In this essay I will give a brief overview of the Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories of the cognitive developmental psychology, evaluate them, and explain how it has been applied to education.
Developmental psychology is a scientific approach, which tries to explain how we change over time. It is focused on development during the childhood, as this is the time when the most changes occur. Developmental psychology studies a wide range of fields, such as child development, educational psychology, psychosexual development, social and cognitive development.
Psychologists study cognitive areas of human activity mainly through observation. They believe that human does not simply react to signs, but structured their experiences and give them a specific meaning. The main three figures have dominated in the cognitive development field and made a huge contribution to developmental approach, namely Lev Vygotsky(1896-1934),Jean Piaget(1896-1980) and John Bowlby(1907-1990) .
Jean Piaget had a strong interest in the relationship between the natural maturing of the child and his interaction with the environment. Piaget believed that child is a scientist that conducting experiments over the world to see what happens (what happens if ..? ,
As a result of these experiments the child builds his theory – Piaget called these scheme – about how the physical and social world is constructed. Encountering with a new situation or an object, a child is trying to understand it in the language of the existing scheme. Piaget called this process assimilation: a child tries to understand a new object, event or information in terms of the existing knowledge (scheme).If the old schema is unsuitable for assimilation of a new object , then a child , like a good scientist modifies it to fit a new situation and thereby extends his theory of the world (this process Piaget called accommodation ). According to Piaget, children try to find a balance between assimilation and accommodation – and this could be achieved by using a mechanism called equilibration.
By observing his children and nephew, Jean Piaget suggested that children develop logical thinking through the four major stages, starting from the birth to early adolescent: sensorimotor stage (0-2), pre-operational stage (2-7), concrete operational stage (7-11), formal operational stage (11+).
During the sensorimotor stage, a child learns the outward world through circular reaction (repeating the same action again and again). An important part of this period is object permanence or understanding that hidden object still exists.
The pre-operational stage begins at age two. According to Piaget during this stage children are very egocentric and see the world only from their point of view. Also, their thoughts become symbolic but they still don’t understand the physical properties of objects such as volume or weight.
On the concrete operational stage, Piaget believes, children are able to converse quantities and become less egocentric.
During the formal operational stage, children develop and test hypothesis and ability to solve abstract problems.
Piaget did not apply his theory to education, but later it was done by other researchers who have explained how Piaget’s theory can be applied to the learning and education.
Piaget developed a new method of understanding children. He suggested that we should not focus on the children answers only but on their understanding and a process that led to the answer.
He believed that all children go through the same cognitive developmental stages but at different rates and that’s why teachers must make the special effort to arrange classroom activities for individuals and groups of children rather than for the whole class group.
According to Piaget the main teacher’s role in not to impart knowledge but to provide the opportunities for the children to practice different strategies. It is important to awake child’s research interest. Piaget emphasized that a child should have the opportunity to make discoveries that allow him to coordinate the existing schemas into a single structure. It is important not to simplify the situation and find the average complexity in which the child can generalize the methods of action.
Piaget’s theory is a great intellectual achievement. It has changed the understanding of the cognitive development of children and for many years has inspired a huge number of researchers. Observations concerning the sequencing of cognitive development in Piaget are confirmed by many studies. However, more new and sophisticated methods of testing the mental activity of infants and preschoolers demonstrate that Piaget underestimated their abilities. As we mentioned above, in order for the child to complete many of the tasks created to validate the theory of stages, the child actually should have some basic skills for information processing: attention, memory, and knowledge of specific facts.
The one more limitation for the Piaget’s theory is that mostly he was focused on logic and ignored social factors, such as work in groups. Also that most of his studies involve children from European high social- economic status families.
The work of Russian psychologist Lew Vygotsky has become influential in the development of a new theory known as social development.
Vygotsky believed that a community and social interaction play a huge role in cognitive development. He suggested that “every aspect of child’s cognitive development appears first – social, and then on the individual level, first between people and then inside the child “.
Lev Vygotsky divides mental processes into elementary and high mental functions. Where the elementary function is a result of biological evolution such as memory or perception, and higher mental function is cultural- the result of historical development of society. The role of the culture is to transform from the lower mental functions into higher.
He pointed to the important role of others, more knowledgeable–Vygotsky called them experts- in the educational process. Initially, the parent or teacher provide instruction how to solve a certain problem or task, but gradually a child began to work independently.
Later Lev Vygotsky introduces a new concept of his theory – Zone of Proximal Development. He defined ZPD as “a distance between the actual development level and the level of potential development”, the tasks with which a child may be not able to handle by himself, but which is able to solve with the help of an adult.
Vygotsky argued that language plays an important role in cognitive development. He believed that language helps
Piaget and Vygotsky, had similar views on cognitive development but not on the egocentric speech. Where Piaget viewed egocentric speech as result of immaturity and a direct expression of the egocentrism, Vygotsky sees it as a part of a social learning process that turns into the inner speech.
Vygotsky’s concept of ZPD played a huge role in education. For the teachers, it is useful to know both levels of the child’s ZPD, to indicate where a child is at the moment and to use it as a guide for the future child’s development.
Vygotsky’s ZPD theory may help teachers to organize classroom activities in different ways, such as scaffolding or collaborative learning.
Vygotsky suggested that a problem with students might be due to the fact that many of them are at different levels. To reduce this difference, teachers are suggested to use cooperative learning, where students work in small groups and responsible for the each other.
According to Vygotsky’s theory, working with more knowledgeable peers enables you to move throw your Zone of Proximal Development.
Vygotsky’s work did not receive the same level of intense scrutiny that Piaget’s did, mostly due to the time-consuming process of translating his work from Russian. Vygotsky made a great contribution by recognizing the importance of social interaction in the child’s cognitive development. Whereas Piaget suggested that all children, despite the culture difference, should make the same progression through the cognitive development stages, Vygotsky found that there would be significant cultural differences. Despite this, Vygotsky’s theory has not much research and has been criticized for the lack of details. This is partly because of his death at the young age and so had no time to finish his work.
How do children think? How do they talk or make their decision? For nearly a century, scientists are working on to find answers to these questions, which are important not only for a child psychology but also for the development of psychology as a whole. The most significant contribution to the study of this area made two outstanding scientists- Jean Piaget (1896-1980) and Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934).
Both of them provided us with important views on cognitive development in the child. Piaget suggested that children progress through the stages of cognitive development through maturation, discovery methods, through accommodation and assimilation. Vygotsky’s theory highlighted the importance of language and culture in cognitive development.
I believe that concepts such as scaffolding, dialogue, and cultural tools are very important components of a student’s knowledge acquisition. Teachers by using ZPD strategies in their classroom, help to gain useful learning strategies which they can internalize and utilize later. Piaget’s theories help to develop many applicable educational strategies, one of them is discovery learning. However, Vygotsky stressed the importance of social interactions, language, and culture in the child’s cognitive development.
In conclusion, I believe that teachers should be focused to provide assistance to students in need and practice group and peer learning, where students will be able to support each other through the discovery process. Especially nowadays, where classrooms are so diverse, the teachers need to be more sensitive to their student’s cultural background or language and be an active participant in their knowledge construction.