Piaget was a pioneer of child psychology and genetic epistemology. He is called a "giant" in the history of psychology except Freud. His genetic epistemology is not only the theoretical basis of the Geneva School, but also a master of European functionalism ... a Swiss psychologist and the founder of genetic epistemology.

First, the core concept of epistemology

(A) Schema

Schema is the basic schema of intellectual structure, refers to the organized way of thinking or action, and is a cognitive structure used to understand the world.

(2) Assimilation

Assimilation refers to the process that organisms integrate environmental components into their original cognitive structure. For example, if you have a diagram of a bird in your mind, and you see a flying bird with feathers, it will automatically merge into the existing diagram. This is the process of assimilation.

(3) adaptation

When individuals encounter new stimuli that cannot be assimilated by the original schema, they should modify or reconstruct the original schema to adapt to the environment. For example, the newly seen ostrich can't fly and can't be integrated into the original schema, so it can only change/expand the original schema and form a new schema.

(4) Balance

Balance is a process in which individuals make cognitive development transition from one balanced state to another higher balanced state through self-regulation mechanism. The development of cognition is a balanced-unbalanced-balanced process.

Second, cognitive development stage.

(1) Perceived motor stage (0-2 years old)

This stage refers to the cognitive development stage of infants from birth to two years old. During this period, babies mainly absorb external knowledge through vision, hearing, touch and hand movements.

When the baby is more than one year old, his sensory movements are developing to the point where the object is permanent. For example, he will continue to look for the invisible ball that rolled under the bed. Babies close to two years old can imitate the actions of people or animals from memory afterwards. This ability is called deferred imitation.

(2) Preoperative stage (2-7 years old)

1. Words or other symbols appear, and images and image schemas begin to appear.

2. The irreversibility of thinking. This means that children in this period can't think from both the front and the back when thinking about problems. They can not only look at the results from the reasons, but also analyze the reasons from the results, so as to think forward and backward.

3. egocentric. This means that children will only look at the problem from their own perspective when facing the problem situation, and will not consider the problem from the perspective of others.

4. animism-everything has life

5. The conservation relation of length, volume and weight is not obtained. ?

(3) Key points of primary school in specific operation stage (7- 1 1 year)

The characteristic of children's thinking at this stage is that they can reason according to logical rules when facing the problem situation, but this ability is limited to the current specific situation or familiar experience. Its main features are as follows:

1. The concreteness of thinking. This means that children at this stage cannot think without concrete things and experiences. If only words are used to describe the problem, children will find it difficult to reason.

2. The conservation relation of length, volume and weight is obtained.

3. Thinking is reversible and can be used for logical reasoning.

4. Be self-centered. This means that children at this stage gradually learn to look at problems from the perspective of others, realize that others have different ideas and solutions from him, and can accept others' opinions and correct their own.

(4) The key points of middle school in the formal operation stage (1 1 age to adulthood)

This stage refers to the cognitive development stage of teenagers after 1 1 years old. The development of thinking at this stage has the following characteristics:

1. Hypothesis-deductive reasoning. The characteristic of this kind of thinking reasoning is to consider not only the actual situation logically, but also the possible situation.

2. Propositional reasoning. The characteristic of this kind of thinking reasoning is that it is not necessarily based on specific data, but can be inferred as long as there is a description or a proposition.

3. Have abstract thinking.

4. Thinking is reversible, compensatory and flexible.

Third, Piaget's theory of stages of moral development

Piaget systematically studied children's moral cognitive development by using the double story method, and divided children's moral development into four stages.

(A) no egocentric stage (2-5 years old)

At this time, children have no moral awareness, will not isolate themselves from the outside world, and have no self-awareness.

(2) Authority stage (5-8 years old)

Also known as heteronomy stage. Children obey external authority and rules, think that the rules are fixed, and judge right or wrong only according to the consequences of behavior, regardless of subjective motives.

(3) reversible stage (8- 10 years old)

Also known as the self-discipline stage. Children do not regard the rules as immutable, but as an agreement between peers, which can be changed. This shows that children's thinking has been freed from egoism, marking the beginning of children's morality.

(4) Justice stage (10- 12 years old)

Children at this stage tend to maintain justice and equality. Piaget believes that the change from reversible relationship to just relationship is mainly the result of the growth of altruism.