Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget displayed how the developing structures of the mind acquired, even constructed knowledge, and that knowledge was therefore not of only one flavor. “think that all structures are constructed and that the fundamental feature is the course of this construction: Nothing is given at the start, except some limiting points on which all the rest is based. The structures are neither given in advance in the human mind nor in the external world, as we perceive or organize it”.(site)

Piaget’s stages in theory

Piaget proposed that all people pass in a fixed sequence through a series of universal stages of cognitive development. He suggested that not only does the quantity of information increase in each stage, but the quality of knowledge and understanding changes as well.(Feldman 2006) Piaget's main focus was that children, First, develop self-centric theories about their environment, Second that children base these theories on their own personal experiences interacting with persons and objects in their environment; Third, that the child used "schemas" to master and gain information about the environment; and lastly that the sophistication of a child's cognitive structures increased as the child grew and developed, as did the child's schemas.(PLEASE SITE) Piaget’s learning stages are as follows: Sensorimotor stage (0-2 yrs) this is were the child interacts with environment through physical actions. These interactions build the child’s cognitive structures about the world and how it functions or responds. Preoperational stage (2-7 yrs) the child is not yet able to form abstract conceptions, they must have hands on experiences and visual representations in order to form basic conclusions., Concrete operations (7-11 yrs) child is developing considerable knowledge base from physical experiences. The child begins to draw on this knowledge base to make more sophisticated explanations and predictions. and Formal operations (from 11-15 and up) the child’s knowledge base cognitive structures are more similar to those of an adult.

Comparing theories