
3. Learning materials and activities should involve the appropriate level of motor or mental operations for
a child of given age; avoid asking students to perform tasks that are beyond their current cognitive
capabilities.
4. Use teaching methods that are actively involve students and present challenges.

Summary

Why are Piaget’s ideas significant?

His theory reinforces the idea that nurturance (comfort, teaching, and play) should be suitable for the
child or adolescence's stage of thinking.
Piaget’s ideas have greatly influenced our understanding of what children can and cannot do based on
their age and intellectual ability.
If children are given tasks that are too difficult for them, they will not be able to succeed, which may affect
them negatively, psychologically and emotionally.
His theory describes children's ways of thinking and how it develops as they gain experiences.
Piaget overlooked the stages of adult intellectual development.

REFERENCE:

Corpuz, Brenda B., et al. (2010). Child and Adolescent Development. Lorimar Publishing Inc., Cubao, Quezon
City, Metro Manila. ISBN 971-685-721-4

LEARNING TASK/ACTIVITY/ONLINE QUIZ

Week 7

General Direction:
1. Be online during the scheduled online class/consultation hours.
2. Make sure you have a stable connection.
3. Synchronous short quiz will be posted both on the assignment tab and in the Week 4 channel before
the scheduled time. (Or link will be provided)
4. Read the directions carefully before starting the quiz.

Congratulations in completing the week 7 module! Keep it up!

Prepared by:

NOVELYN L. MITRA, LPT, MST

Instructor

Reviewed/Approved:

ANGELO K. LAHINA, LPT, MAT

Program Head, Teacher Education