Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory

Abstract

Piaget's (1936) cognitive developmental theory looks at different development stages categorized by age. Working with a sixth grade class towards the end of the school year, the targeted developmental stages observed are concrete operational and the beginning of formal operational. Students were observed in a science setting, specifically a science fair project. These are lessons the students had in order to help them better understand how they would implement those ideas into their own projects. As concrete operational learners, they are able to concretely understand the lesson independently, but as the formal operational stage, they are able to take that lesson and use abstract, theoretical, and hypothetical thinking to turn it into a part of their project.