Piaget's legacy as reflected in The Handbook of Child Psychology (1998 Edition)

The 1998 edition of the authoritative Handbook of Child Psychology (HCP, Damon, 1998) was examined to reveal the impact of the work of Jean Piaget on the field of child psychology at the turn of the millennium when TIME magazine hailed him as one of the greatest minds of the century (Papert, 1999). The review is set in the historical context of the role played by Piaget since the first HCP. Counts of citations and references reveal Piaget to be by far the most cited author in the field. Categorization of Piaget’s prodigious output according to research periods (Smith, 1993) show that HCP authors have been selectively attentive to Genevan research. Piagetian references represent only a small subset of Piaget’s 53 books, and almost none of his 523 published papers. What appears relevant to child psychologists covers only a restricted period in Piaget’s work, and generally does not do justice to Piaget’s own explicitly epistemological perspective. Analysis of chapters on cognitive development beyond childhood and mathematical thinking augment the quantitative summaries with qualitative detail of the Piagetian influence in these areas. It is suggested that Piaget’s own epistemological theory (e.g., Piaget 1947/1960; Piaget & Garcia, 1983/1989) provides a model for investigating how the field of child psychology has adapted to his oeuvre.