Genetic Epistemology: This Is The Acquisition Of Knowledge According To Piaget
Jean Piaget is one of the most influential figures in 20th century psychology. Its four stages of children’s development are world-known, belonging to what has been called Piagetian genetic epistemology
This theory is a set of postulates, ideas and formulations from the French psychologist about how children acquire knowledge, a theory which we are going to explore below.
Without a doubt, Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is one of the most prolific authors on cognitive development This Swiss psychologist focused his work on developing a theory of children’s knowledge, on knowing how children get to know their world.
Piaget wanted to know what the laws are that make cognition develop. His theory focused on this issue is what we know as genetic epistemology and with it he tried to discover what the roots of the different types of knowledge were, from the most basic to the most complex.
Main premises
Traditionally, the origin of knowledge has been explained through two explanations: the empiricist and the innatist According to the empiricist, knowledge comes from outside the human being and people learn to receive it in a more or less passive way. On the other hand, the innatist maintains that knowledge is an imposition of internal structures of the subject on objects.
Piaget was critical of both. He considered that empiricism defended an idea that could well be defined as “genesis without structures,” while innatism would be “structures without genesis.” Faced with these two historical explanations, Piaget presented his own position as a solution: there are no structures that do not come from other structures. Every genesis or development requires a prior structure.
Piaget’s theory of genetic epistemology It is based on the idea that the acquisition of knowledge is a process of continuous self-construction hence it is considered a constructivist theory.
According to this way of viewing human development, the infant’s knowledge is elaborated and re-elaborated as the child develops and interacts with his or her environment. Children acquire knowledge actively, through their actions
A central idea of cognitive theory is schemas, which would be units of generalized behavior (or action) that provide the basis for mental operations. Added to this, Piagetian theory is oriented towards the way children acquire knowledge, not how adults do it.
In his genetic epistemology, Piaget describes three types of knowledge:
1. Physical knowledge
physical knowledge is that which concerns objects in the world the knowledge that can be acquired through its perceptual properties.
2. Logical-mathematical knowledge
Logical-mathematical knowledge is the most abstract type ; that which must be invented.
3. Social-arbitrary knowledge
Social-arbitrary knowledge It is specific to each culture These are the data acquired by the subject when belonging to a certain society and interacting with its members.
The stages of development according to Piaget
These three types of knowledge form a hierarchy, going from the most physical knowledge as the base to the social and arbitrary knowledge as the top.
Achieving specific knowledge will depend on whether the knowledge of the lower level has been achieved For example, from an ontogenetic perspective, acquiring logical-mathematical knowledge cannot be achieved before physical knowledge.
This idea of hierarchy is explained in greater detail by Piaget when he tells us that, As children grow, they go through a sequence of four stages phases that all of them have to overcome in order to acquire the three types of knowledge mentioned above:
1. Sensorimotor stage (from birth to 2 years)
The sensorimotor stage occurs before language has developed. During this period, the baby builds the notion of the permanent object and acquires the notions of space, time and causality He uses sensory and motor experiences to learn about the world around him and relate.
2. Preoperational stage (from 2 to 4 years)
During the preoperational period the acquisition of language and the first representations of reality occur
3. Stage of concrete operations (reached between 6 and 7 years)
In the phase of concrete operations there is greater consistency of knowledge of the object. Concrete operations directly affect the objects manipulated by the child and must be linked to the immediate present. The child has the ability to perform logical mental operations
In the formal operations phase the child can work with hypotheses as well as objects Once adolescence begins, he acquires the ability to formulate a set of possible explanations and then test them for empirical confirmation.
The criteria of the stages of development
As we can see, each stage has its own characteristics. All children go through these phases in the same order, although not at the same time. This means that Each child is expected to exhibit the characteristics of each stage at some point in his or her life, eventually reaching the stage of formal operations
The criteria that Piaget used to establish these stages were:
Each stage should represent a qualitative change in the child’s cognition.
Children go through this sequence of phases outside of culture.
Each stage preserves and includes the cognitive structures and skills of the previous phase.
At each stage, the child’s schemas and operations become integrated as a whole.
Added to Piaget’s three types of knowledge and four stages we have the process of knowledge development, based on three principles: assimilation, accommodation and balance.
1. Assimilation
Assimilation occurs when the child incorporates new objects or events into your existing schemas
2. Accommodation
Accommodation occurs when the child has to Modify your existing schemas to incorporate new objects or events
3. Balance
Balance is described as the “master development process.” This process would incorporate both assimilation and accommodation
At this point the infant begins to find shortcuts in his new way of thinking. This results in an imbalance, which is overcome by moving to the next phase. That is, when the infant is in a certain stage of the Piagetian model and this imbalance occurs, to return to stability, he or she will go to the next stage.
Strengths and weaknesses of genetic epistemology
One of the strengths of the theory is the structure and order it exposes. The theory serves as an interesting guide for educators giving them basic guidelines on the types, phases and processes involved in the development of knowledge in the childhood. These ideas can be of great help when developing the educational plan and help teachers understand the current level of their students taking their age as a reference. It also serves to determine when to progress to more complex knowledge.
Among the weaknesses we find that, first of all, it has been seen that what Piaget defended is not observed in all children Not all adolescents reach the stage of formal operations and there are even adults who do not reach it. And even if kids reach this stage, they may not “stay” there.
The second great weakness of the model is that, although the theory maintains that children progress from stage to stage in the form of a qualitative change, the truth is that it seems to move forward and backward. That is to say, there would be children who would enter a stage, let’s say the concrete operations phase, and then return to the preoperational phase.
The knowledge that children are supposed to achieve is very unstable, this period of instability being the one that would occur at a time of transition from one stage to another. The change does not occur suddenly or definitively, it requires time. It also happens that it has been seen that children can present cognitive strengths that are very advanced with respect to their age based on what Piaget maintained.
Finally, One of the most important criticisms that Piaget received was in relation to his idea of structure According to his critics, the structure does not exist in the minds of children, but only in the mind of the Swiss psychologist. He himself responded that he defines structure as something that the child knows how to do. The child does not have his own idea about the structure, there is no abstract idea about it in his mind, but his actions about what he should do are well coordinated, which allows him to deduce some consequences.
