Evaluate

• Piaget has been criticised for underestimating the age at which children can achieve different parts of the stages 


  Psychologists may argue that young children may have object permanence but may lack the skills or motivation to find the missing toy. 
• Cognitive stages are not fixed for all children 


  some children reach stages sooner/ can demonstrate part of a stage at different ages. E.g Aboriginal children demonstrate the cultural influences of development, as they reach concrete operational stage earlier than European children.
• Researchers have shown that only around half of adults actually reach the formal operations stage with many not being capable of abstract thinking. 


  Piaget failed to recognise that not everyone reaches the final stage of development therefore his theory is not universal like he claims.
• Piaget describes the different stages but doesn’t explain how these stages actually occur and what changes the child’s thinking. 


  Therefore although we have an idea of what happens, we don’t know why and what actually prompts these changes.
• Some of Piaget’s research has been criticised for being too complicated for the children to understand – for example when young children are given a simplified version of the three mountains task, they are able to see things from the doll’s perspective, suggesting that they are not egocentric.
• Piaget’s thinking can be considered reductionist because he didn’t take into account the important role that teachers have in children’s learning. 


  Piaget stated that children must reach certain stages in their development before they can continue learning whereas Vygotsky states that if children ‘scaffold’ learning and support students then they can continue to learn effectively.