Contributions Of The Theories Of Piaget And Vygotsky

Vygotsky believed ‘learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function’ (Vygotsky and Cole, 1978:90) This suggests that Vygotsky believed that the social learning of a child preceded the development of a child. The basis of his theory is to look into the social and cultural interactions that a child makes and engages in, he says this is what focuses the child to gain their knowledge and sense of independence. Although Vygotsky shared some similar beliefs with Piaget, ‘children learn actively and develop their knowledge and thinking skills through hands on experiences’ (Anon, 2013:1) he did not believe in the stages of learning and development in the same manner of Piaget, Vygotsky saw learning as a development process that remained ongoing throughout learning.

For the past few weeks, one of my teammates son has been coming to our soccer games. His name is Elijah and he is about 3 years old. Every time he comes, he always has his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles swords. He is very into the TMNT and is always wearing shirts with them on it and his costume last year for halloween was a ninja turtle. Elijah is always having conversations with adults and playing with them. On Saturday, Sep. 24, 2016, he was at our game. He was very involved with cheering for his mother and the rest of the team. Afterwards, everyone went up to him to say hi and he would have a full conversation with us. Elijah has displayed both Vygotsky’s theory and Piagetian theory. He was communicating with adults and using proper language.

This paper will present an over view of Jean Piaget’s life. It will focus on details of his personal life, his contributions to psychology, his historical development, and his present contributions to his career. Jean Piaget’s research in developmental psychology and genetic epistemology answered the question: How does knowledge grow? Piaget’s findings have been and continue to be an inspiration to fields like psychology, sociology, education, epistemology, economics and law.

Throughout the history of education, there have been many intelligent theorists who have contributed endless amounts of research to explain how children develop. Piaget and Vygotsky were two of the most important theorists whose focus was on how children develop cognitively. Piaget’s research supported the idea that children’s intellectual growth is based partly on physical development as well as the particular interactions that a child has with their environment. He also strongly believed that a child will only learn when their curiosity gets the best of them, because then the child experiments on their own (Mooney, 2000). Vygotsky, on the other hand, believed that a child’s cognitive development was influenced by the values and beliefs of the adults and other children in their lives. He presumed that children learn best from one another, especially when one child is attempting a difficult task and cannot seem to conquer it, but then another child whom has conquered this same task offers aid to the struggling student. Learning occurs when the struggling student accomplishes the task at hand with the gentle guidance of another person. Piaget and Vygotsky, both, possessed research that supported the idea that children learn best when they are at play, yet they both had different ideas about how that learning takes place (Mooney, 2000). Both of these incredible theorists’ ideas coincide quite nicely with the idea of a constructivist view of learning, which can be simply

Vygotsky's theory was based on the premises that intellectual development was a social process unequivocally linked to the teaching of information, he believed that learning proceeded development (McLeod, 2007), Piaget however considered intellectual development an extremely personal process, he believed that people gained knowledge based on their experiences as opposed to their teachings (Piaget, 1973).

The two most influential psychologists of the twentieth century, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky dedicated their lives to the field of Developmental Psychology. They spent every possible day studying the wide span of physical, cognitive, social, and emotional growth and development over a human lifespan. Apart from many criticisms regarding their work, Piaget and Vygotsky’s enduring research is an important part in children 's education around the world. In addition to spreading light on a child develops into an adolescent and adult.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the most influential researchers in the area of developmental psychology during the 20th century. Piaget originally trained in the areas of biology and philosophy and considered himself a "genetic epistemologist." He was mainly interested in the biological influences on "how we come to know." He believed that what distinguishes human beings from other animals is our ability to do "abstract symbolic reasoning." Piaget 's views are often compared with those of Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934), who looked more to social interaction as the primary source of cognition and behavior. This is somewhat similar to the distinctions made between Freud and Erikson in terms of the development of personality. The writings of Piaget (e.g., 1972, 1990; see Piaget, Gruber, & Voneche) and Vygotsky (e.g. Vygotsky, 1986; Vygotsky & Vygotsky, 1980), along with the work of John Dewey (e.g., Dewey, 1997a, 1997b), Jerome Bruner (e.g., 1966, 1974) and Ulrick Neisser (1967) form the basis of the constructivist theory of learning and instruction.

Bruner (2015) discusses a time of great change in the world of psychology in Germany, America, and in Britain through contributions of several “new heroes [that] were much more holistic, much less reductionist…the worldwide major figures in the field of developmental psychology were now Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget”. Lourenço (2012) reiterated the importance of Piaget and Vygotsky as two influential developmental psychologists and added that “their contributions to developmental psychology, albeit different, are similarly remarkable and unique”. With examination and gained understanding of both, paired with consideration of differences and similarities, this paper reveals Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories as complementary in nature.

Piaget’s research ideas have resulted in new insights as to how children think, reason, and perceive the world. Piaget was interested in the qualitative, not quantitative, characteristics of development. It does not matter that a child can recite multiplication tables unless he understands the concepts behind addition and multiplication of numbers or quantities.

Learning and development is a major aspect of everyone and their day to day lives. Some people consider the term learning to have two definitions, these are informative learning which allows people to learn what fits their mental models and transformative learning which is the process of changing these mental models (Heorhiadi et al, 2014). There are two main theorists Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, whose theories will be used to explain the way children learn and develop.

This essay seeks to identify and describe the concept of cognitive development and, highlight both Piaget and Vygotsky’s theory as it relates to cognitive development, and the significant differences between them.

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is named after Jean Piaget, the Swiss clinical psychologist who came up with it. As the name suggests, the theory focuses on the nature of knowledge and how human beings acquire it, construct, and later use it for a particular purpose. According to Piaget, mental development is a progressive reorganization of conceptual process that results from the environment experiences and biological maturation. The theory focuses on the cognitive of children and how their thinking changes as they grow from their infancy, to young adult age, and into adult age. The theory is also referred to as genetic epistemology which is generally the study of the origins of knowledge. Piaget did not focus on how well the children could solve problems, count, or spell words as the measure for their IQ; he focused more on how fundamental concepts emerged such as the idea of quantity, time, and numbers. Since the theory was invented, it has had a great impact on the nature of education that the children receive. However, it has also been faced with criticism from critics who argue that some of the ideas that Piaget uses lack concrete basis. This essay discusses the strengths, limitations, implications to personal life, and how it compares to other closely related theories.

This paper will explore two influential men whose theories have a remarkable influence on development and learning. Second, this essay will examine Piaget and Vygotsky’s background, each hypothesis as it relates to cognitive development and education, the similarities and differences, the impact of having better insight into and understanding the concept of learning. Developmental science involves looking at the entire realm of human thought, behavior, and expression (Steinberg, Bornstein, Vandell & Rook, 2011). Cognitive development entails qualitative changes in thinking as one matures. Sociocultural perspective involves examining ways development adapts to culture (Steinberg et al., 2011). Equally significant is Piaget and Vygotsky’s mutual perspective on a dialectical approach, a non-reductionist view, a non-dualistic thesis, an emphasis on action, a primacy of processes over external contents or outcomes; and concentration qualitative over quantitative changes.

Both Vygotsky and Piaget’s theories about how children develop cognitively, directly relate to a constructivist view of learning.

Lev S. Vygotsky and Jean Piaget are both child development theorist and each have their own view on what cognitive development is for children. Vygotsky places an emphasis on how culture affect cognitive development while Piaget believes that development occurs through different stages and children cannot move on to another stage without finishing the stage they are on. Vygotsky states cognitive development comes from social interactions from guided learning and the environment in which the child grows in will also influence in how they think. Jean Piaget states that the development comes from independent exploration which children construct knowledge of their own. Vygotsky also states that adults are an important source of cognitive development while Piaget emphasize the importance of peers as peer interaction. While observing the classroom I can see both theorist influences inside the classroom.