Piaget's Theory
Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory
Rebekah Wright
Nutrition and Health of Children and Families
Angela Stratton
March 25, 2013
Cognitive Development
I have chosen the theory of Piaget, which is the theory of cognitive development. I have chosen this particular theory, because I believe it to be one that covers a wide range of development of children and what they learn and how they learn as they grow.
The main objective of Piaget’s theory is to be able to explain the developments of the child from infancy to adolescent and how they learn to think using hypotheses. “Piaget believed that cognitive development did not progress at a steady rate, but rather in leaps and bounds.”(Dasen 1994) Piaget also believed that cognitive development was reconstruction of one’s mind and ways of thinking due to their environment and peers. A child may have one thought or opinion about something and then they may experience something within that thought that makes them change their mind and have a totally different opinion. For example a child may be raised in a home and go to school where there are rules and set guidelines that he has to follow, which gives him a thought that all schools are ran with these guidelines and then he may move and go to a different school that has all different rules and ways of teaching. He then may not understand why it is different and his opinion on all schools teaching the same way would have changed.
Another part of this theory is that of equilibration, which is the balance and motivation that when a child gets discouraged or irritated they push through and continue until accomplishing the task that is giving him those feelings.
A great part to this theory is that Piaget did not only concentrate on the way the child learned but also how they thought. He used three techniques in his study of observing children to learn and see how each one’s mind worked.
The first one is naturalistic observation. This one allowed Piaget to make very
Rebekah Wright
Nutrition and Health of Children and Families
Angela Stratton
March 25, 2013
Cognitive Development
I have chosen the theory of Piaget, which is the theory of cognitive development. I have chosen this particular theory, because I believe it to be one that covers a wide range of development of children and what they learn and how they learn as they grow.
The main objective of Piaget’s theory is to be able to explain the developments of the child from infancy to adolescent and how they learn to think using hypotheses. “Piaget believed that cognitive development did not progress at a steady rate, but rather in leaps and bounds.”(Dasen 1994) Piaget also believed that cognitive development was reconstruction of one’s mind and ways of thinking due to their environment and peers. A child may have one thought or opinion about something and then they may experience something within that thought that makes them change their mind and have a totally different opinion. For example a child may be raised in a home and go to school where there are rules and set guidelines that he has to follow, which gives him a thought that all schools are ran with these guidelines and then he may move and go to a different school that has all different rules and ways of teaching. He then may not understand why it is different and his opinion on all schools teaching the same way would have changed.
Another part of this theory is that of equilibration, which is the balance and motivation that when a child gets discouraged or irritated they push through and continue until accomplishing the task that is giving him those feelings.
A great part to this theory is that Piaget did not only concentrate on the way the child learned but also how they thought. He used three techniques in his study of observing children to learn and see how each one’s mind worked.
The first one is naturalistic observation. This one allowed Piaget to make very
References: Dasen, P. (1994). Culture and cognitive development from a Piagetian perspective. In W .J. Lonner & R.S. Malpass (Eds.), Psychology and Culture. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Groark, C. J., & Song, L. A. (2012). Health and nutrition of children. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Piaget, J. (1945). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. London: Heinemann