Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 – September 16, 1980) was a Swiss development psychologist, famous for working out a sequence of stages of cognitive development, and notable for his idea that children (and indeed adults) are continually generating theories about the external world (which are kept or dismissed depending on whether we see them working or not in practice).

Influence

Piaget's theory of cognitive development has proved influential, notably on the work of Lev Vygotsky and of Lawrence Kohlberg. Among others, the philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas has incorporated it into his work, most notably in The Theory of Communicative Action. Piaget also had a considerable impact in the field of computer science and artificial intelligence. Seymour Papert used Piaget's work while developing the Logo programming language. Alan Kay used Piaget's theories as the basis for the Dynabook programming system concept, which was first discussed within the confines of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, or Xerox PARC. These discussions led to the development of the Alto prototype, which explored for the first time all the elements of the graphical user interface (GUI), and influenced the creation of user interfaces in the 1980's and beyond. The philosopher Thomas Kuhn credited Piaget's work in helping him understanding the transition between modes of thought which characterised his theory of paradigm shifts.

Related Topics:
Theory of cognitive development - Lev Vygotsky - Lawrence Kohlberg - Philosopher - Social theorist - Jürgen Habermas - The Theory of Communicative Action - Computer science - Seymour Papert - Logo programming language - Alan Kay - Dynabook - Xerox PARC - Alto - Graphical user interface - Thomas Kuhn - Paradigm shift

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Piaget has had a substantial impact on approaches to education. In Conversations with Jean Piaget, he says: "Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society... But for me, education means making creators... You have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists." (Bringuier, 1980, p.132).

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