Jean Piaget is a Swiss psychologist whose studies on child development still influence psychology and education today. He designed models about the stages of early child development that are still in use now.
Jean Piaget was born on August 9th, 1896, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. (Jean) His parents were very influential in his life and greatly impacted who he grew up to be. His mother was not the best influence for Piaget since he described her behavior as neurotic and easily angered, though she did cause him to find interest in studying neurotic tendencies and psychopathology. Piaget’s father, a medieval literature professor named Arthur, had a passionate dedication to his studies, a trait that Jean Piaget began to mimic from an early age. (Pulaski) At only ten years old, he began to study and write about birds and mollusks, and even had some of his essays published. (Jean) A few years later, he was hired at a natural history museum in Neuchâtel with the task of labeling the shell collections. The director of the museum took Piaget under his wing and educated him about mollusks and gave him samples for his collection as well. Inspired by all that he had learned at the museum, after high school, Piaget went on to study zoology at the University of Neuchâtel, and received his Ph.D. in the natural sciences in 1918. …show more content…
“The first is the "sensorimotor stage," which involves learning through motor actions, and takes place when children are 0–2 years old. During the "preoperation stage," children aged 3–7 develop intelligence by using their natural intuition. During the "concrete operational stage," children 8–11 develop cognitively through the use of logic that is based on concrete evidence. "Formal operations," the fourth and final stage, involves 12-to-15-year-olds forming the ability to think abstractly.”