Piaget's Theory of Intellectual Development (3rd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Prerequisite to tackling anything written by Piaget himself
Review: Piaget's stage theory of intellectual development is rather common fodder for developmental psychology and education courses. Here is an excellent summary of the immense amount of material, both theoretical and experimental, that constitutes the corpus of Piaget's work.

Following almost all secondary authors who discuss Piaget, Ginsburg and Opper discuss each cognitive stage in a separate chapter, in this case, labelled after the common age periods exemplified by each stage.

I especially liked the introductory chapter that provides a theoretical overview of Paiget's developmental work, and a biographical account of the major publications reflecting the more important aspects of his work, and covering Piaget's entire career. This book is stronger than Flavell's "The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget" in explaining the cognitive mechanisms at work in stage transitions, the explication of formal operational thought in adolescence, and the application of Piaget to an educational context. I also liked the focus of this book. Ginsburg and Opper are more careful than Flavell to avoid digressions to touch upon peripheral aspects of Paiget's work. Flavell has greater appreciation of Paiget as an epistemologist.

If you intend to read some of Piaget, I strongly recommend this book as an introductory primer. Piaget can be somewhat dense without preparation beforehand.