Jean Piaget's Five Stages Of Development

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Jean Piaget was a swiss expert whose theories on the nature of children’s thinking and learning have been extremely influential since the 1960s. In his theory, there are five key stages in relation to children of a young age. The first key stage was the ‘Stages of development’. Piaget argued that there was a natural path in which the development of thought, of a child, would follow. This was known as ‘genetic epistemology’. A child would have to be at certain stages of the development to learn new ideas and information. Therefore, Piaget identified four stages within this process. These stages of development were split into four sections; the Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete operational, and Formal operations stages. The Sensorimotor stage was all about a child’s first two years of life. This is where a child would a toddler’s knowledge mainly came from physical action, from their senses. The toddler would become aware of object permanence. The Preoperational stage included children from the ages two to seven. In this stage, the child would learn to manipulate the environment around them and begin to identify different objects were words. The Concrete operational stage includes children from the ages of seven to eleven, this is whereby logical thoughts start to develop. They’re able to …show more content…

His main work is based around the way in which children’s cultural and social factors influence their development. His work has had a strong effect on the development of our current educational theories. His theory on language and thinking emphasises the importance that the role of language plays in the development of a child’s thought process. He believed a child’s language resulted from social interaction with others, such as family and friends. (Pound). Vygotsky argued, "that language is the main tool that promotes thinking, develops reasoning, and supports cultural activities like reading and writing" (Vygotsky

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