Are the stages real? Vygotsky and Bruner would rather not talk about stages at all, preferring to see development as a continuous process. Others have queried the age ranges of the stages. Some studies have shown that progress to the formal operational stage is not guaranteed.

From ages 12 to 18, children grow in the way they think. They move from concrete thinking to formal logical operations. It’s important to note that:According to Piaget’s theory, children should not be taught certain concepts until they have reached the appropriate stage of cognitive development. According to Piaget, at age 7, thinking is no longer egocentric, as the child can see more than their own point of view.

Categorization abilities improve so that children can arrange items along a dimension, understand that categories have subcategories, and relate two objects to each other through a third object.

A 2-year-old child sees a man who is bald on top of his head and has long frizzy hair on the sides. To his father’s horror, the toddler shouts “Clown, clown” (Siegler et al., 2003). In Borke’s (1975) test of egocentrism the child is given two identical models of a three-dimensional scene (several different scenes were used including different arrangements of toy people and animals and a mountain model similar to Piaget and Inhelder’s). One of the models is mounted on a turntable so His ideas have been of practical use in understanding and communicating with children, particularly in the field of education (re: Discovery Learning). Piaget’s theory has been applied across education. He was an inspiration to many who came after and took up his ideas. Piaget’s ideas have generated a huge amount of research which has increased our understanding of cognitive development. Children should be given individual attention and it should be realized that they need to be treated differently.

Reviewing skills and talking about how they connect to new ones—for example, the connection between addition and subtraction He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important differences between the thinking of adults and children. Piaget branched out on his own with a new set of assumptions about children’s intelligence: According to Piaget’s theory, educational programs should be designed to correspond to the stages of development. Hands-on Activities: Children should interact physically with their environment, so provide plenty of opportunities for hands-on learning. Furthermore, the child is egocentric; he assumes that other people see the world as he does. This has been shown in the three mountains study.The stage is called concrete because children can think logically much more successfully if they can manipulate real (concrete) materials or pictures of them. According to Piaget, children are not passive recipients of information; instead, they actively explore and interact with their surroundings. When our existing schemas can explain what we perceive around us, we are in a state of equilibration. However, when we meet a new situation that we cannot explain it creates disequilibrium, this is an unpleasant sensation which we try to escape, and this gives us the motivation to learn. This active engagement with the environment is crucial because it allows them to gradually build their understanding of the world.

Racial and Cultural Stereotypes: These can affect a child’s self-perception and self-efficacy. For instance, stereotypes about which racial or cultural groups are “better” at certain subjects can influence a child’s self-confidence and, subsequently, their engagement in that subject. Memory Games: Using cards with pictures, place them face down, and ask students to find matching pairs. They emphasize communal interaction and shared activity, fostering both cognitive and socio-cultural constructivism. This shared activity promotes understanding and exploration beyond individual perspectives, enhancing social-emotional learning (Gehlbach, 2010). The child’s thinking during this stage is pre- (before) cognitive operations. This means the child cannot use logic, transform, combine, or separate ideas (Piaget, 1951, 1952).

3. The Concrete Operational Stage

Classification Games: Provide a mix of objects and ask students to classify them based on different criteria (e.g., color, size, shape).