Human Development: Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development: an INTRODUCTION

Over the past centuries Educators and Psychologist have observed these developmental changes occurred throughout human life and they came up with various theoretical perspectives as such Psychoanalytic, Social-learning, Cognitive learning, Biological / Ethological and Ecological. Although there are contradiction on the development and the way it take place in these theories, some underlined principle of these theories include the continuous development rate, orderly and sequential development and inter- relation of these development.

Basically, development is an orderly adaptive series of changes that occurs in human beings and animal’s life through the conception to death as the matter of maturation and experience. According to Woolfolk (2012) human development occurs in four main aspects such as Physical development, Personal development, Social development and Cognitive development. Hence, these changes of developments occurs naturally and through learning as the result of how the person interact and adapt in their surroundings.

Intellectual or Mental development of human being is a continuous process which goes on from birth to death. Twentieth century’s one of the most influential theory is the theories of Cognition and it mainly describes how human being learn or process information. Among various theories of cognition Piaget’s theory of Cognitive development is most highly recognized theory in the area of learning. As this theory provides an overall explanation of human development, this article primarily discuss the detail aspect of the theory, different developmental stages and also highlights on how it affect learning. Then it focuses on the importance of this theory to the teachers and how it can be applied in the field of teaching and learning.

                                            

 PIAGET’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT THEORY

In psychology, the term cognition refers to thinking and mental process whereas cognitive development is a long term process which bring developmental changes in it. In the area of developmental psychology, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) was among the most influential researcher who formed a model which describes the child’s development from infancy to adulthood.

According to Woolfol (2012), Piaget’s (1954, 1963, 1970) stated  learning is a constructive process where human construct their understanding of the world by gathering and organizing information through active participation and interaction rather than a passive assimilation or just memorizing it through rote learning.   

The various aspects of these development includes formation of concept, perception, development of language and memory, creativity, thinking skills and also problem solving. According to Woolfolk (2012) a major assumption of this theory is that individual are capable of learning by their own even if they are thought constructively or not. 

Piaget’s believes children are active learners and they construct knowledge by organizing it into schemes either by the process of assimilation or accommodation (Woolfolk, 2012). Which means by doing this they adjust ideas to make sense of reality. Equilibrium and disequilibrium are two major states which stressed on the theory as it enhances on the childs development.

According to Wadsworth (1996)  disequilibrium is especially important in this regard as it is driven or motivated the children to learn and understand things which is important for their development and intellectual growth.

Over time children’s schemes changes and their capabilities of understanding certain things are depend on the developmental stages. Cognition never happens gradually thus it moves on stage by stage which is crucial to understand those changes occurs in each stage and how it enhance in their development.