1. His Life His Theory Applications in Education
Jean Piaget
His Life
His Theory
Applications in Education

2. Outline Who is Jean Piaget? How did he Start Working in Psychology?
Piagetian Glossary
His Theory:
Stages of Development:
Sensorimotor Stage (0 – 2 years)
Preoperational Stage (2 – 6/7 years)
Concrete Operational Stage (6/7 years – 11 years)
Formal Operational Stage (11 –15 years)
Applications of his theory in Education

3. Who’s Jean Piaget? Place Of Birth: Switzerland
Date of Birth: August 9th, 1896
First Appearance: at the age of 11, he wrote a short notice on an albino sparrow – this is considered as the start of a brilliant scientific career.

4. How did he Start Working in Psychology?
PHD in Natural Science.
Moving to France – Working at a school.
First experiential studies of the growing mind.

5. Piagetian Glossary
Genetic Epistemology: The study of the origins of knowledge.
Do we just add more information over time? No!
Children are not just little adults who have not acquired as much knowledge.
They think in qualitatively different ways.
Their thinking is not illogical, but employs a different logic.
Example

6. Piagetian Glossary
Schemas: Simple skills that the individual possesses and that direct the way this individual is to explore his/her environment and gain more knowledge.
Example

9. Piagetian Glossary
Example
Assimilation: Incorporation of new material from the environment into a schema.

11. Piagetian Glossary
Example
Accommodation: Changing a certain schema to fit the environment.

13. Piagetian Glossary
Adaptation: Piaget’s term of what we call “Learning”; individuals use schemata to understand features of the world.

14. Piagetian Glossary
Equilibrium: when Assimilation and Accommodation work in harmony together; it means that adaptation is driven by a biological drive to obtain balance between schemes and the environment.
Further Investigations…

15. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development
Basic Assumption:
Development is children’s attempts to make sense of the world.
Development is the orderly, qualitative, and adaptive changes in:
Physical
Personal
Social
Cognitive
Aspects of an individual.

16. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development
Factors that Influence Development:
Maturation
Activity
Social Transmission

17. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development
Two major characteristics to the theory:
The process of coming to know
The stages the individual moves through as he/she gradually acquire the ability to know.

18. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development
Video 1: Introduction to Piaget.

19. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Stage (0 – 2 years)
Preoperational Stage (2 – 6/7 years)
Concrete Operational Stage (6/7 – 11 years)
Formal Operational Stage (11– 15 years)

20. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Stage: (0-2 Years)
Infant uses senses and motor abilities to understand the world.

21. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development Sensorimotor Stage
Period
Characteristics
0-1 months
Reflex activity only
No differentiation
1-4 months
Hand-mouth coordination
Differentiation via sucking
4-8 months
Hand-eye coordination
Repeats unusual events

22. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development Sensorimotor Stage
Period
Characteristics
8-12 months
Coordination of two schemata
Object permanence attained
12-18 months
New means through experimentation
follows sequential displacements
18-24 months
Internal representations
New means through mental combinations

23. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development Sensorimotor Stage
Video 2: Object Permanence

24. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development
Preoperational Stage: (2-6/7 Years)
The development of internal representation permits the young child to begin to use symbols to represent objects

25. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development Preoperational Stage
Egocentric Stage (2-4 years)
Problems are solved through representation
Language develops
Thought and logic are both EGOCENTRIC

26. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development Preoperational Stage – Egocentric Stage
Video 3: Egocentrism

27. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development Preoperational Stage
Intuitive Stage (5-7 years)
Child cannot solve conservation problems
Judgments are based on perception rather than logic

28. Video 4: Conservative Tasks
Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development Preoperational Stage – Intuitive Stage
Video 4: Conservative Tasks

29. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development
Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)
Child attains reversibility
Child can solve conservative problems
Logical operations developed and applied to concrete problems
Child cannot solve complex verbal problems

30. Video 5: Logical Operations
Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development Concrete Operational Stage
Video 5: Logical Operations

31. Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development
Formal Operational Stage (11-15 years)
Child can logically solve all types of problems
Child can think scientifically
Child can solve complex verbal problems
Cognitive structures attained

32. Video 6: Formal Operational Child
Piaget’s Theory: Stages of Cognitive Development Formal Operational Stage
Video 6: Formal Operational Child

33. Application of Piaget’s Theory in Education
“Learning Comes Through “Doing” – It is an
active process”

34. Application of Piaget’s Theory in Education
Learner-Centered Philosophy
Activity is Essential
Individualized Instruction

35. Application of Piaget’s Theory in Education
Teaching at all levels of education must be
founded on the activity of the learner. Concepts
CANNOT be taught through verbal instruction.
Cognitive development arises out of the activity of the child; therefore, the best methods of education for development are those that foster the activity or active learning of the child.
The child receives valid information about objects and events when he acts on them (such as touching, tasting, looking at, listening to, and thinking about them..) here, the child assimilates the actions and constructs knowledge in this process.
Spoken or written symbols cannot replace the child’s actions in the construction of knowledge.

36. Application of Piaget’s Theory in Education Six Principles
1. The teacher should create an environment and an atmosphere in which children will be active and will initiate and complete their own activities. The teacher should provide time to spare and materials to complete self-initiated activities.
There should be no formal periods or time blocks.
Children should be permitted to complete the activities they start and maintain interest in the activities even if interest is maintained for several days or longer.
Example of the 3rd grader page 103 – 104.

37. Application of Piaget’s Theory in Education Six Principles
2. Teachers should give feedback to their students when dealing with social-arbitrary knowledge, but when it comes to physical and logical-mathematical knowledge feedback should not be given.
As we already discussed, knowledge is distinguished in three areas, social, physical, and logical.
Teachers’ verbal reinforcement is not desirable in logical-mathematical or physical knowledge because the reinforcement comes from the actions of the child and the objects will correct the children; and direct verbal reinforcement diverts children from objects and their actions on the objects.
However, it’s desirable to reinforce children when dealing with social-arbitrary knowledge because in this area, knowledge is practically other people.

38. Application of Piaget’s Theory in Education Six Principles
3. Teachers should let the preoperational child go through stages of being “wrong”.
Being wrong is not a big problem! Really! A child needs to experience things in order to know whether it’s right or not.
For example, in order to know whether a ball sinks or floats, the child needs to try; he need to put in ball in a bowl of water for instance and see. If he had predicted that it sinks, he would be wrong and learn that it sinks.

39. Application of Piaget’s Theory in Education Six Principles
4. Teachers should know that some types of knowledge are best learned and motivated through interaction with other children.
- Children’s egocentrism is broken down slowly during the preoperational stage. In general, children can communicate with their peers more easily than with adults, that’s why children’s tutoring to each other has always been proved successful.

40. Application of Piaget’s Theory in Education Six Principles
5. View all Aspects of Knowledge as inseparable.
While in concept the three areas of knowledge are separable, psychologically speaking they are not. Knowledge exists as a whole in the child’ mind and actions.
For example, a child playing and trying to arrange sticks of different lengths activates his physical as well as his logic-mathematical knowledge.
He is deriving physical information directly from the objects and mathematical-logical information from his action of arranging or ordering the sticks.

41. Application of Piaget’s Theory in Education Six Principles
6. If you want a child to acquire a specific fact or piece of content that is not available to him, teach it directly and reinforce the learning.
Direct teaching through reinforcement, such as token earnings or behavior modification, is a desirable approach and the most efficient way to change a person’s behavior. However, one should be careful not to reinforce the learning of the child but only the behavior because as we said earlier, direct verbal reinforcers divert the child’s learning from the objects and his actions on those objects.

42. Application of Piaget’s Theory in Education
Application of Piaget’s Theory in Education Other Teaching Considerations
Teachers are organizers of the learning process.
Teachers are assessors of the child’s thinking.
Teachers are initiators of group activities
Materials
Development is not automatic
Accelerations
Page 112  119

43. References A Brief Biography of Jean Piaget – Piaget Archives.
Jean Piaget – Psychology History
The Piaget Handbook for Teachers and Parents – Teachers’ College Press
Piaget for the Classroom Teacher – Wadsworth
Knowledge and Development – Easly
The Teaching of Young Children – Schoken
Piaget in the Classroom – Shwebel and Ralph

44. The End