Recently Piaget's model of cognitive development has been seriously questioned. This questioning was due partially to the inadequacy of the model in explaining creative, scientific and mature thought in adulthood. Various proposals have suggested the existence of a fifth stage in cognitive to represent adult thought. A second tradition has focused on the Piagetian model as a competence model. This has initiated a search for an appropriate performance model to describe the processes by which knowledge is actively constructed and applied. The present work reviews the theoretical positions and the research relevant to issue and proposes a synthesis through which cognitive development can be viewed as being both product and process, competence and performance, structure and function simultaneously.
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