Jean Piaget Essay Outline

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Outline Template: Jean Piaget Essay

I. Introduction

A. Historical context of Piaget and why it is important to study the theories of Jean Piaget.

B. The importance of cognitive development and the concept of stages of development.

C. How progressing through the stages of development can lead to successful schemas or to pathological constructs that cause mental or behavioral health issues.

II. First body paragraph: Background information

A. Who was Jean Piaget

B. Who influenced Piaget

C. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

III. Second body paragraph: Childhood cognitive development in stages

A. Sensorimotor stage from birth until age two

B. Preoperational stage from two years old until age seven

C. Concrete operational stage from seven years until age eleven

D. Formal operational stage from age eleven until adulthood.

IV. Third body paragraph: On assimilation and accommodation of new knowledge into the schema

A. How children integrate new knowledge or concepts into their existing schemas.

B. Successful versus unsuccessful integration and assimilation of new knowledge.

V. Conclusion: How Piaget’s theories show that both nature and nurture are important in childhood development.

A. How Piaget’s theories influenced the field of psychology.

B. Applying Piaget’s theories of cognitive development to early childhood education and psychology

Example Outline: Jean Piaget Essay

I. Jean Piaget is one of the most important figures in the history of psychology because of the enduring legacy of his theory of human development.

A. Piaget proposed stages of development, which were different from the staged systems that had gone before such as that of Sigmund Freud.

B. According to Jean Piaget, there are distinct stages to human cognitive development that progress from the mastery of sensorimotor skills to more complex and abstract processing.

C. Understanding Piaget’s theory of staged cognitive development is essential for recognizing and understanding developmental disabilities or improving child behavioral health outcomes.

II. By the 1930s, prominent psychologists like Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget were avidly studying human development in order to uncover patterns universal to all people.

A. Piaget focused on how children form cognitive constructs of the world, which are known as mental schemas.

B. When a child integrates new knowledge into his or her mental schema, he or she can progress effectively through the stages of development.

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III. Cognitive development involves the progression from the infant’s literal world towards levels of increasing complexity.

A. The sensorimotor stage is when the infant or toddler is learning about the world of objects outside of the self.

1. Object permanence is the main cognitive schema at this stage of development.

2. Object permanence refers to the realization that even when an object is not within the field of sensory perception (it cannot be seen or heard) that it still exists.

B. The preoperational stage is when the child masters language and other forms of symbolic thought and communication but remains egocentric (McLeod, 2018).

C. During the concrete operational stage, the child can process increasingly abstract forms of information.

D. As the final stage in Piaget’s construct, the formal operational stage of cognitive development involves successively greater complexity in problem solving.

IV. Successful cognitive development involves adaptation.

A. The process of assimilation allows the individual to blend the new knowledge with the existing schema.

B. Accommodation involves actively changing the schema to fit the new knowledge.

C. Equilibration refers to the process by which the child processes new information as either a threat to the existing schemas or as confirmation thereof.

V. Conclusion

A. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development has been adapted and reviewed, but remains one of the foundational theories of child development.

B. Piaget’s theories and the stages of development can be integrated with other theories of child development such as those of Erik Erikson.

C. With Piaget’s stages, psychologists and educators can assess the child’s behavior.

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