| Childhood/Family Life
Jean Piaget,
Swiss psychologist and an avid
worker with the study of child thinking, stated the above quote. He was the first born to Rebecca Jackson and
Arthur Piaget on August 9th, 1896 in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Jeans father taught medieval literature at
the University and his mother was a Calvinist and caregiver to the
family. He was known as a child prodigy
and
developed a passion for the study of nature at an early age. At age 11 while attending Neuchatel Latin
high school, he wrote a short paper on an albino sparrow sighting. From that came the launch of his scientific
career, which consisted of numerous books and articles.
Later in his adolescence he found himself
intrigued with mollusks and by the end of his early schooling he was
known as a
malacologist (Piaget Society 2002).
Adult Life
After his high school
graduation, he attended University of
Neuchatel where he received his doctorate in Zoology.
After he left the University of Neuchatel, he
spent a semester at
the University of Zurich where he took a liking to psychoanalysis, and
while
there he attended Carl Jung’s lectures. He
left Switzerland to go study abnormal
psychology and logic in France
and ended up working there as well. He
spent a year at a Boy’s Institute that was created by Alfred Binet and
De Simon
who happened to establish the measurements test for intelligence. These intelligence tests helped Piaget as he
applied them and did his first experimental work and studied the growth
of the
mind. He later went back to Switzerland
where he began observing children in their natural environment and
recorded
what they said and did. In 1923 he
married Valentine Chatenay and the couple had three children,
Jacqueline,
Lucienne and Laurent. Being that their
father had a passion for children’s ways of thinking, Piaget studied
their
intellectual development from infancy to the time they could speak.
Piaget
passion for kids led him to the belief that
children’s logic and modes of thinking are completely different from
that of
adults. He quotes his theory as,
“learning is no more than a sector of cognitive development that is
facilitated
by experience” (Papert 1999). He found
that when children answered questions, even if an adult corrected them,
they
still weren’t wrong. This was because they answered the question within
their
framework of their own knowledge from what they see or experience. Teachers for many years have looked at
Piaget as a role model in the fact that he said kids are not robots
that get
filled with knowledge, but rather testing their own theories of life as
they
have learned from interaction in the environment.
Professional Accomplishments
Professional accomplishments
achieved by Piaget were as
followed: from 1921-25 he was a research director at the Institute Jean
Jacques
Rousseau in Geneva, 1925-29, professor of
Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy of
Science at the University of Neuchatel. While
Piaget was at the University of Geneva
from 1929-1980, he was
director of the International Bureau of Education, director of the
Institute of
Educational Sciences, and the director of the International Center for
Genetic
Epistemology. He was Professor of
Sociology, Experimental Psychology,
and Emeritus. He was coeditor of eight
journals and has honorary doctorates from Harvard, Manchester,
Cambridge and about
28 other universities. He received the
Erasmus Prize in 1972 and numerous awards from around the world. The Erasmus is the next biggest award next
to the Nobel Prize. It is awarded to a
person or institute that has
made an important
contribution to European culture, society, or social science that
stands out.
Contributions to Psychology
Some of his contributions to the
study of psychology include
the development of the four stages of cognitive development, which are
Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal
Operational. He also contributed
Developmental Psychology and Genetic Epistemology, which studied how
knowledge
was learned within humans. The four
principles are as follows: 1) “Children will provide different
explanations of
reality at different stages of cognitive development, 2) Cognitive
development
is facilitated by providing activities or situations that engage
learners and
require adaptation (i.e. assimilation and accommodation), 3) Learning
materials
and activities should involve the appropriate level of motor or mental
operations for a child of given age; avoid asking students to perform
tasks
that are beyond their current cognitive capabilities, 4) Use teaching
methods that actively
involve
students and present challenges” (Genetic Epistemology 2005). Even though
he never formally studied child psychology, Jean Piaget led the way for
other
activist for studying children’s modes of learning and thinking. Jean Piaget passed away
in 1980. However, his contributions will
be forever
lasting and anyone associated
with educational purposes for children will look at his theories and
studies as
the start of the pathway to show that children’s thinking should be
taken
seriously.
|
