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).

Piaget's view of the child's mind

Piaget viewed children as little philosophers and scientists building their own individual theories of knowledge. Some people have used his ideas to focus on what children cannot do. Piaget however used their problem areas to help understand their cognitive growth and development. For example children may not be able to conserve five checkers spread out and report that there are more checkers. If you reduce the number to three they could conserve numbers. By focusing on the fact they cannot conserve numbers for five items you would be slow to pick up that they can do it for lower numbers. A surprise is if you tell them a magic bunny moved the objects they would conserve higher numbers. Most people miss that children are theoretical. But many children have imaginary playmates and love to play the game of let's pretend.

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