ABSTRACT
Piaget's work on children's thinking sensitized developmental psychologists to interesting questions about knowledge asked by epistemologists within philosophy and demonstrated that developmental research is relevant to these questions. Piaget asked such questions as “What are the origins of knowledge?” “What form does knowledge take at various points in development?” and “What causes changes in knowledge?” Subsequent theorists of cognitive development sought answers to these questions in information-processing, biological, social learning, or theory-change approaches. Feminist epistemological theories provide yet another opportunity for the field of cognitive development to draw on epistemology. Such theories raise new questions, such as “Who decides what forms of knowledge are important and which ways of thinking are valid?” and “Does who you are influence what you know?” The purpose of this chapter is to outline what cognitive development would look like from a feminist perspective.
