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Piaget 's Cognitive Development Theory

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According to Piaget (1957), cognitive development was a continuous restructuring of mental processes due to varied situations and experiencing the world and maturing biologically. His view of cognitive development would have us look inside a child’s head and glimpse the inborn process of change that thinking goes through. “He was mainly interested in the biological influences on “how we come to know’” (Huitt and Hummel, 2003). Piaget’s views helps us to have appropriate expectations about children’s mental abilities during different periods of development, especially in terms of logical-mathematical intelligence, and that it was our ability as humans to think abstractly that differentiated us (Science and Cognitive Development). There are three elements of Piaget’s cognitive development theory: schemas, the adaptation process and stages of development. Schemas are basically mental templates of knowledge that individuals use to help make sense of the world around them. The adaptation process which allows for the transition from one stage to another, including assimilation, accommodation and equilibrium and the stages of development in which each child must pass through.

Vygotsky’s ideas about how mental abilities develop, on the other hand, show us how important and necessary the social and cultural context are to developing each child’s mental abilities. Lev Vygotsky (1978) strongly believed that community plays a central role in the process of "making meaning." He and

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