According to the deed establishing the prize, its purpose is to "encourage a new generation of scholars to pursue empirical and theoretical studies of children's construction of knowledge by integrating insights from developmental epistemology, biology, psychology, evolutionary theory and education. To that end, this prize will be awarded to a new scholar who will deliver at an annual meeting of the Jean Piaget Society an address based upon her or his dissertation on an historical, epistemological or empirical subject. The prize will be given to the submission that best continues the spirit of Piaget - a study grounded in a firm knowledge of, but not limited to, the work of Piaget and Inhelder."
Any doctoral dissertation originating from any country, from psychology, philosophy, education, history of science, evolutionary biology or related fields that concerns the topic of knowledge and its development will be considered. Empirical work, rigorous demonstrations of educational methods, epistemology, historical analysis of ideas, evolutionary theory or explorations of Piaget and Inhelder's late process theory are some examples of the topics that may be submitted. The quality of the work will be paramount: the work need not have originated from the point of view of Piagetian theory, but knowledge of the theory should be demonstrated in the winning submission, to help explain how the work furthers the ongoing study of the interdependence of knowledge and development.
The mission of the prize is not to look backwards but to promote exciting new discoveries - discoveries that recognize that the study of the development of knowledge begun by Piaget, Inhelder, and their many collaborators is a living, continuing tradition that reverberates in many rich and surprising ways through many disciplines.