Question

Jean Piaget’s theory could be best described as what type of theory?

Answer 1

Jean Piaget’s (1896–1980) theory counts as one of the most influential and enduring theories of cognitive development, and is firmly grounded in biology and epistemology. Piaget, who trained as a biologist, had as a primary objective to understand the development of knowledge in the human species, rather than to understand why and how children develop. His first originality was to address philosophical questions by empirical means, in particular by relying on the study of child development. He established the discipline of genetic epistemology (the term ‘genetic’ referring to the concept of genesis or evolution, as proposed by Baldwin), with the aim ‘to study the roots of the various sorts of knowledge from their most elementary forms on and to follow their development in ulterior levels including scientific thinking,’ and by grounding it in both historicocritical and psychogenetic approaches. Piaget’s epistemology is constructivist, in the sense that knowledge is neither a mere reflection of the external world (realism), nor a projection of pre-existing structures of the mind (nativism), and the origins of knowledge are to be found in the practical and cognitive activity of the subject. Piaget’s epistemology is also fundamentally interdisciplinary. His primary hypothesis was that intelligence is a form of biological adaptation (e.g., Piaget 1967), that is, intellectual or cognitive behaviors are the products of an organism, in interaction with its environment, and the end point of biological evolution. This is not to say that psychological phenomena can be reduced to biological ones, as Piaget always opposed biological reductionism; intelligence is an organizing activity whose functioning transcends biological organization, by elaborating new structures. The main characteristic common to knowledge and to living organisms is their adaptive character. Adaptation itself, whether biological or cognitive, relies on two mechanisms, defined very early in Piaget’s work, namely assimilation (incorporation of new information into an existing system) and accommodation (modification of existing schemes or structures by newly assimilated elements, so as to respond to the demands of the environment). By so doing, actions and operations become coordinated with one another; such coordinations define a new entity, which in turn constitutes a new object for thought and action. This is the process that Piaget labeled equilibration. His theory of genetic epistemology (or experimental developmental theory of knowledge and knowledge acquisition) resulted in an immense œuvre of several thousand pages. All stemmed out of the encounter of his philosophical preoccupations as an adolescent about the validity of knowledge (scientific and religious essentially) when compared with his experience as a young natural historian.

In an article in Educational Researcher DeVries (1997) sought to make the social aspect of Piaget’s ideas on intellectual development more widely known. Especially in work he published in the 1920’s through the 1940’s, Piaget emphasized the importance of social interaction to intellectual development, and DeVries drew heavily on these writings. Piaget saw social interaction as the key to how we overcome the instability of the symbols we each individually construct. Piaget saw language as inherently a social factor partly because of the conventional nature of words (the arbitrariness of the link between a particular sound form and its referent), and it is just this conventional nature of words that Piaget saw as crucial for conceptual development.

Hence it can be argued that Piaget's project was essentially genetic epistemology; as it was concerned with developmental aspects, it is part of developmental psychology and its inner constructs drew aspects from social theory.