What are Piaget's theoretical points? Piaget is the pioneer of children's psychology and genetic epistemology, and is regarded as another "giant" besides Freud in the history of psychology. His genetic epistemology is not only the theoretical basis of the Geneva School, but also a significant development of European functionalism. What are the main points of Piaget's theory for you?

What are the main points of Piaget's theory? 1 It opens up a new way of psychological research and has an important influence on the development of contemporary western psychology and educational reform.

Major achievements

I. genetic epistemology

(1) The connotation of genetic epistemology Piaget defined genetic epistemology as "genetic epistemology tried to explain knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, according to the history of cognition, its social roots and the psychological origin of concepts and operations on which cognition was based." Simply put, genetic epistemology is the theory of psychological origin, and his task is to study the psychological mechanism of knowledge growth. Genetic epistemology in a broad sense includes the historical development and individual occurrence of cognition, while genetic epistemology in a narrow sense only includes the occurrence of individual cognition.

(B) genetic epistemology's basic point of view

The biological basis of (1) cognition

Piaget believes that all epistemological problems must be considered from the biological aspect. From genetic epistemology's point of view, this is very important, because psychogenesis can only be understood after its organic roots are exposed. Therefore, it is necessary to study genetic epistemology's theory of biological origin for an accurate understanding of genetic epistemology.

In order to better explain the mechanism of biological evolution, Piaget used the theory of biological phenotypic replication to explain the occurrence and development of cognition, and clarified the close relationship between the biological concept of interaction between internal cause and environment and the epistemological concept of interaction between subject and object. Phenotypic replication theory is Piaget's most important viewpoint in psychobiology. Phenotypic replication is originally a biological concept, which means that the original exogenous phenotype of an organism is replaced by the endogenous genotype with the same morphology. Here, exogenous phenotype refers to the dominant characteristics of organisms, and endogenous gene refers to the genetic material or gene structure of organisms.

(2) the psychological occurrence of cognition

Piaget's genetic epistemology opposed both innate learning theory and passive learning theory. Based on his own research on children's psychological development, he put forward the theory of cognitive psychogenesis. Piaget believes that the psychological occurrence of cognition does not come from innate inheritance, nor from the perception of objects, but from action. Piaget also believes that the interaction between subject and object in the process of cognitive occurrence and development is assimilation and adaptation.

(3) Understanding the occurrence view of structuralism

Structuralism is Piaget's explanation of the occurrence and development of cognition from the psychological structure formed by cognition. Piaget pointed out that structuralism has two common characteristics: one is that a research field should find laws that cannot be explained from the outside, and can establish its own structure to explain itself. The second is that the actually discovered structure should be formalized and used as a deductive formula.

In other words, to formalize a structure, it can be expressed directly by mathematical logic equations or by cybernetic models, and theorists can decide the different stages of formalization. Piaget believes that a structure includes three characteristics: integrity, transformation and self-regulation.

(4) The constructivist view of cognitive occurrence.

Piaget believes that cognition not only has structure, but also the occurrence of cognition is a process from low level to high level. He believes that the acquisition of knowledge needs to closely combine structuralism and constructivism, and each structure is the result of psychological occurrence, which is a transition from a relatively primary structure to a less primary structure. It can be seen that the transition from simple structure to complex structure is a process of continuous construction, and any knowledge is the product of continuous construction.

Second, the stage theory of children's psychological development

(A) the stage characteristics of children's psychological development

Piaget not only thinks that the actions or operations of the subject are constantly evolving into a certain cognitive structure, but also thinks that children's cognitive development shows obvious stage characteristics because of different levels of cognitive structure. The first is that children's psychological development has stages; The second is that the order of stages is unchanged; The third is that the structure of one stage is formed on the basis of the structure of the previous stage, and the result of formation provides conditions for the structure of the next stage; Fourth, each stage has a preparation period and a completion period.

(B) the stage of psychological development

Piaget, a famous child psychologist, believes that children's cognitive development process can be divided into four main stages: perceptual movement stage, pre-operation stage, concrete operation stage and formal operation stage.

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

This stage is the initial development stage of baby's cognitive ability, and the baby knows the world around him through feelings and actions. At this stage, babies will develop some important cognitive concepts, one of which is the so-called "object permanence" concept.

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

At this stage, children begin to learn and gradually skillfully use symbols to symbolize things and use symbols for simple thinking activities. Piaget called this ability to learn by symbols a symbolic function. At this stage, two typical limitations of children's thinking development are one-sidedness and egoistic thinking. One-sidedness of thinking means that children's thinking at this time tends to pay attention to one aspect of things and ignore other aspects. Piaget's famous "conservation" experiment reveals children's thinking characteristics. In the pre-operation stage, children also tend to look at things and think about problems from their own perspective. Piaget called this kind of thinking "self-centered thinking" and "self-centered thinking", that is, children think that others' thinking and operation methods should be completely consistent with their own thinking.

This is because children have not realized that others can have a completely different way of thinking from themselves. Piaget believes that when children begin to realize this, they enter the stage of concrete operation.

(3) Specific operation stage (7- 12 years old)

Children enter the specific operation stage between the ages of 5 and 7, and the most typical sign of this stage is that children can use symbols for logical thinking activities. Children in the pre-operation stage can form a preliminary symbolic representation of things, but their cognitive activities are closely related to physical experience. The children in the specific operation stage have made great progress in classification, digital processing, space-time concept and so on. At this time, children's "self-centeredness" declined, and they began to overcome "one-sidedness", paying attention to all aspects of things, developing their ability to understand other people's views, thus enhancing their ability to communicate with others.

(4) Formal operation stage (/kloc-after 0/2 years old)

The typical feature of formal operation stage is the development and perfection of abstract thinking. At this time, teenagers no longer limit their thinking to specific things, but begin to use abstract concepts, can put forward reasonable assumptions and verify them, and know that there are many possibilities for things to happen, thus making their thinking more flexible and complicated.

What are Piaget's theoretical points? Piaget's theory came into being in the 1920s, and it was fully mature in the 1950s, which swept the world. Many child psychologists have studied Piaget's theory and repeatedly tested his experiments. It is estimated that more than 3000 verification experiments will be carried out only by repeating the "conservation" term. This situation has made new progress in Piaget's theory.

There are three main reasons why Piaget's theory has made new progress, all of which can be called Neo-Piaget Doctrine.

(1) Revising Piaget's research methods and results is the first reason for the development of Piaget's theory.

At present, a new trend of western children's cognitive development theory is to question Piaget's theory of children's development stages.

First, in recent years, in the research of western cognitive development psychology, more and more people have suggested that the development of children's cognitive ability is not in the form of "all or nothing" described by Piaget's age stage theory. Through experiments, they found that many important cognitive abilities existed when children were very young, but to a limited extent. These abilities will develop into adulthood with the growth of personal knowledge and experience. Psychologists put forward this criticism based on the following views:

(1) thinks that Piaget's theory of development stage has insufficient factual basis. The traditional Piaget theory holds that children lack some cognitive ability, and this conclusion is drawn from very limited experimental results. However, existing scientific research shows that in complex tasks, the interaction and dynamic changes of various cognitive structures often make some important cognitive abilities appear and hide from time to time. Therefore, it is not enough to generalize children's cognitive ability only through a small number of experiments.

(2) I think Piaget's experiment is too difficult for children to do and can't show their abilities. Recent research results show that if researchers can design tasks with appropriate difficulty, if training programs are introduced in advance, and Piaget's experiments are completed, children can show cognitive abilities that they think are lacking.

The second is to put forward the development model of adult thinking. William Perry and others questioned Piaget's theory that 15 years old is the mature period of thinking. They think that 15 years old is not necessarily the mature age of thinking development, and formal operational thinking is not the last stage of thinking development. Perry summed up the thinking of college students into the following three levels:

(1) Dualism level;

(2) the level of relativism;

(3) commitment level. Rigg mentioned in the first chapter clearly pointed out that dialectical operation is the fifth stage of thinking development, which is the characteristic of adult thinking development.

The authors of the above two viewpoints all say that they are new Piaget, but their views on the way of thinking development are different from Piaget's theory.

(2) The combination of information processing theory and Piaget theory is the second reason for the development of Piaget theory.

Generally speaking, information processing theorists have two attitudes towards Piaget's theory: one is the "non-development theory", that is, the development of children's cognitive ability is different from that of adults only because of insufficient storage of knowledge and experience. If enough, there is no essential difference with adults. The other is "development theory", which holds that Piaget's theory and information processing theory should be combined to study the development of children's intelligence. Because, children's psychology and adult psychology are essentially different:

(1) The child is immature, such as the child's brain structure (nerve cell volume, synaptic connection, myelination, etc. ); (2) Children don't have enough information storage;

(3) Children's decision-making ability is poor, because the decision-making process requires complex information analysis and comprehensive ability. According to these characteristics of children, if we can use the information processing theory to establish a programmed model of children's intellectual development at different ages, we can design a more accurate and scientific concrete model of children's intellectual development than Piaget's abstract description. Although the work in this area is still immature, it is a good start. People who hold this view often call themselves the "new Piaget theory" school to show the revision and development of Piaget doctrine.

In recent years, Piaget's theory has not only made new progress in theory, but also been widely used in practice, especially in educational practice. In many countries, such as the west and Japan, according to Piaget's theoretical framework and recent research results, psychologists and educators have designed some educational programs and applied them to infant, preschool and primary and secondary education. In early childhood education, according to Piaget's theory of perceptual sports intelligence, they use various methods to guide children to play with objects and operate intellectual toys to help them form an understanding of the characteristics of objects (such as color, shape, volume, texture, etc.). ); In early childhood education, various intellectual toys and teaching AIDS (such as pictures, building blocks, etc. ) aims to lay the foundation for children to form the concepts of number, space and time at an early age; Some people have also studied how to use Piaget's theory to cultivate the thinking ability of primary school children, and some people have even studied some specific processes of the formation of teenagers' formal operational thinking, and linked this with education.

(3) The change of Geneva School itself is the third reason for the development of Piaget's theory.

At the University of Geneva, where Piaget worked for a long time, in Piaget's later years and after his death, the research work of his colleagues and classmates also made new and revolutionary development to Piaget's theory. Under the premise of maintaining the basic framework or mode of Piaget's theory, this development has adjusted the research direction and expanded the research scope and topics. Its performance either supplements and revises some of Piaget's viewpoints, enriches and perfects Piaget's theory in breadth and depth, or adds some new elements to Piaget's theory. They are also under the banner of "New piagetian school", but they are completely different from the "New piagetian school" of information processing theory.

The emergence of the New piagetian school in Geneva is based on the establishment of the School of Psychology and Education of Geneva University in 1960s. 1976, P. Moundoud published the article "Changes in Children's Psychology", which marked the first step towards the new piagetian school. 1985, the first anthology of the school, The Future of Piaget Theory: New Piaget School, was published, which systematically expounded their views and some main research results.