Piaget and Vygotsky

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Piaget and Vygotsky's Ideas and Practices

I will discuss language, cognition, and the two well-known theorists who are considered the "giants" of the twentieth century as well as were both significant in forming a more scientific approach to analyzing the process of cognitive development. There are those that say that Jean Piaget who was born in 186 and died in 180 was the founder of developmental psychology. Piaget began his research career on children by making extensive written notes, often on a daily basis, about the behavior of his three infant children. Piaget not only observed natural behavior, but also tried out little experiments to test alternate interpretations of what the children could do. In addition, Piaget was the first to take children's thinking seriously. Although Piaget never thought of himself as a child psychologist, his real interest was the theory of knowledge, which, like physics, was considered a subdivision of philosophy until Piaget came along and made it a science.

Children and their reasoning process captivated Piaget. Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist and philosopher in the 10`s, is most often linked with the social constructivist theory. He emphasized the influences of intellectual and social contexts in education and supported an innovative model of learning. This type of representation places the teacher in an active role while the students mental abilities expand naturally through a variety of paths of discovery. He argued for the enclosure within psychology of the study of consciousness, conversely he discarded introspection as a scheme. Vygotsky maintained that a study of the mind, as opposed to just behavior, was essential to differentiate individuals from lower animals.

Piaget began to suspect that observing how the child's mind develops might discover the key to human knowledge. Piaget`s insight opened an innovative porthole into the personal workings of the mind. Jean Piaget has made major speculative and practical contributions to our understanding of the beginnings of and the development of understanding the stages of childhood development. In his work, Piaget acknowledged stages of psychological growth. He theorized that all children progressed through stages of cognitive development. He discovered that children think and reason differently at different periods in their lives. Piaget also believed that everyone passed through a sequence of four qualitatively distinctive stages. They are

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· Sensorimotor -in the sensorimotor stage, which occurs from birth to age two, the child is apprehensive with advancing his or her motor control and learning about physical objects. This stage promotes that attention is based mainly on accomplishment. Each time an infant does some achievement such as holding a bottle or learning to roll over, they are learning more about their bodies and how it relates to them and their environment. Piaget maintains that there are six sub-stages in the sensorimotor stage even though children pass through three major achievements.

· Preoperational- In the preoperational stage, from ages two to seven, the child is inattentive with verbal skills. At this point, the child can name objects and reason instinctively. Piaget has divided this stage into the preoperational phase and the intuitive phase. In the preoperational phase children use language and try to make sense of the world but have a much less refined style of thought than adults. They need to test thoughts with certainty on a daily basis and do not appear to be capable to gain knowledge of generalizations made by adults. In the intuitive phase, the child gradually moves away from drawing conclusions based exclusively on concrete experiences with objects. Nevertheless, the conclusions drawn are based on rather indistinguishable parodies and perceptual judgments. It becomes promising to carry on a conversation with a child. Children expand their ability to categorize objects based on different criteria. At this point, children learn to count and use the concept of numbers.

· Concrete operational- in the concrete operational stage, from ages seven to twelve, the child begins to deal with theoretical concepts such as numbers and relationships. It is here that children learn mastery of lessons, relationships, numbers, and how to be rationale. In this stage, an individual can do intellectual operations but only with real tangible objects, events, or situations. Logical reasons are understood. For example, a concrete operational person can understand the need to go to bed early when it is essential to rise in the early hours of the morning.

· Formal operational - in the formal operational stage, ages twelve to fifteen the child begins to reason sensibly and analytically. The last stage deals with the mastery of thinking. A formal operational thinker can do nonfigurative thinking and starts to enjoy abstract thought. The formal operational thinker is competent to think ahead to plan the solution course. Lastly, the formal operational person is capable of thinking about thinking.

A central component of Piaget`s developmental theory of learning and thinking is that both engage the involvement of the learner. Knowledge is not simply transmitted verbally but must be constructed and reconstructed by the learner. Piaget asserted that for a child to know and create understanding of the world the child must take action on objects and it is this deed that provides information of those objects. The ability to learn any cognitive content is always related to their stage of academic development. Children who are at a definite stage cannot be taught the concepts of a higher stage. There are several fascinating facts about Lev Vygotsky. One fact is that he was one of the first critics of Piagets theory. An additional fact is that he died at age thirty-three from tuberculosis cutting his profession short. As a final point, his works were forbidden in Russia until after his death for the reason that of his reference to western culture. Piaget`s theories seem to maintain that there could be no perception of a childs growth if there was no understanding of the culture that child was raised under. Piaget believed that thinking patterns are not entirely due to our biology, they are the products of our connections in cultural situations and other social activities. He believed that the history of the child and the history of the childs ethnicity must be understood to appreciate the child. That cognitive development occurs when children internalize the tools that are taught through the social interactions. It is through social activities that children learn educational tools and societal inventions. These include language, counting systems, writing, art, and music.

Intellectual growth involves three fundamental processes assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration. Assimilation involves the inclusion of original events into pre-existing cognitive structures. Accommodation means accessible structures change to accommodate to the new information. This dual process, assimilation and accommodation, enables the child to form schema. Equilibration involves the person striking a sense of balance between himself or herself and the environment, between assimilation and accommodation. When a child experiences a new event, disequilibrium sets in until he is able to assimilate and accommodate the new information and therefore attains equilibrium. There are many types of equilibrium between assimilation and accommodation that differ with the levels of growth and the problems to be solved. For Piaget, equilibration is the most important factor in explaining why a number of children progress more rapidly in the development of reasonable intelligence than do others.

Vygotsky maintained that adults have the conscientiousness to share their superior collective knowledge with the younger generation. Vygotsky`s theories had three general claims

· The claim that human social and psychological processes are essentially shaped by cultural tools.

· The claim that advanced mental implementation in the individual emerges out of social processes.

· The developmental method of the zone of proximal development, which is the concept that the potential of the child is restricted to a specific time span.

According to Vygotsky`s theory the zone of proximal development problem solving skills of responsibilities can be placed into three categories.

· These are as follows those performed independently by the student.

· Those that cannot be performed even with help.

· Those that fall between the two extremes, the tasks that can be performed with help from others.

Vygotsky`s zone of proximal development emphasized his belief that learning is, primarily, a socially mediated activity. There are two parts to the zone of proximal development, scaffolding, and subjectivity. Scaffolding is the help given to a child that supports the child's learning. Scaffolding is comparable to scaffolding around a building; it can be taken away after the need for it has finished. When a child is shown how to do something for example matching pictures to pictures using verbal and or hand gestures to finish the task on his or her own, the teacher will pull back and allow the child to complete the task for him or herself. Subjectivity, alternatively, is the onset at a point of shared understanding, particularly when two individuals have had conflicting viewpoints on a subject matter. The people around the student significantly shape the way he or she sees the world. The style and eminence of these tools (i.e. people) surrounding the child greatly establishes the pattern and rate of development of the child.

Arguments and comparisons of egocentric speech are contrasted with socialized speech. In other terms, it is non-social, and non-communicative to others. It is verbalized for the sake of saying it. It is usually found in three to five year olds. Egocentric speech is divided into three categories. They are repetition, monologue which is thinking aloud and dual/collective monologue. Vygotsky argues that speech moves from communicative social speech to inner egocentric speech. Piaget proposes the opposite. He believed that children begin by articulating a personal dialogue and then moved on to social speech. Piaget argued that egocentric speech goes away with maturity while Vygotsky claimed that it became internalized as a grown-up. Vygotsky found that a child spoke egocentrically when he was acquisitive or redefining a situation.

Comparisons of Piaget and Vygotsky beliefs on egocentric speech are as follows Piaget believed in the development of thinking and that language moves from the individual to a social. Vygotsky believed in the development of thinking but that language moves from the social to the individual. Piaget felt that egocentric speech is simply an supplement to a child's actions and Vygotsky felt that egocentric speech is not accompaniment but that it helps the child to reason. Piaget believed egocentric speech appears first, and then fades out and is replaced by socialized speech and Vygotsky believed egocentric speech is not first but that it gives voice to internalized social or inner speech. Piaget believed in three key observations about egocentric speech that it is audible and not whispered, it occurs when a child thinks that the others understand his or her egocentric talk and that it occurs when children act jointly on a task, not alone. Vygotsky's felt his experiments sincerely challenged Piaget's three key observations about egocentric speech.

In thought and language, Vygotsky analyzed Piagets work. Vygotsky assumed that Piaget had developed a scientific method that revolutionized the study of childrens language and thought. Nevertheless, Vygotsky also asserted that there were a number of flaws in Piagets methods. Piaget combined psychology and philosophy even though he tried to keep away from theorizing. He ignored the role of the childs activity with relation to thinking processes. Vygotsky also disagreed with Piagets assumption that progression could not be hindered or be sped up through instruction. Summing up, Vygotsky was decisive of Piagets hypothesis that developmental growth was autonomous of experience and based on a universal characteristic of stages. Vygotsky believed that logical development was incessantly developing without an end and not completed in stages as Piaget theorized. Although Vygotsky was critical of Piaget, he realized the magnitude of the information that Piaget gathered. In malevolence of his criticisms, Vygotsky built his educational theories on the strengths of Piagets. The above explains a few examples why Piaget and Vygotsky were acknowledged and recognized as the "great" theorists of child development Please note that this sample paper on Piaget and Vygotsky is for your review only. In order to eliminate any of the plagiarism issues, it is highly recommended that you do not use it for you own writing purposes. In case you experience difficulties with writing a well structured and accurately composed paper on Piaget and Vygotsky, we are here to assist you. Your persuasive essay on Piaget and Vygotsky will be written from scratch, so you do not have to worry about its originality.

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