Piaget Versus Vygotsky, Research Paper Example

Piaget

Jean Piaget was born on August 9^th 1896 in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Even as a child, Piaget showed an exceptional ability for acquiring and retaining knowledge and by age ten, Piaget had already completed and published his first scientific paper on the life of the Albino Sparrow. At the age of 22, Piaget became the recipient of a doctorate degree in Biology. In 1919, after becoming interested in psychology, Piaget first focused on understanding Freudian theories, but later changed direction and began studying cognitive development. While working as director at The Institute for research on Children, Piaget decided to use his own three children to study the development of thought processes. Piaget continued his study of children for over fifty years (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2015).

Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory

Piaget discovered that at certain points in children lives new capabilities and development milestones can be mastered. He further revealed that as children grow and mature, they adapt to new environments and complexities through assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the process by which children are able to absorb knowledge via the environment, even if they have to adjust their senses to fit that knowledge. Accommodation is the difference in one’s understanding of concepts through the process of assimilation. During his many years of studying children, Piaget uncovered four stages of cognitive development. These stages are the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage (Cherry, 2013).

The sensory motor stage is primarily experienced by children ranging from birth up to two years of age. During the sensorimotor stage, children begin to differentiate self from other objects using sensory exploration and manipulation of objects. Toddlers begin to recognize that there bodies are instruments of action, so they begin to intentionally cause actions like shaking rattles. It is also in this stage that babies develop object permanence. With object permanence, comes the knowledge that objects remain present even when the senses cannot detect it (Atherton, 2013).

Stage two is preoperational stage. This stage covers the growth period between ages two up to age seven. During the preoperational stage, children begin to master language and to develop understanding that objects can be represented by images or words. Children in the preoperational stage are egocentric so they may struggle with comprehending logic and they become confused when trying to see another person’s point of view. While in the preoperational stage, children classify objects by only one aspect of the entire object. When the shape of equal amount objects are changed, children have difficulty distinguishing that the amount remains constant (Atherton, 2013).

The third stage is the concrete operational stage. The concrete operational stage is characterized by three distinct milestones that span through ages seven to eleven. The first milestone is that children gain the ability to think logically about events or objects. In this stage, children become less egocentric and start to take into account how others might feel. They also make the realization that not everyone will share their thoughts, opinions, or emotions. During the accomplishment of the second milestone, children achieve conservation with numbers, mass, and weight. The third milestone of the concrete operational stage is children attain the capacity to classify objects using multiple features such as size, shape, and amount (Atherton, 2013).

The last stage of Piaget’s cognitive development theory is the formal operational stage. The formal operational stage covers ages eleven and up. During this stage, children have mastered deductive reasoning, the ability to think logically about abstract ideas, and also to formulate and test hypothesis. While in this stage, children start to formulate ideas on how to solve world problems (Atherton, 2013).

Vygotsky

Vygotsky was born on November 17, 1896 in Orsha, Belarus. Even as a child, Vygotsky had exceptional ability for reading and memory retention, which lead him to read the Torah. He received his primary education from his mother, who was a teacher and a private tutor, but entered into public school to finish his secondary education. At the age of seventeen, Vygotsky graduated from school with gold standard recognition. He then attended the University of Moscow and decided to study law. After graduating from college, Vygotsky returned to his childhood home of Gomel to teach philosophy and literature. In 1924 at the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress in Leningrad, Vygotsky presented a paper in which he discussed comparative methods between reflexological and psychological investigative processes. After attaining his dissertation in the art of psychology in 1925, Vygotsky focused his attention on the area of psychology of education and its applications to children with learning disabilities. Vygotsky died in 1934, after contracting tuberculosis at the age of thirty eight. During his lifetime, Vygotsky wrote over one hundred eighty papers and had fifty of them published (New World Encyclopedia, 2014).

Vygotsky’s Cognitive Development Theory

Through many years of observing children, Vygotsky developed a cognitive theory that explained the development of children’s thinking. His theory is composed of several beliefs that children learn from their social environments, they learn through use of language, they learn through play, and they learn through scaffolding (McLeod, 2014).

Vygotsky believed that the first step in the development of children’s cognitive thinking comes from the interactions they have with their social environment. Most children learn to interact socially from watching or imitating their parents. Parents or “more knowledgeable others” model the behavior they want the children to practice and assist the children with verbal instructions. This model/mimic behavior is referred to by Vygotsky as collaborative or cooperative dialogue. During this time, the child strives for understanding of the actions or instructions, then adopts the information, and changes it to control their own performance.

Vygotsky also hypothesized that children develop cognitive thinking through the use of language. He claimed that mastering language develops from social interactions as a means of communicating. According to Vygotsky, language played to major roles in developing cognitive thinking. First, language is the primary way that adults convey information to children. Secondly, language can be used as an instrument for intellectual adaptation. Three different forms of language was differentiated by Vygotsky. Number one is social speech, which is the main way one communicates with others. Secondly, private speech which is aimed toward self and meant to work as an intellectual function. The last form of language is underground private, which is known as silent inner speech. Vygotsky was the first psychologist to recognize the importance of private speech as internalization of language.

A second feature of Vygotsky’s cognitive theory is children learn through play by expanding their zone of proximal development. Zone of proximal development is a concept that gauges the difference between what a child can do by themselves and what a child can do with the help and guidance of an adult. Zone of proximal development is composed of two levels of attainment. The first level is referred to as “present level of development”. For example, during this level a child may attempt to solve a puzzle and take a long time or it may not be solved at all. The second level is referred to as “potential level of development”. During this level, the same child may quickly solve the puzzle when his mother gives him guidance. Vygotsky describes the gap between level one to level two as the zone of proximal development.

The third aspect of Vygotsky’s cognitive theory is learning through scaffolding. Scaffolding is seen when an adult provides assistance or support to a child during a task. In the process of scaffolding, the amount of assistance is adjusted depending on the child’s progress. An example of this is seen when a child first learns to walk and the mother holds both hands, but gradually progresses through levels to releasing both hands altogether.

Comparing and Contrasting Piaget and Vygotsky

Piaget and Vygotsky were both brilliant psychologists that dedicated their lives to understanding and helping children. They both spent years observing the cognitive development processes of children and they both developed theories around the same time. Both psychologist agreed that children actively participate in the learning process through feedback to adults. Both psychologist also agreed that cognitive learning declines with age (DifferenceBetween.net, 2015).

However, there were many differences between the main principles of Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s cognitive development theories. The first difference is in how the psychologists approached the idea of cognitive development in children. Piaget thought that children go through stages of development in order to expand their ability to learn. Vygotsky disagreed because he believed that children didn’t go through stages to acquire knowledge, instead they acquire knowledge from social interactions even before physical development occurred. The second difference is in the importance of the use of language to cognitive development. Piaget simply viewed language as a milestone in development, but Vygotsky thought that language played a major role in development. Vygotsky thought the inner speech was important to development, but Piaget thought that children mostly remained too egocentric to think about using inner speech to regulate self-behavior. Another difference between the two theories is that Vygotsky believed that adults play a major role in children’s cognitive development. In contrast, Piaget thought that peers played a larger role in the development of cognition. Piaget and Vygotsky also differed in how they thought children conquered obstacles. Piaget maintained the belief that when faced with an obstacle from the environment, children adapted through methods of assimilation and accommodation. However, Vygotsky had the belief that children overcame obstacles through assistance and guidance from their parents or other adults by scaffolding and overcoming zones of proximal development (DifferenceBetween.net, 2015).

References

Atherton, J. S. (2013). Learning and teaching; Piaget’s developmental theory. Web. Retrieved 8 December 2015 from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/piaget.htm

Cherry, K. (2015). Piaget’s stages of cognitive development. Web. Retrieved 9 December 2015 from http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/a/keyconcepts.htm

DifferenceBetween.net. (2015). Difference between Vygotsky and Piaget. Web. Retrieved December 2015 from http://www.differencebetween.net/science/differenc-between-vygotsky-and-piaget/

Encyclopedia of World Biography. (2015). Jean Piaget Biography. Web. Retrieved 9 December 2015 from http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pe-Pu/Piaget-Jean.html

McLeod, S. (2014). Lev Vygotsky. Web. Retrieved 9 December 2015 from http://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html

New World Encyclopedia. (2014). Lev Vygotsky. Web. Retrieved 8 December 2015 from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Lev_Vygotsky