Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood and Adolescence.

Introduction

Cognitive development refers to the change in one’s mental activities in related to one’s age. These mental activities refers to things such as thinking, remembering, taking note of what is going on around you, perceiving and learning. Children begin to think in multi-dimensional ways in their middle childhood and this is all due to cognitive development. During the middle childhood children begin to perceive things in more than one way and towards the end of this stage they are able to compare different objects to each and can also reasonably manage their mental actions (Ntshangase, 2011). Adolescence is the stage of development which follows that of middle childhood and which leads to that of adulthood. This stage begins with puberty and ends once one has found their identity within adulthood (Shefer, 2011). In this essay Jean Piaget’s theory related cognitive development in middle childhood and adolescence will be discussed.

Background on Jean Piaget’s life that led to his theory will be discussed. His theory regarding cognitive development will then be evaluated as a whole in a broad aspect. Then from that Piaget’s theory about cognitive development in middle childhood and adolescence will be focused on and discussed in further detail. The limitations, strengths and criticism of Piaget’s theory will then be evaluated.

Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget, a Swiss, was a philosopher, evolutionary biologist and an educationist. He is regarded, in modern times, as having had a very important role in child development research (Brodile, 2012). Piaget was a believer in adaptation for survival. He believed that adaptation took place in two levels namely the species level phylogentically and the individual level ontogenetically. Jean Piaget came to the conclusion that since intelligence occurs in living organisms intelligence therefore has to be a biological process and...