Jean Piaget: Difference between revisions

There are a total of four phases in Piaget's research program that included books on certain topics of developmental psychology. In particular, during one period of research, he described himself studying his own three children, and carefully observing and interpreting their cognitive development.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Beilin Harry |title=Piaget's Enduring Contribution to Developmental Psychology|year=1992|journal=Developmental Psychology|volume=28|issue=2|pages=191–204|doi=10.1037/0012-1649.28.2.191}}</ref> In one of his last books, ''Equilibration of Cognitive Structures: The Central Problem of Intellectual Development'', he intends to explain knowledge development as a process of equilibration using two main concepts in his theory, assimilation and accommodation, as belonging not only to biological interactions but also to cognitive ones.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kurt |first=Dr Serhat |date=2022-11-17 |title=Jean Piaget: Biography, Theory and Cognitive Development |url=https://educationlibrary.org/jean-piaget-biography-theory-and-cognitive-development/ |access-date=2022-11-30 |website=Education Library |language=en-US}}</ref>

 

 

Piaget believed answers for the epistemological questions at his time could be answered, or better proposed, if one looked to the genetic aspect of it, hence his experimentations with children and adolescents. As he says in the introduction of his book ''Genetic Epistemology'': "What the genetic epistemology proposes is discovering the roots of the different varieties of knowledge, since its elementary forms, following to the next levels, including also the scientific knowledge."

 

Piaget's research relied on very small [[Sample (statistics)|samples]] that were not [[selection bias|randomly selected]]. His book ''The Origins of Intelligence in Children'' was based on the study of just his own three children.<ref name="Hopkins 2011">{{cite journal |title=The Enduring Influence of Jean Piaget |journal=APS Observer |year=2011 |last=Hopkins |first=J.R. |volume=24 |issue=10}}</ref> This means that it is difficult to generalize his findings to the broader population. He interacted closely with his research subjects and did not follow a set script, meaning that experimental conditions may not have been exactly the same from participant to participant, introducing issues of consistency.

 

As Piaget worked in the era before widespread use of voice recording equipment, his data collection method was simply to make handwritten notes in the field, which he would analyse himself.<ref name="Klahr" /> This differs from the modern practice of using multiple [[Coding (social sciences)|coders]] to ensure [[test validity]]. Critics such as [[Linda Siegel]] have argued that his experiments did not adequately control for social context and the child's understanding (or lack of understanding) of the language used in the test task, leading to mistaken conclusions about children's lack of reasoning skills.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1037/h0078835|title=Amazing new discovery: Piaget was wrong!|journal=Canadian Psychology|volume=34|issue=3|pages=239–245|year=1993|last1=Siegel|first1=Linda S}}</ref>