Cognitive Development, Essay Example

Pages: 3

Words: 700

Essay

The Theories of Piaget and Vygotsky

Piaget

Vygotsky

It was Piaget who suggested that children enter the concrete operational stage of development at around 7 years of age. As such, children enter a substantive degree of logic and reasoning over objects and events. At age 11, they reach the fourth stage of cognitive development and a formal operational stage commences. He identified four key stages of learning. Piaget signified the importance of developing a curriculum to assist in the education of children and teachers need to be fully aware and take into consideration environmental factors in consideration of learning

It was a Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) who put forward an alternate theory in the teaching of adolescents. He stated that we are all made up from genes and cultures and we make sense of this by utilising the tools around us. It was the socio-cultural influences that helped in the cognitive development of our minds and in these sense languages, music and material objects.

1) Sensorimotor stage – birth to 2 years of age

2) Preoperational Stage – age 2-7

3) Concrete operations – age 7-11

4) Formal operations – age 11 to 15

A distinction existed in the nature and interaction of sociocultural development. Piaget was a cognitivist constructionalist whereas Vygotsky was considered to be a social constructionist. Vygotsky’s theory was considered to be more flexible and adaptable to the teaching of adolescents because it was not hampered by being in fixed sequential stages, as was Piaget’s theory. (Smith, 2007). The two psychologists were instrumental in putting forward two important theories of cognitive learning and sociocultural development. (Kozulin, 1998). Despite the differences in the two theoretical approaches, there are a great deal of similarities that have now resulted in what is termed cognitive development to learning.

Piaget was a cognitivist constructionalist whereas Vygotsky was considered to be a social constructionist. Vygotsky’s theory was considered to be more flexible and adaptable to the teaching of adolescents because it was not hampered by being in fixed sequential stages, as was Piaget’s theory. Nevertheless, both were significant contributions towards cognitive learning and despite the differences in approach, the similarities have been blended into what we now term cognitive learning.

Piaget concentrated on gaining structure by identifying specific stages of cognitive development, as illustrated in the table above. Piaget was perhaps ahead of his time in the sense that the modern approach leads more towards the logical constructionist approach of logical sequences of events. Vygotsky adopted much more of an open-ended social approach and was more holistic by nature; this approach provides a far greater degree of flexibility and manoeuvrability. Sociologists tend to prefer this degree of freedom whereas psychology has become more scientifically defined and leans more towards the social constructivist approach.

The main similarity is that both Piaget and Vygotsky were regarded as constructivists. This approach to both teaching and learning considers that the premise of cognition is based upon mental construction. Equally, constructivist believes the concept of learning is influenced by the behavioural conditions of student’s beliefs and attitudes. Both Piaget and Vygotsky believed the boundaries of cognitive growth were influenced by society. This is really, where the similarities end.

Piaget considered how children’s minds work and as such became extremely influential in childhood education. As children are growing up, they are limited in learning capacity until they are sufficiently psychologically mature enough to accept different tasks. This maturity model was illustrated in stages and provided a vital input to educational approaches in teaching children. (Kamii, C. 1984)

With scaffolding, the teacher only offers support where the skills are considered beyond the capability of the student. There are a number of different approaches to this but it might include something like:

Building modular learning components
Providing guided practice towards task accomplishment
Mnemonic device chant
Tutoring other students

Works Cited

Kamii, C. (1984). Autonomy: The Aim of Education Envisioned by Piaget. The Phi Delta Kappan, 410-415.

Kozulin, A. (1998). Psychological tools: a sociocultural approach to education. In A. Kozulin, Psychological tools: a sociocultural approach to education (pp. 29-34). Boston MA: Harvard University Press.

Smith, H. A. (2007). Teaching adolescents: educational psychology as a science of signs. In H. A. Smith, Teaching adolescents: educational psychology as a science of signs (pp. 129-135). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.