A Comprehensive Research on Jean Piaget's Cognitive Theory

This research paper provides a comprehensive overview of Jean Piaget's life, career, and significant contributions to the field of psychology, particularly his cognitive development theory. The paper begins with Piaget's biography, tracing his early interests in biology and philosophy to his later work in child psychology. It details his key concepts, including genetic epistemology and the stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages. The paper explores Piaget's influence on psychology, education, and related fields, highlighting his strengths and weaknesses. It also addresses criticisms of his work. The essay emphasizes his lasting impact on understanding child development and the processes by which children acquire knowledge, making it an essential resource for students studying psychology, education, and related disciplines. The paper also includes important biographies and references to support the research.

Running Head: PIAGET 0
RESEARCH ON PIAGET
PHILIOSOPHER

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ABSTRACT
The entire life of Piaget is high lightened in this research, which starts from his birth in the year
1896 and covers all the ups, downs, and achievements, his career and also his personal life. He is
a pioneer of psychology and the importance of his work which has an essential space in the field
or the subject of education, till his death in the year 1980.
His cognitive theory and research done on the mindset of the children are the commendable work
done by him in the field of psychology. Along with the plus points there are also criticizes which
were faced by him, but all of those criticizes are considered as secondary in front of his
achievements and the work done.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION & OVERVIEW.............................................................................................3
HISTORY.......................................................................................................................................4
Personal......................................................................................................................................4
Career.........................................................................................................................................4
Piaget’s word..............................................................................................................................5
DISCOVERING HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE.......................................................................6
HIS CONTRIBUTION & INFLUENCE ON PSYCHOLOGY................................................7
IMPORTANT BIOGRAPHIES...................................................................................................8
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF PIAGET’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
THEORY........................................................................................................................................9
Strengths.....................................................................................................................................9
Weaknesses.................................................................................................................................9
CRITICISM.................................................................................................................................10
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................11
References.....................................................................................................................................13

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INTRODUCTION & OVERVIEW
Through this research the entire life and history of the Piaget an outstanding philosopher will be
researched along with all his achievements in all the field will be discovered very carefully. The
mesmerizing journey of Jean Piaget started in the year 1896, August 9 and ended on 16
September, 1980.
He was a psychologist in Swiss, who became popular for his work on the development of the
children, his cognitive development theory along with the views on knowledge and the methods
of achieving it, was combined together and called as “genetic epistemology.” He was the
director of the “International Bureau of Education” and in the year 1934 he declared that the
only way of solving the collapse which may possibly raise in the society can only be overcome
by education, so he emphasized mostly on the education of the of the children. In all the
programmers of the pre-services education his child development theory is been studied and the
educators till now continues including these strategies. In Geneva also he generated an
International center for the Genetic branch of philosophy which is basically concerned with
knowledge in the year 1955.
From the beginning of his career till the death there were many alliances of his work which were
made possible and had diverse impact and the scholars called his work and literature as the
“factory of Piaget.” Ernst von Glassersfield considered Piaget as a greet pioneer of the theory of
constructive knowledge and was seen immediately after the psychologist of the year B.F.
Skinner, in the 20th century.

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HISTORY
Personal
Piaget was born in the region of Switzerland and was the eldest son of Arthur Piaget, who was a
professor of literature in the medieval time at the university. He was an advanced as well a clever
child, whose was interested in Biology and the natural world. At the age of 15 he had published
many articles in the field of zoology. Later due to the influence his godfather he developed his
interest in the knowledge theory in the fields of philosophy and logic. In course of time he got
know much about the ideas of the Claparède, which also included the concepts of psychology i.e.
grouping or being closely in touch with the “trials and errors” which are mostly seen in the
mental status of the humans. He then got married in the 1923 to Châtenay and had three
children. He had taught at Geneva University and also at Paris University in the year
1984, so was invited as chief consultant at the conferences of Cornell University and
The University of California, which had addressed the relationship between the
cognitive study and the developments in the curriculum for attaining the current
curriculum in the cognitive development of the children. He was awarded with a prize in
the year 1979 for his outstanding work in social and political sciences and lastly died
and was buried along with the family in an unmarked grave in Geneva (Tattum and
Tattum 2017).
Career
Before becoming a psychologist Piaget was a trained natural historian and philosopher and had
received a doctorate in it thereafter, then Harry Beilin stated that there were four phases in the
theoretical research program of Piaget which were as follows 1st the developing model of
sociology, Here he investigated upon the hidden side of the child’s mind and this was explained

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by using the combination of psychology and other clinical methods. For this purpose he also
interviewed many children by asking them normative questions and after looking at their way of
answering, further would ask them a number of usual questions. By his studies he noticed that he
came across numerous changes and also a gradual progress in the responses of the children. 2nd
intellectual model relating to the developments in biology, in this stage it was discovered that
intellectual development in the species is the outcome of the biological process i.e. assimilation
where the child behaves in a very similar way which remains consistent with the existing ones
and accommodation is when the child shows modified behaviors as compared to the existing
ones. 3rd intellectual development on the elaboration of the logical model, here it was seen that
there are several stages used in the development of the intelligence and all are related to age and
are progressive in nature as next stage can’t be reached before accomplishing the first one.
4th is the figurative thought study. While occurring to this stage Piaget had already discovered
the perceptive and memorial areas of intelligence, to which he didn’t consider completely logical
(Cooperrider and Gentner 2019).
Piaget’s word
According to Piaget the aim of the school must be to educate and bring out the best of education
in the men and women so that they are not just repeating the things which the older generation
had already done, rather capable of doing something new.

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DISCOVERING HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE
Piaget recognized himself as a “genetic epistemologist” whose basic aim was to discover the
roots of the different types of knowledge from its elementary form towards its next level and also
includes the scientific knowledge. Epistemology is that branch of philosophy which is concerned
with origin, nature, extent and limits of the knowledge of the human. He was not only concerned
with the nature of thought but was also interested in understanding and development of its
genetic impact on this process. This theory of his has identified four stages, where the first one is
the sensorimotor stage, which begins from the birth and lasts till the age of two years. This is the
stage where the child tries to recognize the world through his senses or the motor movements.
Second one is the preoperational stage which begins from the age of two and lasts up to seven
years, here the child develops language and symbolic play is emerged into them. Third one states
the concrete operational stage, which begins at the age of seven and ends at the age of eleven,
this stage reflects the struggling phase of the child between its own abstract and theoretical
thinking. Last is the formal operation stage that is considered as the final stage which starts from
the age of 12 years and end up with adulthood, here the child becomes very adaptive towards its
abstractive thoughts and defective reasoning (Smith 2017).

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HIS CONTRIBUTION & INFLUENCE ON PSYCHOLOGY
Piaget had identified many research works and important milestone in the mental developing
capabilities of the children and also supported that the thinking pattern of the children, which is
really very different from that of the adults. One’s interest was pulled in cognitive and
developmental psychology just because of his outstanding work, which is still been studied as an
important topic in psychology, sociology, genetics and education. In his entire career he had
many chair holding positions for the research conducted in genetic and psychology. International
center was created by him in the year 1955 for the Genetic Epistemology and upheld the position
of a director till his last breathe. His work had a greater influence as compared to that of the
earlier researchers, as they had determined and presumed the children as the smaller version or
the early aged stage of the adults, whereas he had presented a new and unique definition to the
childhood and considered the most important period in the developing phase of a human.
Other very well-known psychologists i.e. Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg also got very
much influenced by his work. Brainerd and Reyna also reflected the influence of Piaget in their
work in the year 2005, while writing a text i.e. The Science of False Memory. He was considered
as the most profound psychologist of the 20th century, whose work had a dominant effect in the
world of psychology very similar to that of Freud’s idea a generation ago and had a very long
and high profiled career full of mesmerized field works relating to philosophy of science,
language, education, sociology and evaluation of biology. He was so influential that his work
alone had that much power to shift the focus of the people or the developmental researchers from
the traditional concern relating to the social and emotional development towards the cognitive
developments (Lemaire 2017).

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No other theoretical farmworker was thought to have that larger influence as that of Piaget had
in the field of psychology. He was the profounder of the well-articulated and the integrated
theory of the cognitive development, which was an outstanding work done by him. Not just a
theoretical farmworker who had conceptualized a huge amount of research, Piaget was also a
very flexible author who had written around 70 books, and more than 100 articles which were all
related with the psychology of humans (Piaget, Structuralism (Psychology Revivals) 2015).
IMPORTANT BIOGRAPHIES
Some of the most essential biographies of the life of Piaget are as follows 1st is the Convention
with Jean Piaget by Bringuier J.C. in the year 1980 at the University of Chicago Press, 2nd is the
Jean Piaget, the Man and His Ideas in the year 1952, by Evans R. in New York, 3rd is the
History of psychology in autobiography. Vol.4 in the by Piaget J. in the year 152, in the Press of
the Clark University.

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STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF PIAGET’S
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT THEORY
This theory explains the development of the child by building and using of the mental models
and Piaget considers it as that result which leads to the growth in intellectual and biological
process of the environment. He disagrees with the idea that there are fixed traits for intelligence
and he considered cognitive development as that process which is occurred due to the biological
maturation and interactions. Thus it has the following strengths and weaknesses (Piaget, The
Child's Conception of Physical Causality 2017).
Strengths
This theory brought the revolutionary changes and newness in the perspective of psychology
development, it also brought changes in the mindsets of the people regarding the world of the
child and the methods of studying them and became that field of the research theory that had
inspired and developed understanding in thousands of researchers thereafter. Due to his focus on
the qualitative development, his ideas were used mainly in the field of education, though it could
had been used in many other fields, they basically facilitated on the child’s communication and
understanding. Which further helped in developing the instructional program and educational
strategies for the children (Greene 2017).
Weaknesses
Along with the strengths this theory also faced difficulties or the challenges in its formal
operations as the research of many years shows that, all children are not able to pass across
automatically from the lower stage to the upper one, this creates quarrel in the theory.
Researchers reflected that in certain cases the that environment factors were not being able to

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influence the child’s development and in some cases development was not seen in terms of
stages rather a continuous process.
Questions were raised against the research methods used by Piaget as this theory was unable to
meet the cultural and social norms of the developing society, because his work had mainly
focused on the biological growth and the universal stages
CRITICISM
Along with the supporters the Paget theory also has criticism, some of the common criticism of
his theory are as follows 1st Carlson and Buskist in the year 1997, criticized this theory by stating
that the scientific viewpoint requires the definition of the operating new terms but Piaget had
ignored these thing in very often, which created difficulties for the other who wanted to get
access to his general findings because they were not able to get connected easily so replicated
precisely. For example the terms like “accommodation:” and “assimilation” were used to reflect
the occurrence of changes in a child, but the question here raises is that, what changes is he
actually talking about? There is no exact meaning or definition of these terms explained by him
which could have guided the researchers for getting linked between the behavior which was
observed and changes occurred in the mindset of that child. 2nd criticism was done by Weiten in
the year 1992, he argued on the stage theory of the Piaget and stated that the stages may
sometimes also be inaccurate or simply wrong. 3rd some researchers in the year 1960’s and 70’s
argued that there were many shortcomings in the theory of Piaget as his ways of defining a
theory is confusing and abstract, basically while estimating the abilities of the child. They upon
their research have invented that children are much more capable of and can attain success on the
simple tasks which requires same amount of skills (Clements, Fuson and Sarama 2017). Some
says that there are lots of predictions in the work of Piaget, he thinks that some stages may

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reflect the particular form of task. For example all the preschool children will perform the same
in the perceptional level in all the cognitive tasks. While others also criticize his work by stating
that his methods and concepts of teaching the children and developing the best out of them may
also be unsuccessful because there are instances where brief instructions are required by the
children to learn the advanced concepts (Greer 2017).
He had overlooked the cultural effects- There are researchers who states that Piaget overlooks
the cultural and social groups of the students, there are lots of presumption in his work that may
be regarding the western society or the developmental skills in the children etc.
Use of unscientific methods- According to Edwards, the4 work of Piaget was characterized as
having lack of control, small samples along with that having shortage or absence of statistical
analysis in its research work. Most criticism is due to the origination of his work from that of the
empirical and logical positivism which was really very popular at a time. He wanted to identify
the universal feature in the cognitive development by putting the children in certain situations
and observe them because according to him those small observed samples of the children and the
methods used by him were adequate enough but that was possible only till the time there were
adequate and identical structures which were common to all the individuals (Barrouillet 2015).
Etc.
CONCLUSION
Therefore it can be concluded that although there are some criticism but still the theories and the
work done by the Paget are still greatly respected in all the communities of the Psychological
world. His theories have not lacked any influence leaving on the other researchers or the
developmental psychologists for researching in the new arenas. His work has the widest

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influence and impact on the education systems, which perhaps may not be exactly accurate but
also can not completely considered as wrong.

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References
Barrouillet, Pierre . 2015. "Developmental Review." Theories of cognitive development: From
Piaget to today 38: 1-12.
Clements, Douglas H, Karen C Fuson, and Julie Sarama. 2017. "Early Childhood Research
Quarterly." The research-based balance in early childhood mathematics: A response to
Common Core criticisms 40: 150-162.
Cooperrider, Kensy, and Dedre Gentner. 2019. "Cognitions." The career of measurement 191.
Greene, Roberta. 2017. Human Behavior Theory and Social Work Practice. 2nd . New York:
Routledge.
Greer, Brian . 2017. "Educational Studies in Mathematics." Review of “All positive action starts
with criticism: Hans Freudenthal and the didactics of mathematics” (2015). Translated
from “Elke positieve actie begint met critiek: Hans Freudenthal en de didactiek van de
wiskunde” by Sacha la Bastide-van Gemert (Sp 95 (1): 386.
Lemaire, Patrick. 2017. Cognitive Development from a Strategy Perspective. 1st. London:
Routledge.
Piaget, ean. 2015. Structuralism (Psychology Revivals). 1st. London: Psychology Press.
—. 2017. The Child's Conception of Physical Causality. 1st . New York: Routledge.
Smith, eslie. 2017. Necessary Knowledge Piagetian Perspectives on Constructivism. 1st.
London: Routledge.
Tattum, Eva , and Delwyn Tattum. 2017. Social Education and Personal Development. 1st.
London: Routledge.