Piaget

• Piaget's theory is based on the idea that children develop through stages, with each stage building upon the previous one.
• what did Piaget produce?

  • theory of cognitive development
  • realised children think entirely different to adults rather than knowing less than adults
  • divided childhood into 2 stages: the role of motivation and the question of how knowledge develops
• what is cognitive development?

  • describes all mental processes (thinking, reasoning and understanding of the world)
  • cog dev continues throughout but with a particular focus on childhood
• what are schemas?

  • mental framework for beliefs and expectations
  • our understanding of a person, object or idea
  • schemas become increasingly complex during development as we acquire more information about each object
  • developed from experience
• what is assimilation?

  • form of learning that takes place when we acquire new learning or a more advanced understanding of an object, person or idea
  • when new info doesn't radically change our understanding of the topic we can assimilate it into an existing schema
• what is accommodation?

  • form of learning that takes place when we acquire new information that changes our understanding of a topic to the extent that we need to form a new one or a new schema or radically change existing schemas to deal with the new understanding
• what is equilibration?

  • when we have encountered new information and built it into our understanding of a topic either by assimilating into an existing schema or accommodating it by forming a new one
  • everything is balanced and we have escaped the unpleasant experience of a lack of balance equilibrium
• Piaget's experiments

  • his theory was created through a series of experiments which allowed him to conclude that cog dev occurs through interaction of inborn abilities and environmental events that proceed through a series of intellectual development
• Piaget's mental structures

  • knowledge is actively discovered using mental structures known as:
  • functional variants (discovery and understanding of knowledge)
  • variant structures (these change and develop as knowledge is discovered)
• what are functional variants

  • discovery and understanding of knowledge through:
  • the process of adaptation-accommodation and assimilation
  • the process of equilibrium involving swinging between disequilibrium and equilibrium
• what are variant structures?

  • these change and develop as knowledge is discovered including:
  • schemas - ways of understanding the world
  • operations - strings of schemas assembled in logical order