Jean Piaget was a 20th century psychologist and theoretician best known for his creation of the developmental stages of children.
Jean William Fritz Piaget was born in Neuchatal, Switzerland in 1896. He studied zoology at the University of Neuchatel and received his doctorate in 1918. Next, he studied psychology in Zurich briefly, and he spent two years at the Sorbonne in Paris studying the philosophy of science, logic, and abnormal psychology. While in Paris, Piaget worked with Theodore Simon and Alfred Binet, evaluating responses to an intelligence test Binet and Simon had developed for children. Piaget recognized that some of the errors were consistent among children of the same age, and he began to consider the possibility that younger children possessed different cognitive processes than older children or adults.
In 1921, he was hired as director of research for the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva. Eventually, he became co-director of the institute. Piaget became a professor of philosophy in 1925 at the University of Neuchatel, a professor of the history of scientific thought in 1929, and professor of experimental psychology in 1940 at the University of Geneva. From 1952–1963, Piaget taught child psychology at the Sorbonne. He also directed Geneva’s Centre International de l'Épistémologie Génétique from 1955–1980.
Piaget married Valentine Chatenay. The couple had three children, each of whom Piaget used in his experiments. He died in 1980.
Piaget’s studies into the cognitive development of children led to several different theories. Piaget examined and evaluated the behaviors of his own children, observing their behaviors as infants, and watching and assessing the physical movements and actions they employed to accommodate their needs as they grew. Piaget also determined that younger children responded intuitively to a series of questions he created and that they developed more socially acceptable responses as they aged.
Piaget believed that children progress through specific phases of development during which they acquire predictable skills and behavior:
Piaget argued that children develop schemata, or ways of organizing knowledge, to help them understand the world. These schemata serve as framework through which information is organized. He identified three types of schemata:
Piaget’s influences can be observed throughout the world in child psychology. The Jean Piaget Society supports his theories and is a world-wide organization that holds well-attended conferences each year. Piaget’s theories continue to impact education, psychology, evolution, philosophy, morality, and even artificial intelligence, as his theories were used in the development of many of our modern society’s computer operating systems and interfaces.
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