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Piaget Jean 1896 - 1980 (84)

Family is the most important school.


QUOTES

excerpts form

The Psychology

of Intelligence



Jean Piaget was a Swiss scientist, physicist, philosopher and psychologist, best known for his studies of children's cognitive development. He was born in Newcastle, Switzerland, on August 9, 1896, to a bourgeois family; is father was a university professor. In his youth he was interested in biology and at the age of 15 he published a study on mollusks. He studied natural sciences with a dissertation on Ostrich's valley and received his doctorate in 1918 from the University of Nessatel. In 1920 he continued his studies in Paris and in 1922 he moved to Geneva to work as director of research at the Rousseau Institute. From 1930 he became director of the International Institute of Education

He had three children and he started studying infant's behavior, to reach the conclusion that children's thought processes have their own kind of order and their own special logic, that children are not just "empty containers" to be filled with knowledge but active creators of knowledge, who constantly examine and reconstruct their theories as they perform experiments, make observations, interact with the world around them. His theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development:

Sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years
Preoperational stage: ages 2 to 7
Concrete operational stage: ages 7 to 11
Formal operational stage: ages 12 and up

Piaget received strong criticism for overemphasizing the role of cognitive development, but in any case, his studies and publications had a huge impact on the development of pedagogical science.

Piaget worked until 1980, the year he died, on September 16.