Jean Piaget: His Stages of Developmental Psychology

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Jean Piaget: His stages of Developmental Psychology Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland in 1896. He was a pioneer in the field of psychology, specifically in developmental psychology. He developed many fields of psychology, but is mostly associated with genetic epistemology. In fact, he identified himself as a Genetic Epistemologist. Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the origin, nature, extent, and limits of human knowledge. (Richmond, 1970) his interest went beyond the nature of thought, but how it develops and understanding how genetics impacts the process. Jean Piaget’s interest in the natural sciences came at an early age. By the age of ten, he published his first research paper on the albino sparrow. (Rotman, 1977) Piaget continued to study the natural sciences and received his Ph.D. in Zoology from University of Neuchatel in 1918. After completing his course work, Piaget took part in research being conducted by Theodore Simon and Alfred Binet. Binet and Simon developed the Stanford-Binet Intelligence scale, which later became known as the IQ test. Piaget was intrigued by the consistently wrong answers given by children. Jean Piaget was married in 1923 and his first child was born in 1925. (Rotman, p 26) He and his wife had a total of three children. This gave him the opportunity to study children intimately. His three children became the focus of his research. He wanted to study children’s reasoning process further. He interviewed, recorded and documented their behavior and reactions to his questions. His work with children was a major part of his life until his death, in 1980. He received numerous honorary degrees and held various influential positions during his career. He was the President of the Swiss Society of Psychology, director of the Bureau of International Office De l’Education, President of the
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