Illustrating Piaget's Theory: Child Observation and Stage Analysis

This essay explores Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development by examining two case studies of children in the pre-operational stage. The first child, aged six, struggles with spatial reasoning and connecting a dollhouse model to a full-size replica, indicating difficulties in understanding scale and representation. The second child exhibits animism, believing inanimate objects have feelings, and struggles with conservation tasks, unable to reconcile number and length. These observations highlight the characteristics of the pre-operational stage, including egocentrism and limitations in logical thinking. The essay emphasizes the importance of understanding these developmental stages to tailor teaching methods effectively, and underscores that teachers can address shortcomings in children by understanding their symptoms.

Piaget: Theory of Stages

According to Jean Piaget, intellectual growth is continuous. It commences at birth and
ceases only at death. However, the abilities such as grasping, shaking, and understanding of
things might vary for different people (Eve and Kangas 2015). Two such cases shall be explained
where the kids experience issues in intellectual growth.
One of the students aged 6 years is in the pre-operational stage. I conducted an
experiment where I showed a room to the child in a small dollhouse. I asked the child to find a
toy in the room. The child was able to find the toy hidden in behind a piece of furniture in the
dollhouse quite easily. Further, I took the child into a full-size room which was an exact replica
of the dollhouse. The child was unable to relate the room to the dollhouse and did not understand
to look behind the couch to find the toy. However, the children who were slightly older than him
could immediately find the toy. I could see the child being confused. The child could not sense
or had the slightest hint on seeing the replica of the dollhouse. He got confused when I asked him
to find the piece of toy in the room. On seeing the size of the room, he got confused and terrified
about searching a small toy in a big room. Apart from this, the child is egocentric as he is lost in
his own private world. The child has not completely grabbed the social function of rules because
of which he chooses to speak less. The child is afraid that he might end up saying something
inappropriate that does not fit in the social world (Light 2017).
Further, another child who is also in his pre-operational stage is believed to be in
animism. She believes that all inanimate toys such as teddy bears have human feelings. The child
brings one of her favourite toys to the class regularly. Recently, there was an incident where her
toy fell on the ground. The child got upset and almost teary eyed as she is under an assumption
that all the things have feelings. She thought that the teddy must have gotten hurt as it fell on the
ground. I could see her rubbing teddy bear’s head and asking him if it got hurt. In her opinion,

every individual gets hurt as all beings are alive. Further, the child played the role of a doctor so
that she could cure her teddy. Another incident happened when I asked the child to count the
blocks in a row. She could easily count the blocks in the rows correctly. However, on asking
which row had more blocks, she got confused. She could not determine which row made the
longest line simply by looking at it. She was unable to focus on both number and the length.
Such inability contributes to her egocentrism (Van Geert 2017).
Therefore, Piaget focuses on what children cannot do. Not all children are equal.
However, by knowing the exact symptoms and shortcomings in the children, the teachers can
work on it.

References
Eve, P. and Kangas, M., 2015. Posttraumatic growth following trauma: Is growth accelerated or
a reflection of cognitive maturation?. The Humanistic Psychologist, 43(4), pp.354-370.
Light, P., 2017. Social interaction and cognitive development: a review of post-Piagetian
research. In Developing thinking(pp. 67-88). Routledge.
Van Geert, P., 2017. The development of perception, cognition and language: A theoretical
approach. Routledge.