Piaget’s Theory of Intellectual Development
Herbert P. Ginsburg & Sylvia Opper [Ginsburg, Herbert P. & Opper, Sylvia]The undergraduate students of Piagetian theory, for whom this book is intended, are really fortunate to have this book to help them understand some of the more abstruse concepts; even our Genevan students do notfind his theory easy to grasp. Each time Piaget comes across a behavior, however trivial it may seem, he seeks to explain it with reference to his theoretical framework, which is thus continuously being refined and enriched; with Piaget, the empirical is never separated from the theoretical. It is this continuing development that students find difficult, and that is so clearly brought to light in this book. The authors in fact adopt this technique, passing from theory to example, and vice versa,in a way which is both clear and comprehensible. Their examples of children’s behavior have been most carefully selected, and I particularly like the use of various aspects of one example to illustrate different theoretical points.