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Compare Vygotsky And Cognitive Development

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Many theorists have ideas about how a child develops. Many are used today to define when a child matures, when they can feel emotion, and other significant aspects to which there are no textbook answers for. To critically reflect which of the theories support a continuity or discontinuity hypothesis, this paper will examine the both theories and try to assess which the most prominent from a Cognitive Development perspective.
Piaget and Vygotsky are theorists that offer theoretical viewpoints on how a child develops. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development is recognised as Piaget’s Stage Theory and it deals with four stages of development. Each stage has its own mechanisms and characteristics that take place. They are all detached by an approximate …show more content…

Nurture” argument, and promotes the continuity hypothesis. He proposed that three things revolved around everything in teaching the child: Culture, Language, and Zones of Proximal Development. In each classification he speaks about the influence that each section gives to the child as he or she develops. ‘A culture is like a life of its own’ (Flavell, J.H. 1963). Vygotsky separates the prominence of culture into two parts Elementary Mental thinking, and Higher Mental thinking (Sutherland & Sutherland, 1992), it is using what they have not yet learned. It shows when a new-born turns his head as soon as a person speaks, and how the baby can recognise its mother’s smell. Higher mental thinking is apparent in many things, like our practice of language and our thinking processes are examples of using a higher mental thinking. These type of developments require human contact, and interaction with others. Another vital feature of this theory is scaffolding. When the adult delivers support to a child, they will adjust the amount of help they give dependent on their progress. For example, a child developing the skill of walking might at first have both their hands held for them, then eventually allowing the child to walk unaided. This expansion of different levels of help is scaffolding. It draws its likes from real scaffolding for buildings; it is used as a support for erection of new material and then detached once …show more content…

Does cognitive development happens as routinely as his theory proposes? When a child secures all they developmentally need to move onto the next stage, a ‘switch’ doesn’t just get turned on allowing them to continue on to another stage. Cognitive development is much more disordered than the theory suggests. Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development has conflicting evidence that suggests some details of his study maybe inaccurate. Evidence suggests Piaget underestimated the ability children (Russell, 2004). He provided no way to explain individual differences; some children will naturally be very intelligent and develop through the stages much earlier than Piaget suggests. This highlights the inaccuracy held within his stage theory. The approach used to develop his theory has been heavily critiqued. Is it that children are incapable of cognitive functioning, or just that his approaches were too complex for a child to comprehend as highlighted in (McGarrigle and Donaldson’s ‘Naughty Teddy’ experiment 1974). There is little explanation in Piaget’s theory for emotional, social development or developmental inhibitors. Piaget’s theory has had a huge influence on education methods over the world, and remains one of the most significant cognitive development theories in education. His theory offers a foundation for understanding what might be happening when children obtain definite cognitive functions. There are

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