Accomplishments of Jean Piget: Genetic Epistomology

Jean Piaget was one of the most influential theorist of the 20th Century. A constructivist, he was born in Switzerland in 1896, he published his first paper at the age of 10 on an Albino Sparrow. At the age of 16 he was offered a position as curator of a museum but had to turn down as he was still at school. Piaget went on to University and studied Biology, Psychology and Philosophy and rather than choose one he combined all three into a new discipline which he called “genetic epistemology”, meaning “the developmental theory of knowledge”, how we know the world. https://moodle.ncirl.ie/course/view.php?id=2389§ion=

Piaget said we can classify education into two main categories, passive education relying on memory and active education relying on intelligent understanding and discovery he continues our real problem is, what is the goal of education? Are we forming children who are only capable of learning what is already known? Or should we try and develop creative & innovative minds, capable of discovery from the pre-school age on, throughout life? Tran (2012)

He suggested that children sort the knowledge they acquire through their experiences and interactions into groupings known as schemas. When new information is acquired, it can either be assimilated into existing schemas or accomodated through revising and existing schema or creating an entirely new category of information. Today, he is best known for his research on children's cognitive development. Piaget studied the intellectual development of his own three children and created a theory that described the stages that children pass through in the development of intelligence and formal thought processes. http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/piag...

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Kendra, C. About.com Psychology. (n.d.). Jean Piaget Biography (1896 -1980). Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/piaget.htm

Kendra, C. About.com Psychology. (n.d.). Jean Piaget Biography (1896 -1980). Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/sindex/g/def_schema.htm

McLeod, S. A. (2009). Jean Piaget | Cognitive Theory - Simply Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html

Piaget, J. (1973). Main Trends in Psychology. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Singer, D.G. & Revenson, T.A. (1997). A Piaget Primer: How a Child Thinks (Revised Edition). Madison, Connecticut: International Universities Press Inc.

Van Kham Tran. (2012, Jan, 10th). Piaget’s Developmental Theory: An overview, Part 1 [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_EkfWS2Wks