Piaget's Theory (AQA A Level Psychology): Revision Note

Piaget's theory of cognitive development

• Piaget’s theory of cognitive development (developed from the 1930s to the 1970s) is based on the idea that children’s thinking and reasoning are qualitatively different to that of an adult

• Piaget was interested in studying child development in terms of how a child’s thinking progresses according to their age, i.e., it is a maturational theory

• Piaget observed how his children played at home, as well as observing children’s games on the streets of his hometown in Switzerland

• Piaget was working at the Binet Institute when he became interested in the errors children made, rather than their correct answers

• Piaget believed that children are continuously exploring their environment, almost performing experiments to test what they discover every day (hence, discovery learning)

  • Piaget suggested that children are ‘little scientists’

• Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is an example of constructivism, i.e., children learn via action and reflection

  • They then build on these learning blocks to construct schemas, which in turn help them to negotiate their world

• Piaget argued that children develop cognitions according to genetic epistemology, i.e., this drive to explore and learn is innate and runs according to a nature-derived ‘timetable’ 

Piaget's schema theory

• Piaget’s schema theory is the basis on which cognitive development is built

  • Schemas are mental representations of the world, of other people as well as the self, events, situations, ideas, etc.

• The first schema that a child constructs, according to Piaget, is the 'me-schema', which stores all the child's knowledge about themselves, as the child begins to understand that they are separate from other aspects of their environment

• As the child gets older, their schemas become more complex and sophisticated and can encompass not only concrete objects (e.g., ‘cat’, ‘house’) but also abstract concepts (e.g., ‘freedom’, ‘loneliness’)

• Assimilation is the process by which new information is incorporated into existing schemas

  • E.g. a child in a family with dogs meets an unfamiliar breed of dog for the first time; they can incorporate it into their existing 'dog' schema without changing the schema itself

• Accommodation is the process by which new schemas are created or existing schemas are significantly altered in response to new information

  • E.g., the same child meets a cat and initially tries to assimilate it into their 'dog' schema (four legs, fur, tail), but its differences force them to accommodate by forming a new 'cat' schema

• The state of equilibrium is when a child's schemas are balanced: the information in them makes sense and helps the child to understand their world

• Disequilibrium occurs when a child encounters new information which does not fit their existing schemas

  • This is an unpleasant state which motivates the child to adapt

• Equilibration is the process of escaping disequilibrium by adapting schemas (through assimilation or accommodation) until balance is restored

  • According to Piaget, it is this drive to achieve equilibration that motivates children to learn

Research which investigates Piaget’s theory

• Nelson et al. (1986) - Preschool children have developed well-organised schemas about  familiar events constructed from their own experience and use these schemas to help them plan, reflect and enact behaviours/ideas

• Howe et al. (1992) – children aged 9–12, working in groups of four to study and discuss the movement of objects down a slope, increased their level of knowledge after discussion but did not converge on the same conclusions

• Dasen (2017) researched children’s cognitive development in the Cote d’Ivoire and found that abstract reasoning is achieved via symbols and inductive reasoning rather than the analytical, deductive reasoning used in the West

Evaluation of Piaget’s theory

Strengths

• Piaget’s theory was instrumental in encouraging discovery learning within educational settings, i.e., children need to explore and discover for themselves rather than being told what to think by adults

• Piaget's theory was groundbreaking: children’s cognitive development had previously been overlooked, but his ideas prompted a great deal of research in the field, providing hugely valuable insight into children’s thinking

Limitations

• Piaget’s theory does not consider the role of language in a child's cognitive development

  • This means that it is an incomplete explanation of the different aspects of developing cognition

• Piaget may have overestimated how motivated children are to learn: children vary greatly in intellectual curiosity, and his sample (clever, middle-class children attached to his university nursery) may explain why he assumed all children share a strong drive to equilibrate

  • This biased sample and his reliance on informal observation limit the validity of the theory's universal claims

• Piaget may have underplayed the role of other people in learning: he saw adults and peers mainly as sources of information during discovery learning, whereas Vygotsky argued that learning is essentially a social process, with children capable of much more advanced learning when supported by peers or an expert adult

  • This suggests Piaget's individualist account of learning is incomplete

Issues & Debates

• Piaget based much of his research on observations of middle-class Swiss children, which may not reflect the cognitive development of children in other cultures or socio-economic contexts

  • Dasen (2017) found that cognitive milestones differ across cultures, e.g., abstract reasoning develops differently in children from Côte d’Ivoire

  • This suggests that Piaget's theory may not be universally applicable

• Piaget’s theory is maturational, placing strong emphasis on the role of innate biological processes (nature) in cognitive development

  • However, it also acknowledges that environmental experiences help shape schemas through assimilation and accommodation, showing interactionist elements