Jean Piaget is a well-known child psychologist that Alfrey mentions within chapter one of her book, Piaget provided a foundation of research that is still widely used today. Piaget’s research helps to explain the intricate cognitive developmental stages that a child goes through from birth to childhood in order to help them understand the world around them. Piaget refers to these structures as ‘schemas’. His theory therefore proposes the idea that all development and learning takes place from the cognitive structure a child is born with, and their cognitive capabilities throughout life develop in relation to this structure with the aid of external stimuli also, which children use as an aid to their learning.
Alfrey covers the four key stages that …show more content…
Piaget states that this stage is primarily made distinctive by a child being able to partake in orderly thinking. An example of this form of thinking would be when a child understands the concept of a word or an idea, such as death, although this concept cannot necessarily always be seen children are this stage are able to understand how this life stage may occur, and that various emotions such as upset and frustration would be related to this. This is the significant advance from concrete operational ways of thinking, as without being able to visualise a concept/idea the child would be unable to understand