Piaget’s
theory has been criticized because children and adults
often think in ways that are inconsistent with the notion of
invariant stages. It also appears that Piaget underestimated
children’s cognitive abilities; he insisted that children could
not be taught the operations of the next stage but had
to develop them on their own. Alternative explanations
place greater emphasis on students’ developing information
processing skills and ways teachers can enhance their
development. Piaget’s work is also criticized for overlooking
cultural factors in child development