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 on the development of children, belonging to what has been called Piagetian genetic epistemology.

This theory is about a set of postulates, ideas and formulations of the French psychologist about how children acquire knowledge, a theory which we are going to explore next.

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What is genetic epistemology?

Without a doubt, Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is one of the most prolific authors on the subject of 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 are the laws that make cognition develop. His theory centered on this question is what we know as genetic epistemology and with it he tried to discover what were the roots of the different types of knowledge, from the most elementary to the most complex.

Main premises

Traditionally, the origin of knowledge has been explained by two explanations: the empiricist and the nativist.. 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 nativist 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 is based on the idea that the acquisition of knowledge is a process of continuous self-construction, hence it is considered a theory constructivist.

According to this way of seeing the development of the human being, the infant's knowledge is elaborated and reworked as the child develops and interacts with her environment. Children actively acquire knowledge through their actions.

A central idea of ​​cognitive theory is the 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 in which children acquire knowledge, not how adults do it.

In his genetic epistemology, Piaget describes three types of knowledge:

1. Physical knowledge

Physical knowledge is the one that concerns the objects in the world, the knowledge that can be acquired through its perceptual properties.

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2. Logical-mathematical knowledge

Logical-mathematical knowledge is the most abstract type; that which must be invented.

3. Social-arbitrary knowledge

Social-arbitrary knowledge is specific to each culture. They are the data acquired by the subject by belonging to a certain society and interacting with its members.

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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 as the top of it.

Getting specific knowledge will depend on whether the lower level knowledge has been achieved. For example, from an ontogenetic perspective, acquiring logical-mathematical knowledge cannot be achieved before physical knowledge.

This idea of ​​hierarchy is exposed 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 (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 get to know the world around him and to relate.

2. Preoperational stage (from 2 to 4 years old)

During the pre-operational period there is the acquisition of language and the first representations of reality.

3. Stage of concrete operations (reached between 6 and 7 years)

In the phase of concrete operations there is a greater consistency of knowledge of the object. The concrete operations directly affect the objects that can be manipulated by the child and must be linked to the immediate present. The child has the ability to perform logical mental operations.

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4. Formal operations stage (from 12 years old)

In the formal operations phase child can work with hypotheses as well as objects. At the beginning of adolescence, they acquire the ability to formulate a set of possible explanations and, later, put them to the test for their empirical confirmation.

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The criteria of the stages of development

As we can see, each stadium 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 her life and finally reach the stage of formal operations.

The criteria that Piaget used to establish these stages were:

• Each stage must represent a qualitative change in the child's cognition.
• Children go through this sequence of phases regardless of culture.
• Each stage preserves and includes the cognitive structures and abilities of the previous stage.
• At each stage, the child's schemes and operations are integrated as a whole.

Added to the three types of knowledge and the four stages of Piaget we have the process of knowledge development, based on three principles: assimilation, accommodation and balance.

1. Assimilation

Assimilation occurs when the child incorporate new objects or events into your existing schematics.

2. Accommodation

Accommodation occurs when the child has to modify your existing schematics 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 going 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, it 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 based on their age. It also serves to determine when to progress to more complex knowledge.

Among the weaknesses we find that, in the first place, it has been seen that what is defended by Piaget is not observed in all children. Not all adolescents reach the stage of formal operations, and there are even adults who do not. And even if children reach this stage, it may be the case that they do not "stay" there.

The second great weakness of the model is that, although the theory holds 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, there would be children who would enter a stage, let's put the phase of concrete operations, and then go back to the preoperational.

The knowledge that children are supposed to reach is very unstableThis period of instability being the one that would occur at a time of transition from one stage to another. The change does not happen abruptly or definitively, it takes time. It also happens that it has been seen that children can have very advanced cognitive strengths with respect to their age based on what Piaget argued.

Finally, one of the most important criticisms Piaget received was in relation to his idea of ​​structure. According to her critics, the structure does not exist in the minds of children, but only in the mind of the Swiss psychologist. He himself replied that the structure defines it 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 on what he should do are well coordinated, allowing him to deduce some consequences.