Piaget's stages: the unfinished symphony of cognitive development

Abstract

After a period during which Piaget's work in developmental psychology went into serious decline as a central force in the field, it has once again gained considerable interest to theorists and researchers. The purpose of the current discussion is to reconsider Piaget's stage construct so that a revised version is viable within the psychological part of the theory. The premise of the discussion is that Piaget fully intended his stages to remain at the heart of his psychology, but had difficulty meeting the objections of critics: that the stages as proposed were too vague, too broad, and too dependent on faith in a “miraculous” transition process. By shifting stage transitions to the midpoint of each stage, by adopting recursive transition processes from neo-Piagetian theories, by embracing decalage as systematic and necessary, and by using Piaget's idea of the taking of consciousness, some of the main problems of his stages can be resolved in a satisfying way. Although still not fully specified, the Piagetian stages can retain their place as general guides to cognitive development and as sources of constraints on what structures and functions are available to the developing mind.