Jean Piaget: Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) was a Swiss psychologist and the founder of genetic epistemology — the study of how knowledge develops. His Constructivism held that children are not empty vessels but active builders of their own understanding, progressing through stages and adapting via assimilation and accommodation of schemas.

His work directly shaped Seymour Papert (who worked with him in Geneva) and, through Papert's Constructionism, the idea that learners construct knowledge by acting on their environment.