Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 &ndash September 16, 1980) was a Swiss developmental psychologist.

He was born in Neuchâtel in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. His father, Arthur, was a professor of medieval literature at the University of Neuchâtel. He was a precocious child and developed an interest in biology, particularly of mollusks, to the point of publishing a number of papers before he graduated from high school.

He received a Ph.D. in natural science from the University of Neuchätel and studied briefly at the University of Zürich. During this time, he published two philosophical papers which showed the direction of his thinking at the time, but which he later dismissed as adolescent work. His interest in psychoanalysis can also be dated to this period.

He then moved from Switzerland to France, where he taught at the school for boys run by Alfred Binet, the developer of the Binet intelligence test, in Grange-aux-Belles. In 1921, he returned to Switzerland as director of the Rousseau Institute in Geneva.

In 1923, he married Valentine Châtenay, and they had three children, whom he studied from infancy.

He was a professor of psychology at the University of Geneva from 1929 to 1975 and is best known for organizing cognitive development into a series of stages—levels of development corresponding to infancy, childhood, and adolesence. These four stages are labeled sensorimotor, (children experience through their senses), pre-operational (motor skills are acquired), concrete operations (children think logically about concrete events), and formal operations (abstract reasoning is developed here). Advance through these levels was explained through biology and culture along with a "third factor" called equilibration, working inter-dependently with the other two.

Piaget's model of development has proved influential, notably on the work of Lev Vygotsky. Among others, the philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas has incorporated them into his work, most notably in The Theory of Communicative Action. Piaget also had a considerable impact in the field of computer science. Seymour Papert used Piaget's work while developing the Logo programming language. Alan Kay used Piaget's theories as the basis for the Dynabook programming system concept, which was first discussed within the confines of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, or Xerox PARC. These discussions led to the development of the Alto prototype, which explored for the first time all the elements of the GUI, or Graphical User Interface, and influenced the creation of user interfaces in the 1980's and beyond.

His long scientific career began in 1907 at the age of eleven with the publication of a short paper on the albino sparrow. Over the next seven decades he wrote more than sixty books and several hundred articles.

Major works and Achievements

Single "Best Read"

Bringuier, J-C. (1980). Conversations with Jean Piaget. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Major Works

• Piaget, J. (1983). Piaget's theory. In P. Mussen (ed). Handbook of Child Psychology. 4th edition. Vol. 1. New York: Wiley.
• Piaget, J. (1995). Sociological Studies. London: Routledge.
• Piaget, J. (2000). Commentary on Vygotsky. New Ideas in Psychology, 18, 241-59.
• Piaget, J. (2001). Studies in Reflecting Abstraction. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.

Appointments

1921-25 Research Director, Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Geneva
1925-29 Professor of Psychology, Sociology and the Philosophy of Science, University of Neuchatel
1929-39 Professor of the History of Scientific Thought, University of Geneva
1929-67 Director, International Bureau of Education, Geneva
1932-71 Director, Institute of Educational Sciences, University of Geneva
1938-51 Professor of Experimental Psychology and Sociology, University of Lausanne
1939-51 Professor of Sociology, University of Geneva
1940-71 Professor of Experimental Psychology, University of Geneva
1952-64 Professor of Genetic Psychology, Sorbonne, Paris
1955-80 Director, International Centre for Genetic Epistemology, Geneva
1971-80 Emeritus Professor, University of Geneva

See Also

• Smith, L. (1997). Jean Piaget. In N. Sheehy, A. Chapman. W.Conroy (eds). Biographical dictionary of psychology. London: Routledge.
• Smith, L. (2001). Jean Piaget. In J. A. Palmer (ed) 50 Modern thinkers on education: from Piaget to the present. London: Routledge

External Links

• Piaget Biography and Theories
• Piaget Postcard by Leslie Smith with a fuller summary of Piaget's work and achievements.