Piaget

Piaget's main theory revolved around the four stages of cognitive developement in children. The four stages are as follows:

1. Sensorimotor Stage
Age of birth to 2years
Children learn through their senses and movement of both themselves and their environment. They also learn about object
permanance. This is when they begin to understand that an object exsists even if they can no longer see it.

2. Preoperational Stage
Ages 2-7years
This is when children acquire their motor skills. This includes things such as coordination, hand-eye coordination and speech.

3. Concrete Operational Stage
7-11years
It is in this stage that a child start developing and using logic

4. Formal Operational Stage
11+years
This is the final stage of cognitive development. In this stage chldren can think abstractly, draw conclusions and evaluate
information.

I find Piaget's work slightly difficult to accept on the whole. I believe that yes children obvioulsy develpoe in stages but I don't think that those stages are neccessarily the same for all children. Piaget's theory states that the stages develope at the same rate that the child ages. However I don't think that this allows for pyschological developement or different learning rates which are inevitable amognst children.

Piaget's stages are sequenctional. However children do not develope at a detirmened rate and occurence and timing of their developement cannot be timed to such a key as Piaget has it.

The following is a link to a short video on Piaget and his work on the different stages of cognitive development.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcjPkPIwsog

I thought the clip was quite effective in explaining the stages as it shows how children react to cognitive thinking and problems differently and more advancingly as they progress in the stages.