Piaget’s Stages of

Cognitive
Development
 Learning Outcomes:

At the end of the module, you should be able to:

●describe Piaget’s stages in your own words

●conduct a simple Piagetian Task interview with children
●match learning activities to the learners’ cognitive stage
 Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

"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 but men who are creative,
inventive and discovers"
- Jean Piaget
 Jean Piaget

● A swiss psychologist, who's into biology and had also a

background in philosophy. He was known for his work
on child development
 Abstraction
● Stages of cognitive development focus on how individuals construct
knowledge.

● Stages of cognitive development began when Piaget conducted a research on

cognitive development in a small number of people, wherein this people
responded to the task that Piaget's designed that is called "Pigaetian task".

● Stages of cognitive development has been applied widely to teaching and

curriculum design especially in the preschool and elementary curricula.
 BASIC COGNITIVE CONCEPTS
1. Schema
- Refers to the cognitive structure by which individuals
intellectually adopt to and organize their environment.

2. Assimilation
- A process of fitting a new experiences into an existing or
previously created cognitive structure or schema.
 3. Accomodation
- A process of creating a new cognitive structure or
schema.
4. Equilibration
- Achieving a proper balance between assimilation and
accommodation.
•Cognitive disequilibrium - When our experiences do not
match our schemata (schema)
•Cognitive development- It involves a continuous effort to
adopt to the environment in terms of assimilation and
accommodation.
 Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Stage 1. Sensori-motor Stage
- It corresponds from birth to infancy. This is the stage
when a child who is initially reflexive in grasping,
sucking and reaching becomes more organized in his
movement and activity.
Object permanence
- This is the ability of the child to know that an object exists
even when out of sight.
Stage 2. Pre-Operational Stage
- It covers from about two to seven years old, roughly
corresponding to the preschool years. At this stage, the child
can now make mental representations and is able to pretend,
the child is now ever closer to the use of symbols.
The pre-operational stage is highlighted by the following:

Symbolic Function
- This is the ability to represent objects and events.

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.
Centration
- This refers to the tendency of the child to only focus on
one aspect of a thing or event and exclude the 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 pre-operational child’s type of
reasoning that is neither inductive nor deductive.
Stage 3. Concrete- Operational Stage
- Ages between 8-11 years old
- This stage is characterized by the ability of the child to
think logically but only in terms of concrete objects.

Decentering
- Refers to the ability of the child to perceive the different
features of objects and situations.
Reversibility
- During the stage of concrete ideas the child can now
follow that certain operations can be done in reverse.

Conservation
- The ability to know that certain properties of objects or
area do not change even if there is a change in
appearance.
- The children progress to attain conservation abilities
gradually being a pre- conserver, a transitional thinker,
and then a conserver.
Seriaton
- Refers to the ability to order or arrange things in a series
based on or one dimension's such as weight, volume or
size.
Stage 4. Formal Operational Stage
- ages between 12 and 15 years
- thinking becomes more logical

Hypothetical Reasoning
- The ability to come up with different hypothesis about a
problem and to gather and weigh data in order to make a
final decision or judgement.
Analogical Reasoning
- The ability to perceive the relationship in one instance
and then use that relationship to narrow down possible
answers in another similar situation or problem.
- The individual can understand relationships and do
analogical reasoning.

Deductive Reasoning
- 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
drive 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 as situations that
engage learners band require adaptation(i.e.assimilation, 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 task that are beyond their current cognitive capabilities.
4. Use a teaching methods that activity involve student and present challenges.