Foundations of Education

Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) was the most prominent developmental psychologist of the 20th century, His theory of cognitive development in childhood is essential study in virtually all university programs that focus on childhood. Concurrent teacher education students at Brock University study Piaget's theories in a number of courses.

Piaget described learning as interplay between two mental activities that he called assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the interpretation of new information in terms of pre-existing concepts, information or ideas. A preschool child who already understands the concept of 'bird', for example, might initially label any flying object with this term - even butterflies or mosquitoes…

…Assimilation operates jointly with accommodation, which is the revision or modification of pre-existing concepts in terms of new information or experience. The preschooler who initially generalizes the concept of 'bird' to include any flying object, for example, eventually revises the concept to include only particular kinds of flying objects, such as robins and sparrows, and not others, like mosquitoes or airplanes.

For Piaget, assimilation and accommodation work together to enrich a child's thinking and to create what Piaget called cognitive equilibrium, which is a balance between reliance on prior information and openness to new information. At any given time, cognitive equilibrium consists of an ever-growing repertoire of mental representations for objects and experiences.

Piaget called each mental representation a schema (all of them together— the plural— was called schemata). A schema was not merely a concept, but an elaborated mixture of vocabulary, actions, and experience related to the concept. A child's schema for 'bird', for example, includes not only the relevant verbal knowledge (like knowing how to define the word "bird"), but also the child's experiences with birds, pictures of birds, and conversations about birds.

As assimilation and accommodation about birds and other flying objects operate together over time, the child does not just revise and add to his vocabulary (such as acquiring a new word, "butterfly"), but also adds and remembers relevant new experiences and actions. From these collective revisions and additions, the child gradually constructs whole new schemata about birds, butterflies, and other flying objects. In more everyday (but also less precise) terms, Piaget might then say that "the child has learned more about birds".

Piaget reasoned that cognitive development occurred as people’s minds physically developed. In Piaget’s view, people are increasingly able to mentally organize information into schemas (categories) as their brain matures. As people engage in new activities within social environments, they assimilate new information into their schemas or change their schematic categories to accommodate new information.

The video below provides an explanation of schemas and how people accommodate and assimilate information.

Piaget proposed that there are four stages of development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Each of these stages is described below:

Sensorimotor (birth to 2 years): During this stage of development, children learn through interacting with their environments, using their reflexes, senses, and movements. They begin to understand that words represent objects (symbolic thinking) and that objects not within their immediate vision still exist (object permanence).

Preoperational (2-7 years): During this stage, children begin to use language to represent their thoughts. While able to communicate, their speech and thinking is often limited to the present and they have difficulty understanding other people’s viewpoints.

Concrete operational (7-11 years): At this stage, children have an understanding of past and future. They are able to think logically and sequentially if engaged in “hands-on” tasks and are able to organize things into categories. They understand the concept of conservation. Conservation is the understanding that the physical quantity of a material does not change if it is rearranged. For example, if you have 10 popsicle sticks the quantity does not change if you place them closer or farther apart from each other.

Formal operational (11 years to adulthood): During the formal operation stage, people can think increasingly abstractly. They can reason, consider multiple viewpoints, and become concerned about things beyond themselves, such as social justice and morality.

Piaget, J. (1962). The stages of the intellectual development of the child. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 26, 120

Seifert, K., & Sutton, R. (2021, February 27). Major Theories and Models of Learning. University of Manitoba & Cleveland State University. https://socialsci.libretexts.org/@go/page/10821

Woolfolk, A., Winne, P.H & Perry, N. E. (2020). Educational Psychology, Seventh Canadian Edition. Pearson.

Chapter 2 of the Seifert and Sutton (2022) textbook begins with the following anecdote from one the authors:

“When my son Michael was old enough to talk, and being an eager but naive dad, I decided to bring Michael to my educational psychology class to demonstrate to my students "how children learn." In one task I poured water from a tall drinking glass to a wide glass pie plate, which according to Michael changed the "amount" of water - there was less now than it was in the pie plate. I told him that, on the contrary, the amount of water had stayed the same whether it was in the glass or the pie plate. He looked at me a bit strangely, but complied with my point of view - agreeing at first that, yes, the amount had stayed the same. But by the end of the class session he had reverted to his original position: there was less water, he said, when it was poured into the pie plate compared to being poured into the drinking glass. So much for demonstrating 'learning'!” (p. 27)

The above anecdote describes a Piagetian experiment related to the conservation of mass. The concept of conservation is an important marker of development in Piaget’s theory. Below is a video which repeats the experiment, demonstrating young children’s understanding of this developmental concept. As you watch the video, consider the implications of conservation on children’s understandings of the world more broadly: