Does Knowledge Progress Through a Selection of Stages?

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Does Knowledge Progress Through a Selection of Stages?

There are many theorists that put forward the idea that development and knowledge progressing occur through a selection of stages. These stages can be seen as a variety of ‘psychological metamorphoses’ (Mitchell and Ziegier, 2007) strung together forming the way that a child develops from birth to adulthood. These stages can be the influence of either physical maturation or environmental factors such as opportunities available for learning and stimuli given. Theories that support this approach to developmental psychology include Piaget’s stage theory of cognitive development, Freud’s theory of Psychosexual stages and Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, however Vygotsky’s theory of social constructivism, opposes this view.

The stage theory of cognitive development was developed by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in 1954 and is still highly influential in today’s modern psychological thinking. It makes very clear definitions of the stages of development and states that each must be fully completed before the next can start to be accomplished. It is a constructivist theory in that it states that development is self-motivated and that knowledge is not innate or gradually acquired through life unless the individual takes it upon themselves to develop and the theory is also universal, meaning it can be applied cross-culturally. The theory is divided into four separate sub-stages consisting of the sensory motor stage which is from birth to two years, the preoperational stage from ages two till seven, the concrete operational stage from seven to eleven years and finally the formal operational stage from eleven years upwards. The age ranges of Piaget’s theory are only a rough guide, with the actual rate of progression based on the individual, it is the order of the stages which is fixed as the theory is based on the assumption that each stage is the foundation for the next so it would be impossible to miss or only partially complete a stage.

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The sensory motor stage is the ‘baby’ stage of infancy, named to indicate the two major developments of the senses and movement. In this stage extremely important mental processes occur including the development of reflexes, habits, co-ordination, insight, creativity, and object permanence, with this being the most important concept in this stage. Object permanence is the realisation at around eight to nine months that objects still exist even though they can’t be seen. This was supported by experiments conducted by Piaget in the ‘A not B error’ task, showing that when an item is not accessible to the child’s ...

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