What contribution did Jean Piaget make to the understanding of child development.

"I am a constructivist. I think that knowledge is a matter of constant, new construction, by its interaction with reality, and that it not pre-formed. There is a continuous creativity" (www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/piaget.html). This quote is from Jean Piaget a Swiss psychologist born in 1896 who, through studies of his own three children tried to better understand how children acquire knowledge and intellectual thought. To this day, Piaget's work is …

…competence. The sensori-motor stage is the only stage which still is accepted today as the children do not always reach Piaget's other stages at a specific age. According to Smith and Cowie (1988) "Piaget's approach has provided the most detailed, comprehensive account of cognitive growth to date and as such has had condsiderable implications for education, notably the child-centred methods of the nursery and infant school... mathematics... in the primary school and science... at secondary level."