Katie Morgans
Education 601
Dr. Clabaugh
Jean Piaget was born on August 9, 1896 (3) in Neuchatel, Switzerland.
Piaget was a child prodigy. “By age ten he had written his first short paper on an albino sparrow that he had observed.” (3) After he graduated high school he attended the University of Neuchatel where he went on to complete his PhD in Natural Science.
After World War I, Piaget worked with Alfred Binet, a child psychologist. This experience sparked an interest in Piaget to study the minds of children.
Dr. Piaget conducted his research on children posing very simple questions of them like: “Where does the wind come from?” (3) Utilizing the finding from his research he concluded that children were “not empty vessels to be filled with knowledge, but as active builders of knowledge.” (1)
Piaget was an individual with no formal training the in the field of education. He is, however, credited by many as a man, “that championed a way of thinking about children that provided the foundations for today’s education.” (2, 3)
He was not an educational reformer. (3) Rather, he laid the groundwork for future generations of educators to think beyond the traditional methods of teaching children. (3, 2) His contributions go far beyond that of cognitive development. “He is considered to be the developer of cognitive theory, developmental psychology, and genetic epistemology.” (3)
Perhaps a quote out of Time Magazine attributed to Albert Einstein best sums up Piaget work: “His work was so simple that only a genius could have thought of it.” (1)
Before he died he was the “recipient of honorary degrees from Cambridge, Harvard,” (3) and other prestigious institutions as a result of his outstanding contributions to the field of child education.
References:
1. Papert Seymour. (1999) Time Magazine: The most important People of the Century. (2009) www.time.com
2. Preston D. Feden. Cognitive Development: Seminal Theories and New Research on how humans learn. (2008)
3. Smith L (1997) Jean Piaget Society. In N. Sheehy A. Champman W. Conroy (eds). Biographical dictionary of psychology. http://www.piaget.org (2007)
