by Jessyca T

Created on: April 14, 2009

Jean Piaget's work on childhood development has been profoundly influential in the field of education. Through years of study, he discovered that there are four main stages in children's development, each stage consisting of groupings of distinct cognitive abilities.

Like most theories, Piaget's has been exposed to the elements over the years and people build careers by picking at the holes and sagging spots. I'm not going to pick because it's unnecessary, there are a plethora of people who will do that for you on command. However, I will mention that while the following stages are good outlines, definite crossovers have been observed. For example, some children in Piaget's second stage exhibit behaviours which are prescribed to start in the third stage, some in the third exhibit traits in the fourth. There are also cases of exceptional children, gifted individuals whose blatant disregard for the rules of normal development make us all look bad.

Regardless of exceptions and annotations to the original formula, Piaget's stages are worth knowing for their overall contribution to the field. They are as follows:

1. The sensorimotor stage. Birth to 2 years.

In this stage, a child understands the world through movement and use of the senses. Eventually they begin to understand objects through repeated exploration and will learn that an object exists even when they can't see it. In some philosophical leanings however, this assertion never stops being questioned (did that falling tree make a sound?).

2. The preoperational stage. 2 years to age 6 or 7.

In this stage a child learns to think symbolically. Most notable is the development of language; the ability to transform symbols to words and idea. Children think mainly in present terms, though they begin to develop an understanding of past and future. Lastly, a child in this stage will assume people see things from their viewpoint and have a hard time understanding abstract concepts. They are very egocentric. Some adults never make it out of this stage. I don't need to because I'm wonderful.

3. The concrete operations stage. Age 6 or 7 to age 11 or 12

Children begin to develop logical reasoning sequencing abilities. They can imagine and grasp things that occur outside their own lives. They begin to have abstract reasoning skills and are able to perform math operations. Abstractions are still largely based on concrete experience, i.e, counting groups of blocks to learn addition. That being said, for most people the counting

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