Piaget and Vygotsky: compare and contrast Essay

fooling life is characterized by conscious goal. From reaching for intellectual nourishment to designing an experiment, our deeds be directed at goals. This purpose reveals itself parti anyy in our conscious aw atomic number 18ness and partly in the organization of our thoughts and actions. Cognition, as defined as the activity of knowing and the offsetes through which cognition is acquired (Shaffer et al., 2002), is the transit involved in thinking and mental activity, such as attention, memory and difficulty solving. Much an otherwise(prenominal)(prenominal) and present theory has emphasized the parallels amidst the provide prepositional structure of style and the structure of an intimate code or style of thought. In this paper I allow discuss words and cognition and two famous theorists who were both influential in forming a much scientific access code to analyzing the process of cognitive instruction jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. jean Piaget was kn proclaim for his establishment of the quatern major periods of cognitive reading. Lev Vygotsky was the complement to Piagets theory with his sociocultural scene on cognitive evolution. Both were keenly fire in the relationship of thinking and run-in scaming.Jean Jacques Piaget was natural in Neuchtel, Switzerland on August 9, 1896. His father, Arthur Piaget, was a professor in Medieval Literature. His mother, Rebecca Jackson, was an intelligent fair sex exactly Jean found her a brusk bitneurotic. When he was in his late youthfulness he had a faith crisis. His mother encourage him to att overthrow church to solitary(prenominal) found it foolish. So he had decided to focus less on philosophy and to a greater extent on psychology (Smith, L.). Piaget be the University of Neuchtel. There he studied natural sciences. He then attended the University of Zrich were he gained an interest in psychoanalysis. In 1919, he went to Paris, France where he met Dr. Simon at the Binet Laboratory . While in Paris, Piaget planned and administered numerous reading tests to school baberen and became interested not in their correct answers, scarcely in their incorrect answers. He wanted to explore the suit out process that electric s gainrren shoot. By 1921 he began to publish his investigate findings.He essential a smart government agency of questioning the barbarianren it was a psychiatric method of question and rejoinder. It is called the methode clinique or the clinical method. The clinical method is a type of wonder in which a participants response to each successive question (or problem) de margeines what the investigator will ask (Shaffer et al., 2002). Piaget was interested in larn the differences between a tiddlers acquisitions of knowledge compared to an big(a)s. He formed the theory that the growth of knowledge is a progressive makeion of analyticly implant structures superseding one another by a process of inclusion of lower less powerful logical means into eminenter and more powerful ones up to great(p)hood. Therefore, kidrens logic and modes of thinking are ab initio entirely different from those of adults (Smith, L.). By the epoch Piaget died in Geneva in 1980, he had written everyplace 300 papers, book chapters and introductions as well as thirty books on cognitive setment.Piagets brain was that children had well-educated through action. He believed that children are natural with and acquire schemas, or concepts for how to act and respond to the world. As children explore their world, they form and reform ideas in their minds. The more actively involved children are, the more knowledge is gained. McGee and Richgels (1996) note, Because children construct their own knowledge, this knowledge does not come amply developed and is often quite different from that of an adult (p.7). Accordingly, the Piagetian perspective of literacy acquisition emphasizes a childs branchs of development and reflects concepts of read ing and constitution as the child has constructed them, state McGee and Richgels (1996, p. 10). They add,Children s concepts of reading and writing are shaped more by what they effected in preceding developmental stages than by their simply imitating adults behavior or undermentioned adults directions (p. 10).Piaget believed that children are born with the innate tendency to try to organize the way in which they think about their environment, that is, to make smell out of it. He believed that human existences organize the sensible about the environment in different ship so-and-soal as they mature. These mental changes are related to an fundamental interaction between age and environment. Piaget further believed that his theory was widely distributed, that the stages of development he outlined would exist in all societies. He viewed the development of the childs cognitive ability as a four-stage process. Children would move up through the stages in a fixed monastic order. He assigned estimations of age for each of the four stages, but did not see the process as affiliated to specific ages. Piagets theory identifies four developmental stages and the processes by which children progress through them.The four stages are as follows Sensorimotor stage (birth 2 geezerhood old)The child, through corporal interaction with his or her environment, builds a set of concepts about reality and how it works. This is the stage where a child does not know that physiological objects stay on in existence even when out of crapper (object permanence). Preoperational stage (ages 2-7)The child is not yet candid to conceptualize abstractly and compulsions concrete physical situations. Concrete operations (ages 7-11)As physical abridge care accumulates, the child starts to conceptualize, creating logical structures that explain his or her physical experiences. Abstract problem solving is also accomplishable at this stage. For example, arithmetic equations can be figure out with numbers, not provided with objects. Formal operations (beginning at ages 11-15)By this point, the childs cognitive structures are like those of an adult and include conceptual reasoning (Shaffer et al., 2002).While Piaget did not conduct cross-cultural research, his research in Switzerland was comprehensive. As the text points out, Piagets captain observations and hypotheses were based on his observations of his own three children. He then tested his theories by designing experiments for children to perform. These experiments were passed on to teachers being trained atthe institute. Over the years, Piaget and these teachers have conducted an estimated 20,000 of his various experiments. For example, if one child had been taken on trips around the world, fagged much quantify in museums, and read many books, she mogul be watchful to move up to the next stage at an earlier age than a child who spent his time playing video games and watching TV all day (Driscoll, 1994).Piaget accounted for varying takes of preparedness by explaining that each child possessed a schema, and that a child could not move to the next stage until his or her schema was at a sceptre level. Schemata were expanded through what Piaget termed as assimilation (adding to former knowledge) and accommodation (changing prior knowledge to fit new information). In this manner, children adapt to situations in response to their need for equilibrium (solving dilemmas crucifying skills). A soccer actor who wishes to be a scorer, but lacks aiming skills, may trust at shooting at the goal until she assimilates knowledge of which angle to shoot from and how hard to kick the ball. When she adjusts her play (via accommodation) and score a goal, she moves from disequilibrium to equilibrium. Physical maturation, activities and amicableizing with peers to learn from them are all factors that can or do promote growth in schema (Driscoll, 1994).Piaget believed that children who prono unce aloud in the presence of others will sometimes adapt their speech to take into consideration the hearer(s) but at other times would direct their remarks to no-one in particular and thither would be no certify that the child was attempting to take into account the knowledge or interests of a specific listener. Piaget called this egocentric speech the unfitness of the child to separate their own perspective from those of other people. Piaget saw egocentric speech as being the reflection of thought processes of the four-year-old child, and he investigated this in detail. He saw egocentric speech as having no apparent function in the childs behaviour, so it would have no reason to survive, eventually fading away as the child became more aware of the distinctions between themselves and others (Piaget, 1955).Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was born in the U.S.S.R. in 1896, the same yearPiaget was born. His active ocloving cupational group as a psychologist was only around 10 years long. He graduated with a legal philosophy degree at the Moscow University. After graduation, he started teaching at various institutions. Vygotskys rootage big research project was in 1925 with his psychological science of Art. A few years later, he act a career as a psychologist running(a) with Alexander Luria and Alexei Leontiev. Together, they began the Vygotskian approach to psychology. Vygotsky had no formal cooking in psychology but it giveed that he was intrigue by it. After his death of tuberculosis in 1934, his ideas were repudiated by the government however, his ideas were kept alive by his students.While agreeing with Piaget that the child is an active learner, Vygotsky placed more emphasis on the childs interaction with the social environment. Whereas Piaget visualizes the young child as a natural scientist, experimenting with the environment, Vygotsky sees the child as needing attention at a tiny point he refers to the wheel of skills that a child can exercise wit h assistance but cannot perform supremely as the govern of proximal development. With guidance or assistance from parents, adults, or even older children, the child is able to master a more difficult task or concept. In contrast to Piaget, Vygotsky believed that the child requires more culture for cognitive development. While recognizing that maturation is important in cognitive development, he placed less emphasis on it.Language and cognition emerge in development at about the same time and are intertwined. Children build new concepts by interacting with others who either provide feedback for their hypotheses or service them accomplish a task (McGee & Richgels, 1996). Vygotsky suggested that learning is a matter of internalizing the language and actions of others. According to McGee and Richgels (1996), Vygotsky believed that children need to be able to intercourse about a new problem or a new concept in order to understand it and use it (p. 8). As the child discusses a probl em or task with an adult, the adult supplies language to assist the child in solving the problem the child gradually internalizes the language until the task can be completed independently (McGee & Richgels, 1996). The instructional proficiency in whichthe teacher models the desired learning system or task and then gradually shifts function to the students is called sustain.Vygotsky perceived the process of cognitive development as less segmented and rigid than Piaget had. He believed that children learned from in two ways from tools and from more capable peers and adults. Tools could be anything in the environment that children use to help them advance intellectually (e.g., the internet, cultural artifacts). He advocated that children be placed in learning contexts which were raised just slightly above their existing ability so that they would step up to reach the next level. For Vygotsky, learning was a social process from the beginning. Children learned only by interacting wit h adults, not with peers who were at there level of cognition. The adult provides the child with assisted learning and scaffolding until the zone of proximal development has been removed. An example of this might involve a mother teaching her child how to drink from a cup. The mother could model the action for the child the mother could then hold the cup up to the childs mouth following that, the child could attempt to raise the cup to her own mouth finally, the mother would help the child line up the activity until the child she has acquired the skill.A main subject field Piaget and Vygotsky are both concerned about is the relationship between language and thought. This is the concept in which they show great dissimilarity. As preschoolers go through their mundane activities, they frequently talk out loudly to themselves as they play and explore the environment. Piaget called these utterances egocentric speech, a term expressing his belief that they reflect the preoperational ch ilds softness to imagine the perspectives of others (Piaget, 1955). Piaget believed that egocentric speech reflects an inability to take the perspective of others, and plays no useful role in development.Vygotsky believed that a childs use of cloistered speech talking to himself/herself is not an example of self-seeking but rather is pre-social conversation. Vygotsky placed a high value on private speech because it enables the child not only to practice talking but also to plan activities. Some modern investigators have suggested that private speech is a process of readiness out loud for example, when you are going to a new place, you verbalize the instructions for getting there aloud to yourself. It is an important developmental phenomenon, which helps children to organise and govern thinking. As the Western world has more time to assimilate Vygotskys ideas, we may discover other contributions that are important in the cognitive development of young children (Vygotsky, 1962) .There are two cases of Piaget and Vygotskys differences that stand out the most in their world. First, Vygotsky was critical of Piagets assumption that developmental growth was independent of experience and based on a widely distributed characteristic. Vygotsky asserted that development is complex and is effected by social and cultural contexts. Biological and cultural development are interrelated and do not develop in isolation. Vygotsky believed that intellectual development was continually evolving without an end point.Second, the other conflict between Vygotsky and Piaget was the latters explanation of development as the notion that concepts should not be taught until children are in the appropriate developmental stage. This conflicts with Vygotskys zone of proximal development (ZPD) and developmental theories. Vygotsky noted that instruction that is oriented toward development is inefficient concerning the childs overall development.Both Vygotsky and Piaget were prodigious men with theories that have helped shaped the world of psychology. Piaget believed the universal acquisition of knowledge occurs within a four stage process. The Vygotskian perspective of cognitive development emphasizes social interaction but places less emphasis on stages of behavior. Although both theories had conflicted with one another, it is true to believe that Vygotsky had reinforced his educational theories on the strengths of Piagets.ReferencesDriscoll, M. P. (1994). psychology of learning for instruction. capital of Massachusetts Allyn andBacon.Evans, R. (1973). Jean Piaget The Man and His Ideas. New York E. P. Dutton & Co.,Inc.Hall, Wayne and Drinnin, Beverly. Instructors Resources for Discovering Psychology.New York Worth Publishers, 2000, p. 254.McGee, L.M., & Richgels, D.J. (1996). Literacys beginnings Supporting young readersand writers (2nd ed.). Boston Allyn and Bacon.Moll, Louis C. (1994). Vygotsky and Education Instructional implications andapplications of socio historical psychology. New York Cambridge University Press.Piaget, J. (1955). The language and thought of the child. New York Meridian Books.Shaffer, D. R., Wood, E., & Willoughby, T. (2002). Developmental PsychologyChildhood and Adolescence, First Canadian Edition. Toronto Thomson/Nelson.Smith, L. (1997). Jean Piaget. In N. Sheehy, A. Chapman. W.Conroy (eds). BiographicalDictionary of Psychology. London Routledge.Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge MIT Press.