"The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things." Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget was a Swiss Psychologist who was born in 1896 in Neuchatel, Switzerland and died in 1980 in Geneva, Switzerland. All through his childhood, Jean was fascinated with science and studied many different animals. He had a love of mollusks and studied them in depth for many years. At age 11 he also wrote about the albino sparrow and gained recognition for that work, surprising all when they found out his actual age. He went on to study zoology, and then psychology, abnormal psychology, and also dove deeper into psychoanalysis. He attended the University of Neuchatel, University of Geneva, and the University of Zurich. Jean Piaget spent six decades of his life deeply involved in childhood psychology during which he gave to us his 4 Stages of Cognitive Development.
Although that was over 100 years ago, Piaget's theory and his 4 Stages of Cognitive Development are still the cornerstones to children's intellectual development and their overall childhood development.
Piaget's 4 Stages of Cognitive Development include; sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Although these labels may be a mouthful and perhaps confusing, they are easily explained and absolutely observable stages if you are working with or have your own children.
Sensorimotor Stage occurs from the time a child is born to the time they begin to acquire language. This stage involves the child using their senses to make sense of the world around them. They are grabbing, sucking, looking, and listening to their environment. This is also the stage of object permanence and the child's understanding of an object still existing even when they can't see it or hear it. This is illustrated in the game of Peek-a-Boo.
Preoperational Stage is when the child begins to speak. There is an increase of play and pretend occurring and the child will experience difficulty trying to take another person's perspective on something. There is a lot of questioning "why" and this stage can last up to 7 years of age.
Concrete Operational Stage occurs between 7 and 11 years of age and is the stage when problem solving and logic begin to strengthen although full common sense isn't cemented at this stage.
Formal Operational Stage lasts from 12 years old through adulthood. The ability to think abstractly, the entrance of metacognition (thinking about your thinking), and more complex problem solving skills are being formed at this stage.
It is important to note that the ages and stages can differ between children, adolescence, and adults. Piaget was met with a great deal of challenges and differences of opinions (as most scientists, researchers, and psychologists are). Piaget admitted that these stages are quite rigid and really are more of a continuum of growth than to be fit into a box with no wiggle room. Beyond that, Jean Piaget set the stage for looking at children and their cognitive growth in a way that is still very much alive and at work today.
Child-centered practices and open ended questions in order to hear how children process the information we are giving them are directly related to Piaget's extensive work. He was a strong believer in the child taking the lead in their educational endeavours and the teacher to act more of a guide or mentor in the process to help when things became confusing or needed clarification. I believe Jean Piaget would have been incredibly excited with the STEM and STEAM initiatives currently at play around the world and when we are working with our STEAM materials and the children are so engaged in their non-structured learning and their outcomes are not all the same, it gives me great pride knowing I'm following in his footsteps.
Spontaneous activity as it relates to expected knowledge is an everyday occurrence in our kindergarten classroom. I sincerely hope the outcomes of my students match the expectations of our kindergarten curriculum. I believe your students are getting far more out of open-ended learning experience and spontaneous wonderings and experiments that they need to. We are having a wonderful time as we journey through our (Jean Piaget's) stages of Cognitive Development. Let me know if you want to talk more at length about this!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive_development
https://www.biography.com/scientist/jean-piaget
