Jean Piaget and Stage Theory of Learning

Jean Piaget was born in Neuchâtel on August 9, 1896, the oldest child of Arthur Piaget and Rebecca Jackson. Piaget showed an early interest in science, producing a brilliant paper at the age of 11 on the albino sparrow. He studied natural sciences at the University of Neuchâtel where he obtained a Ph.D. While spending a semester at the University of Zürich, he developed an interest in psychoanalysis, and spent time working with Alfred Binet on a test that measures intelligence. It was here that he did his first experimental studies of the growing mind. Piaget was married to Valentine Châtenay in 1923, and the couple had 3 children, who Piaget studied from infancy to language for intellectual development.

While at the Theodore Simon’s Paris Laboratory administering intelligence tests to children, Piaget found himself captivated by the reasoning underlying the children’s wrong answers. Piaget decided to study how children use their intelligence, and he devoted the rest of his life to cognitive development. Piaget main contributions were the creation of a system of cognitive development that explained how children learned and the development of his theory of stage development. According to Piaget, children interact with their environment which leads to assimilation and eventually accommodation. From this system of assimilation to accommodation, Piaget was able to develop his theory of stage development, which has four underpinning assumptions. These are:

(1) Stages imply a qualitative difference in structures (modes of thinking) that still serve the same basic function (intelligence) at various points in development
(2) These different structures form an invariant sequence or order in individual development. Cultural factors may speed up, slow down, or stop development, but they do not change its sequence.
(3) Each of these different and sequential stages forms a “structural whole.” Each stage represents a “schema” or recognizable pattern of thinking.
(4) Stages are hierarchical integrations. Stages form an order of increasing differentiated and integrated structures for fulfilling a common function.

Piaget did not stop at this junction. He entered the world of moral development with his stage theory as his spring board. Piaget developed two stages of moral reasoning -- stage one the morality of constraint (moral realism) and stage two, the morality of cooperation. Kohlberg later used Piaget’s theory of stage development and early work in moral development to create his theory of the six stages of moral development.