CURRICULUM GUIDE FOR S.C. TEACHER CADET COURSE | EXPERIENCING EDUCATION, TENTH EDITION
Cognitive Development According to Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget, noted as “the Father of Cognitive Development,” determined that children and
adults think differently. His work was based on case studies and systematic observations of
people doing tasks. He believed that all behavior is related to thinking or cognition, that cognition is developmental, and that both genetics and environment play roles in cognition.
Important to understanding his theory are three steps:
1. reflexes: simple blocks of cognition that help infants to adapt (e.g. sucking,
grasping)
2. schema: reflexes categorized into schema in the same way that a computer
organizes data
3. operations: logical thought processes
Piaget believed that people learn new information in one of the following two ways:
1. assimilation: fitting new information into an already existing schema (ex. If a
student is asked to imagine that a person had never seen a soccer ball and to
explain one, the student may describe it as being round with a white and black
desig