Piaget's Theory Paper

Psychologist Jean Piaget’s theory describes the cognitive development of children. In Piaget’s view, children learn through the four fundamental stages of cognitive development. He believed that the stages need to occur in a particular order, as each stage involves and improves the last. (Webb, P.K, 2001, Piaget: Implications for teaching, page 1-2). Piaget suggested that development had to come before learning, and intelligence is something that grows and develops through a series of stages (Cherry, K. 2016, Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development). The four theories include the sensorimotor stage (infancy: 0-2 years) which involves a child taking in their physical environment, Piaget suggested that infants learn through their senses (touching, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling: Piaget, 1952b, 1962), their repeated use of reflex actions (sucking, grasping) which makes them increasingly capable of their movements. This stage begins shortly after birth with babies being able to imitate and mimic facial expressions (smiling, or an open mouth). According to Piaget (1954) a child (around 8-12 months) believe that if they cannot see something that it ceases to exist and to find that missing ‘something’ the child would look in the last place they saw that object or person (S. Howard, R. Walton, 2015, Educational Psychology: Foundations of Learning
Piaget (1952) defined a schema as “a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning”. Piaget emphasised on the important of schemas in cognitive development and he described how they are developed. They can be defined as a set of linked mental representations of the world, which are used to understand and respond to situations in a logical way and know when to use them (McLeod, S. 2009, Simply Psychology: Jean