Jean Piaget- Cognitive Theory

According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge is based.

There Are Three Basic Components To Piaget's Cognitive Theory:

1. Schemas (building blocks of knowledge)
2. Adaptation processes that enable the transition from one stage to another (equilibrium, assimilation and  accommodation).
3. Stages of  Development:
• Sensorimotor (birth - 2 years): When children differentiate themselves from objects. Recognises self as agent of action and begins to act intentionally: e.g. pulls a string to set mobile in motion or shakes a rattle to make a noise. Achieves object permanence: realises that things continue to exist even when no longer present to the sense
Preoperational (2-7 years): Learns to use language and to represent objects by images and words. Thinking is still egocentric: has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others  Classifies objects by a single feature: e.g. groups together all the red blocks regardless of shape or all the square blocks regardless of colour
Formal operational (7-11 years): Can think logically about objects and events Achieves conservation of number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight (age 9)
Classifies objects according to several features and can order them in series along a single dimension such as size.
Concrete operational (11 and up): Can think logically about abstract propositions and test hypotheses systemtically, becomes concerned with the hypothetical, the future, and ideological problems 

Theories:

Adaptation	What it says: adapting to the world through assimilation and accommodation.
Classification	The ability to group objects together on the basis of their common features.
Class Inclusion	The understanding, more advanced than simple classification, that some classes or sets of objects are also sub-sets of a larger class. (E.g. there is a class of objects called dogs. There is also a class called animals. But all dogs are also animals, so the class of animals includes that of dogs)
Conservation	The realisation that objects or sets of objects stay the same even when they are changed about or made to look different.
Decentration	The ability to move away from one system of classification to another one as appropriate.
Egocentrism	The belief that you are the centre of the universe and everything revolves around you: the corresponding inability to see the world as someone else does and adapt to it. Not moral "selfishness", just an early stage of psychological development.
Operation	The process of working something out in your head. Young children (in the sensorimotor and pre-operational stages) have to act, and try things out in the real world, to work things out (like count on fingers): older children and adults can do more in their heads.
Schema (or scheme)	The representation in the mind of a set of perceptions, ideas, and/or actions, which go together. In more simple terms Piaget called the schema the basic building block of intelligent behavior – a way of organizing knowledge. It is useful to think of schemas as “units” of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including objects, actions and abstract concepts.
Stage	A period in a child's development in which he or she is capable of understanding some things but not others

Terminology:
Asmmilation: The process by which a person takes material into their mind from the environment, which may mean changing the evidence of their senses to make it fit.
Accommodation: The difference made to one's mind or concepts by the process of assimilation.
Note that assimilation and accommodation go together: you can't have one without the other.
 

Bibliography:

http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html 

http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/piaget.htm