Describe and Evaluate the Work of one Major Psychologist. Jean Piaget

Describe and Evaluate the Work of one Major Psychologist

Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, was a pioneer in the field of developmental psychology. He developed many fields of science, but is recognised primarily for his contribution to the field of genetic epistemology (the theory of knowledge). He believed that there was a biological explanation for the development of knowledge, and that children had their own processes of learning, and their thought processes were separate and distinct from adults. He developed a broad theory, based on his studies of children, which described four main stages in the learning process. He began studying children and the development of knowledge when he moved to Paris and began working on the Simon-Binet intelligence study, and this was the foundation for his later work. His work with children was a major part of his life up until his death, in 1980. Piaget’s theory forms the basis of many educational principles used in the present day, and has greatly expanded our understanding of the way in which knowledge is acquired. He believed that children created their own theories of the world, and were constantly testing those theories, in order to develop their understanding of the world. This was in direct contrast to the generally-held belief at that time that children should be taught by rote, that simple repetition would ensure knowledge and that children were merely ‘empty vessels waiting to be filled’. Although there has been some criticism of his method and interpretation from other psychologists, there is general acceptance of the four cognitive periods outlined in his theory and his work has inspired further in-depth research into cognitive development.

Piaget was a child prodigy, publishing his first paper at the age of 10 in order to gain admission to the university library (he wanted the librarian to stop treating him like a child). Upon completing his doctorate and moving to the Sorbonne, and taking part in the research being conducted by Theodore Simon and Alfred Binet (of IQ-test fame), he was intrigued by the consistently ‘wrong’ answers given by children and decided to study their reasoning process further, recording interviews and play behaviour in order to document the children’s reactions. His marriage in 1923 provided him with the opportunity to study children intimately; his first child was born in 1925, and his three children became the focus of research for both Piaget and his wife. He received numerous honorary degrees and held various influential positions during his career (president of the Swiss Society of Psychology, director of the Bureau International Office de l’Education, President of the Swiss Commission of UNESCO). He also created the International Center for Genetic Epistemology and the School of Sciences at the University of Geneva. His written work was prolific, and he was writing papers and articles right up until his death, aged 84.

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Piaget’s belief that looking at how knowledge develops in children will expand our understanding of knowledge in general has led to many investigations into ‘ways of knowing’; the fields of artificial intelligence and behavioural studies owe a large portion of their hypotheses to Piaget’s theories. His objective was to explain the way in which a newborn comes to understand the world and function in it. Piaget had several key ideas – that children learned through a process of ‘assimilation’ (what is already known) and ‘accommodation’ (adjusting to what is now known) and organised their ideas into groups of information called ‘schemes’. He came to believe that intelligence is a form of biological adaptation in which the child is constantly seeking to make sense of its world, to find a state of ‘equilibrium’. Piaget’s guidelines for biological adaptation can be loosely outlined as follows:

‘1. There is complete interdependence between a living organism and the environment in which it lives;

2. The organism and its environment are engaged in a continuous process of action on, and reaction to, each other; and

3. There will be a balance or equilibrium relationship.’

Children form representations based on their experience of the world; when they encounter new situations they assimilate information about the situation as well as using past experience to deal with it. Piaget outlined a sequence of developmental stages that children progress through during their cognitive development; the sensorimotor stage, the pre-operational stage, the concrete operational stage and finally the stage of formal operations. Each stage provides a foundation for the next stage; each child has to progress through each stage and although the child cannot go back a stage, they can use the skills from previous stages to handle new situations/problems.

The ‘sensorimotor’ stage lasts from birth to approximately two years old; during this stage the child develops his intelligence through motor interactions with his environment (through rudimentary explorations with his hands and mouth) and has a knowledge of the way things behave (whether they are hard, soft, warm, cold) but not why. The child will modify his behaviour through experience and actively experiments with his surroundings, gradually realising that objects are ‘external and permanent’.

The ‘preoperational’ stage lasts till between the ages of 6 and 8 years old; during this stage the child begins to use symbolic thought to reason out situations and its symbolic representations are unique to its experience. The child has formed representations in its own mind, which are used to classify certain actions or objects, e.g. Daddy or Ball, and these objects have properties based on the child’s experience to date. The child also has images associated with actions, e.g. hot water for shaving, and reasons accordingly – this process was called ‘transduction’ by Piaget, the child using its own library of concepts to form a hypothesis, and linking events that do not necessarily have a relationship to explain a situation (using a juxtaposition of concepts/images, e.g. explaining the workings of a ship by describing the smoke exiting the funnel). During this period language becomes increasingly useful in translating the images in order to share them; the child is aware of its social status and the world beyond itself, yet still has a subjective view of the way things behave in relation to itself; it believes that its actions have a direct impact on all aspects of the world. Initially, however, language is simply an accompaniment to action.

The ‘concrete operations’ stage follows this; and lasts until the child is about 12 years old. The child now attempts to express its thoughts and to understand the thoughts of others. Language helps to develop the child’s reasoning ability, and the development of the child’s reasoning abilities help to develop language. The child now begins to understand cause and effect, recognises transformation of objects (parts and a whole) and also begins to classify objects differently. The child starts to use evidence in support of its reasoning, and realises that the actions or properties of objects are not necessarily affected by it (its viewpoint becomes less egocentric). It is rearranging its representations of the environment to allow for other viewpoints and its discoveries through experimentation, and begins to use ‘conservation’ of classes – the discovery that variants such as quantity, number, length, weight, area etc., can be unchanging despite changes in other aspects. The child now learns about ‘reversibility’, the fact that objects can belong to sub-sets of a class (e.g. man and dog, who belong to different sub-sets, of the class of animal) and the fact that actions can be performed and reversed without changing the first action (e.g. an experiment with a piston and various weights, determining that the level of the water could be varied in numerous ways). The child can estimate the effects of an action without needing to perform the experiment and becomes aware that many factors are at work. ‘Developed concrete operations permit accurate observation and experiment. Complex classes can be formed and linked statements can be made’.

The final stage is that of formal operations; up till now the child has been capable of concrete operations, with actual objects, but could not think in abstract terms. From the age of 12 onwards, the child begins to develop abstract thinking and can imagine situations that have not yet been encountered. The child can use hypotheses, experiment and use deduction when investigating its environment. The child uses forms of reasoning acceptable to society, based on its interaction with and interpretation of the society in general. This stage continues through adulthood and enables the child to refine previous discoveries using knowledge obtained during previous stages to extrapolate information.

Piaget’s theory has led to a change in educational style throughout the world, in which children are now encouraged to reason through their understanding of a problem. His theory can be used as a guideline for teachers, to help to tailor learning for individuals and offer guidance on the kind of lesson best suited to children of different ages. We can better understand the conditions needed to determine the rate of development in children, and although Piaget has been criticised for failing to take into account social and emotional influences upon children’s learning rates, his work has formed a standard by which many psychologists and teachers can determine that there are problems with a child’s rate of development. One of the main arguments against Piaget’s theory has been his methodology; there have been several recreations of his conservation experiments, with notably different results – in the subsequent experiments, the researchers asked the children a question once, instead of repeating it two or three times as Piaget had done and found that the children made less errors. Piaget’s questions were very individual (specific to each child) and statistical analysis was very difficult; it was hard to compare results among children because of the differing questions and some psychologists deemed his interpretation of the data subjective.

There have also been many debates regarding the stages of development; although there have been challenges to Piaget’s description of the separate nature of the stages (many professionals believe they overlap, instead of being separate distinct stages), it is widely accepted that there is a sequence in development, and many psychologists and educational systems now use age boundaries to distinguish between developmental periods in a child’s life. Children tend to vary their thinking according to the situation they are in and it has been found that in a large group of children of a similar age, there can be a spread of ability across the stages, unlike the theory propounded by Piaget. The stages are sometimes unclear and children may display only a few characteristics of a stage before progressing onto the next, but it is acknowledged that the basic principle behind Piaget’s theory is sound. His work has undoubtedly not only initiated but stimulated and inspired some of the greatest research and discoveries in the field of human intelligence today.

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