Stages of Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget
About Stages of Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who flipped the script on how we think about learning. Instead of seeing kids as tiny adults who just need more facts crammed into their brains, he treated children as active thinkers—mini-scientists who explore, experiment, and construct knowledge step by step.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is all about how our thinking evolves as we grow. He believed that children go through four distinct stages, each one building on the last. In each stage, kids aren’t just getting smarter—they’re thinking in entirely new ways.
So, a toddler who hides her face and thinks you can’t see her isn’t being silly—she’s just working through the sensorimotor stage. A kid who can do basic math but struggles with abstract ideas? Totally normal—they’re likely in the concrete operational stage.
The stages Piaget laid out—sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational—help explain why certain lessons or teaching styles work better at different ages. He also introduced key concepts like schemas (mental frameworks we build), assimilation (fitting new info into what we already know), and accommodation (changing what we know to fit new info). Basically, he showed that learning isn’t passive—it’s an active, messy, hands-on process.
Piaget’s ideas transformed the way educators think about teaching. Instead of treating all learners the same, he encouraged us to meet students where they are, developmentally speaking. And while some of his ideas have been updated or challenged by newer research, his work remains foundational in education and psychology—especially if you care about how people really learn, not just how they perform on tests.
Before You Read
Think back to how you understood the world as a little kid. Did you think the moon followed your car? Or that if you broke your crayon, it was “dead”? Piaget would say: Of course you did! You were thinking in a way that totally made sense for your stage of development.
In this reading, you’ll explore how Piaget mapped out the way our thinking changes over time—from babies learning through touch, to teens tackling abstract ideas like justice and truth. His theory is all about how cognition—aka thinking—grows, shifts, and becomes more complex with age and experience.
As you read, ask yourself: how does this theory help us better understand how people learn? And what does it mean for how we structure schools, lessons, and expectations for learners of different ages?
Guiding Questions
- What are Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development, and what characterizes each one?
- How do concepts like assimilation and accommodation explain how learning happens?
- Why is it important for educators to understand developmental stages when designing instruction?
- Can you think of a time when you (or someone else) learned something too early or too late for your developmental stage? What happened?
Where to Find This Reading
Required Reading (Summary Chapter) The required reading is licensed with an open license and available as an open educational resource.:
Supplementary Reading (Original Work): This text is not in the public domain or shared with a Creative Commons license. Your college or university may have access to this reading through this source.
