Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive

Development Explained
POSTED JULY 14, 2017 LETPASSER STAFF

Jean Piaget was a Swiss child development psychologist. His

contributions to education are still studied even to this day by college
students in the fields of education and psychology.
At the peak of his career, Jean Piaget became the director of the
International Bureau of Education for UNESCO. He is known for his
Theory of Cognitive Development.

“only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether
violent, or gradual.”

-Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development attempts to organize the

stages of learning that a child undergoes between birth and adulthood.
Piaget suggested that the development of a child can be divided into four
development stages:

Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive

Development
1. Sensorimotor stage

Age Group: Starts at birth and ends at around the age of two

How does the child learn?

The child learns about his or her environment through movements
and the senses.

Major Characteristics:

o Infants are prone to simple reflexes like rooting and sucking

 o Children begin to use simple habits and circular reaction
o Infants point of view is extremely egocentric
o At 8 months, the infant begins to perceive the things beyond
their own body. They continue to use habits and circular
reactions for satisfaction
o Beyond 8 months, the infant begins to learn about object
permanence
o At the end of this stage, the child begins to become curious
with new things. This allows them to explore the environment
more and the capabilities of their own bodies
2. Preoperational stage

Age Group: starts when the child learns to speak until around age
seven

How does the child learn?

In this stage, the ability to walk and speak allows the child to learn
more about his or her environment through playing. Games like
pretending and role playing become a common theme among
children at this age.

Major Characteristics:

o Child point of view may still be egocentric

o Symbolism begins to show in playing.

Example: A child can associate a real car to his toy car.

Leaves can be used to represent money in a role playing
game
 o Intuitive thought also starts at the later part of this stage (4-7
years old). The child’s curiousity at this stage is already an
early sign of the ability to reason.
o Centration
o Irreversibility
o Class inclusion
o Transitive inference
3. Concrete operational stage

Age Group: starts at around the age of seven and ends at around
ten

How does the child learn?

Children add more schema from the learning skills learned in
previous stages. Fast acquisition of logical skills allows them to
learn the basic concepts of subjects like math and logic.

Major characteristics:

o Children may no longer be egocentric

o They begin to develop the concept of conservation
o Their classification skills significantly improve
4. Formal operational stage
 Age Group: From around eleven to sixteen

How does the child learn?

At this stage, the child starts to learn solely through the use of his
or her mental faculties. Abstract concepts like applied
mathematics, advanced physics and chemistry can now be
introduced to gradualy improve abstract thinking.

Major characteristics:

o Abstract thoughts begin to develop

o Skills in logic learned in the previous stages can now be
applied with abstract thought for higher level of thinking
o If taught, the children can now learn the concept of
metacognition

Explanation:
When studying Piaget’s theory, it is important to remember that it shows
the gradual acquisition of understanding, knowledge and skills from birth
until the child reaches young adulthood. For example, at the
sensorimotor stage, the child only learns through short movements and
through his or her senses. During the preoperational stage, these
learning skills are still present. They do add more skills on top of those to
enhance their learning experience.

The child learns through the use of prior knowledge learned from
previous stages to gain more understanding. The learning basically
happens through a combination of cause and effect and trial and error
methods. A child starts to learn by using his or her movements and
senses to act on object around them. They learn that certain actions will
have corresponding reactions. Through continuous experience and
manipulations of their environment, they learn which reactions are
constant and which are not. The child uses cause and effect relationship
with future experiences to learn new concepts.

Example:
Anton, a 8-year old boy, saw from his mother that putting powdered juice on a glass of
water will make the powder “disappear” and make the water sweet and fruity.

Anton tries the same action on his own and achieved the same results. He learned that
putting powdered substances on the water will make the powder disappear.

Anton tried the same action with different types of powdered substances in the kitchen.
He learned that not all powdered substances will dissolve in water when he added
pepper to water.

His mind can now start to classify the different types of powders that dissolve in water.

In this example the Anton’s learning is obvious. It happens sequentially

and deliberately as Anton tries out different experiments. In the real
world, children learn gradually by trying out ideas, through observation
and sometimes, by accident.