“Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory in Mathematics Education” is a paper written by Kristin E. Reedal of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Ripon College. She gives a thorough introduction to Piaget, his theory and it’s stages. She also applies Piaget’s theory to the learning in mathematics and questions his theory based on some criticisms.
She gives weaknesses of his theory based on the opinions of critics that feel his contributions rely on observations without scientific support. They also say Piaget has failed to offer a complete description of a child’s stages and why. He just labels each stage with an age group only which indicates that the stages could be misapplied. She questions based on these criticisms whether we are pushing students in our educational system through this developmental process too quickly.
Reedal leaves out many criticisms of Piaget’s theory that could be helpful to her question and how students actually fit into the developmental process. Piaget studied only his three children and a small sample of children of well-educated professionals of high socio-economic status, so his finding don’t properly represent an entire population, which may or may not include the development of the math students that Reedal is discussing. Piaget also argues that children will automatically move to the next stage of development as they mature. Reedal does mention that Piaget believed that the amount of time each child spends in each stage of development will vary based on the individual but neither take into account or discuss developmental factors such as environmental factors or capital or cultural class. So while Piaget may have oversimplified the developmental process, Reedal doesn’t go into much depth on it either.
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