Jean Piaget

Biographical Information

Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland on August 9, 1896, and died in Geneva on September 16, 1980.  As a child he was interested in nature, biology, and zoology.  One of his most notable hobbies was shell collecting which lead him to publish many articles on mollusks by the age of 15.  After schooling in Switzerland, he moved to Paris where he taught at the Grange-Aux-Belles Street School for Boys, where he assisted Alfred Binet in creating his intelligence tests.  As he helped create and administer these tests, he began the development of theories concerning children's cognitive processes.  He was married in 1923 to Valentine Chatenay, and has three children which he studied from infancy.   

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Piaget believes learning occurs in four stages. He also thought one could not learn outside or more than their learning stage. Within the classroom, it is the duty of the teacher to help progress students along and allow them to see ideas in different and complex ways.  The four stages include:

• Sensorimotor Period (birth-2 years old)
• Using senses and motor activity, children will learn to organize activities.
•  Preoperational Thought (2-6/7 years old)
•  Children will begin to represent their lives, people, and events through different forms of representation.
• Develops creative and illogical thinking skills.
• Important for play and language.
• Concrete Operations (6/7-11/12 years old)
• Children are able to work on and solve easy, current problems, however, they are not able to formulate abstract ideas.
• Formal Operations (11/12-adult)
• This is the highest form of cognitive thinking.
• Now able to think abstract and formulate predictions.

Mingling Conversation

While in the concrete operations stage, it is important to help guide students to form abstract ideas, and apply higher order thinking strategies.