Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a Swiss scientist whose theory has been very influential in the way we think about child development. Piaget was honored by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Piaget studied children's thinking through what he called the clinical method. He encouraged children to talk freely and learned about their thoughts from a detailed analysis of what they said.
Piaget believed that we are constantly adapting to our environment. We use our minds to organize the world in ways that we can understand. The organization is based on the development of schemas.
Schemas: a cognitive framework that places concepts, objects, or experiences into categories or groups of associations
Piaget set out two processes of adaptation: assimilation and accommodation
Assimilation: fitting new experiences into existing mental schemas
Accommodations: changing your mental schemas so they fit new experiences
Equilibration: an attempt to resolve uncertainty to return to a comfortable cognitive state
Piaget believed that children change in qualitative ways from one age period to the next. The stages he described were based on how he believed children thought about and understood the world at each age level. Piaget believed that children are not just less knowledgable than adults; rather, they think in qualitatively different ways at each developmental stage.
Constructivism: the idea that humans actively construct their understanding of the world, rather than passively receiving knowledge
Piaget believed that we are constantly adapting to our environment. We use our minds to organize the world in ways that we can understand. The organization is based on the development of schemas.
Schemas: a cognitive framework that places concepts, objects, or experiences into categories or groups of associations
Piaget set out two processes of adaptation: assimilation and accommodation
Assimilation: fitting new experiences into existing mental schemas
Accommodations: changing your mental schemas so they fit new experiences
Equilibration: an attempt to resolve uncertainty to return to a comfortable cognitive state
Piaget believed that children change in qualitative ways from one age period to the next. The stages he described were based on how he believed children thought about and understood the world at each age level. Piaget believed that children are not just less knowledgable than adults; rather, they think in qualitatively different ways at each developmental stage.
Constructivism: the idea that humans actively construct their understanding of the world, rather than passively receiving knowledge