Jean Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage

Concrete operational is the third

stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive
development. It spans from age 7 to
approximate 11 years old. During this time,
children have better understanding of their
thinking skills. Children begin to think
critically about concrete events,
particularly their own experience, but have
difficulty understanding abstract or
hypothetical concepts, thus most of them
still have a hard time at problem-solving..
 Logic
Concrete operational thinkers,
according to Piaget, can already make
use of inductive logic. Inductive logic
involves thinking from specific experience
to a general principle. But at this stage,
children have great difficulty in using
deductive logic or beginning with a new
principle leading specific event.
 Reversibility
One of the most important
developments in this stage is an
understanding of reversibility, or awareness
that action can be reversed. An example
of this is being able the order of
relationships between mental categories.
For example in arithmethic (3+4=7 and 7-
4=3)
Example:
Teacher: Jacob, do you have a
brother?
Jacob: Yes.
Teacher: What’s his name?
Jacob: Matthew.
Teacher: Does Matthew have a
brother?
Jacob: Yes
Cognitive Milestone

Elementary-aged children encounter

developmental milestone. This is the stage
when they leave behind egocentric thinking
and start to develop a more mature way of
looking at things, which greatly enhances
children problem-solving skills, Piaget called
this process DECENTRATION. The skill they
learn are in sequential manner, meaning they
need to understand numbers before they
can perform mathematical equation. At this
stage, reasoning is still immature, they have
ease identifying here and now.
 The human mind is a system that can
process information through the process of
logical rules and strategies. They also
believed that the mind receives
information, performs operation to change
its form and content, stores and locates it
and generates responses from it.
Implication to Child Care, Education, and Parenting
Children have varying intelligence profiles. This profiles
may be based on the influences of learning and achievement.
Parents, child care, providers and teachers should be able to
recognize these by:
 Helping children draw on their strengths and promote growth
in their weaknesses;
 Planning lessons that cater to multiple intelligences based on
instruction objectives;
 Encouraging children to read more every day to increase
their vocabulary;
 Bringing children to museums, art exhibits and historical
landmarks to widen their perspective about the world and
people; and
 Lessening children’s screen time and increasing their personal
and face to face interactions.