Who is Jean Piaget, and why should childrens ELT teachers be familiar with his work?
Jean Piaget and Cognitive Development Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a Swiss-born psychologist and scientist who essentially invented the field of cognitive development. Although he was not a teacher, he spent much of his life observing children; he was fascinated by the way childrens minds work. If you listen to children talking, you will immediately recognise that they live in a different world from adults. Children have their own logical world, full of magic, superstition and fanciful explanations. It was Piagets genius to recognise that this childish logic is entirely correct, as part of a childs exploration and attempts to make sense of the world. It is a characteristic of modern educational theory that teachers should recognise childrens language as a positive sign of interaction rather than a bunch of mistakes to be corrected. Indeed, the making of mistakes actually reveals evidence of learning (Ginsburg and Opper, 1988). The stages of cognitive development Piaget, having recognise
