Child Development and Pedagogy – Four Major Stages of Piaget’s Cognitive Development

Four Major Stages of Piaget’s Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.

Important Concepts within Piaget’s Model:

Schemes: Mental model of the world that we use to represent, organize, and interpret our experiences

Assimilation: Integrating new experiences into an existing scheme

Accommodation: Changing or modifying a scheme in order to incorporate a new experience

Four Major Stages:

1. Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
   • Infant’s world consists of the immediate environment
   • Interact and learn by sensory input (hearing, feeling, seeing) with motor capabilities
   • Gradually learn to control their own bodies and objects in the external world
   • The ultimate task at this stage is to achieve the sense that objects go on existing even when we cannot see them (Object Constancy/Permanence).
2. Preoperational (2-7 years)
   • Developing ability to manipulate images and symbols, especially language
   • Play becomes key in learning.  Begin to see use of symbolism in pretend play (e.g. Use a broomstick as a “horsey”).
   • Child’s view of the world is egocentric.
   • Logical organization of thoughts remains undeveloped (e.g. unable to apply principles of conservation).
3. Concrete Operations (7-11 years)
   • Perform logical operations, but only in relation to concrete objects, not abstract ideas.
   • Basic math skills developed (counting, addition, subtraction) as well as an understanding of conservation.
   • Can sort items into categories, reverse the direction of their thinking, and think about two concepts simultaneously.
   • Able to understand a situation from another person’s perspective.
4. Formal Operations (12+ years)
   • Begin to think logically and abstractly, including speculations about what might happen in the future
   • Theoretical, philosophical, and scientific reasoning becomes possible.
   • Abstract concepts and moral values become as important as concrete objects.
   • With these newly developed thinking abilities, adolescents begin to reinterpret and revise their knowledge base.

Almost every CTET and State TET ( UPTET, HTET etc) question paper has questions from this topic.

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