Vygotsky’s Views On Cognitive Development Complements Piaget’s

Methods and approaches to teaching have been greatly influenced by the research of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Both have contributed to the field of education by offering explanations for small fryrens cognitive look outing styles and abilities. This essay will discuss how rather than being an alternative, Vygotskys sights on cognitive development complements Piagets. Initially, the term cognitive will be be before having a depend at Piagets stages of cognitive development and subsequently analyzing how Vygotskys views complement Piagets.Flanagan (199672) states that, cognitive development is the acquisition of mental bear upon involved in thinking and mental activity, such as attention, memory and problem solving. It is therefore a totality of mental processes. Piaget and Vygotsky were both influential in forming a more scientific approach to analyzing the cognitive development process of the child active construction of experience. While Piaget and Vygotsky may differ on how they view cognitive development in children, both offer educators good suggestions on how to teach certain material in a developmentally appropriate manner.Both Piaget and Vygotsky agree that childrens cognitive development took place in stages. (Jarvis, Chandler 2001 P. 149). However they were distinguished by contrasting styles of thinking. Piaget was the first to reveal that children reason and think disparately at different periods in their lives. He believed that all children progress finished four different and very distinct stages of cognitive development. This supposition is known as Piagets typify Theory because it deals with four stages of development, which argon sensori-motor, pre operative, concrete operational and formal operational (Ginsburg, Opper,197926).In the first stage sensori-motor, which occurs from birth to the age of two is the time in an infants life when the child basically deals with what is presented to him. They learn about physical objects an d are concerned with motor skills and the consequences of some of their actions (Thomson and Meggit, 1997107). During this stage children will learn the sentiment of object permanence. This is where an object will continue to exist even if it is out of sight. (Ginsburg, Opper 1979 P. 48) For instance if the toy fell off the bed, the child will begin to look for it because he understands it continues to exist.The preoperational stage last from two to seven years. In this stage it becomes come-at-able to carry on a conversation with a child and they in any case learn to count and use the concept of numbers. This stage is divided into the preoperational phase and the intuitive phase. Children in the preoperational phase are preoccupied with verbal skills and try to mold sense of the world but have a much less sophisticated mode of thought than adults. In the intuitive phase the child moves apart from drawing conclusions based upon concrete experiences with objects.One problem, whi ch identifies children in this stage, is the inability to cognitively conserve relevant spatial information. This is when, when a material is manipulated and no longer matches the cognitive theatrical role that a child has made, that child believes the amount of material has been altered instead of just its shape. (Jarvis and Chandler,2001135) During the Concrete Operational stage from ages seven to ten, children of this age are in school and they begin to deal with abstract concepts such as numbers, relationships and how to reason.They can now group certain things into categories, and put objects into size order, number order, and any new(prenominal)wise types of systematic ordering. There is a form of logical reasoning and thinking. Using logic, the child is capable of reversibility and conservation, which is the understanding of that mental operations and physical operations, can be reversed. They are now beginning to understand other peoples perspectives and views and are cap able of concentrating on more than one thing at a time.In this stage a person can do mental operations but only with real concrete objects, events or situations (Jarvis and Chandler, 2001139). Finally, in the formal operational stage, age twelve to fifteen, the child has become more adult-like in their thought structures and processes. They begin to reason logically, systematically and hypothetically. (Jarvis, Chandler 2001 P. 139). In other words, they can imagine things that do not exist or that they have never experienced.This stage is superior generally like the preceding stage but at a more groundbreaking level. The formal operational person is capable of meta-cognition, that is, thinking about thinking. Piaget also theorized on Adaptation, and Development. The adaptation theory (also known as the Constructivist theory) involved three implicit in(p) processes, which contributed to the childs cognitive development. These are assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium. Assim ilation involved the incorporation of mod events into pre-existing cognitive structures.Accommodation is the adjustment involved in the formation of new mental structures contracted to accommodate new information. Equilibration involved the person striking a balance between him and the environment, between assimilation and accommodation. When a child experienced a new event, disequilibrium set in until he was able to assimilate and accommodate the new information and thus attain equilibrium. There were many different types of equilibrium between assimilation and accommodation, which varied with the levels of development and the problems, which needed to be solved.(Thomson and Meggit 1997105)This dual process, assimilation-accommodation, enabled the child to form schema, and with each stage there came new methods for organizing knowledge together with the acquisition of new schema. Schemas are Form action plans which guide us in understanding what is going on around us (Hayes b. P . 15) These are similar to responses but imply more cognitive processes. A schema includes ideas, information, actions and plans. People can learn by adopting new schemes or combine little already present schemes to create new larger ones.(Hayes a. 1999 P. 98)In contrast of Piaget, Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist and philosopher in the 1930s, is most often associated with the social constructivist theory and came into three general claims Culture which is that higher mental functioning in the case-by-case emerged out of social processes. Secondly Language which human social and psychological processes are essentially shaped by cultural tools. Lastly the developmental method Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) which is the concept that the potential of the child is limited to a particularized time span.(Jarvis, Chandler 2001 P. 149-150).Vygotsky believed that it was adults and the Childs peers, which had the responsibility in sharing their greater collective knowledge with the younger generations. (Jarvis, Chandler 2001149-150). This type of education supports a discovery model of learning and places the instructor in an active role while the savants mental abilities develop naturally through various paths of discovery. Vygotsky argued that through social activities children learnt cultural tools and social inventions.These include vocabulary, rules, numerate systems, writing, art, and music. Language for Vygotsky was a system of symbolic representation, which had been perfected over many previous generations and allowed the child to abstract the world. It provides the symbols for the childs equations concerning the world Language came into three separate categories, which were Social, Egocentric, and Inner. For Vygotsky language was what made thinking even a possibility. Language is the difference between thinking on an elementary level and on a higher level.According to Vygotskys theory ZPD had to do with a childs current and potential abilities to do something (Flanagan 1999 P. 72). He believed that problem-solving tasks could be placed into three categories, which were as follows (a) those performed independently by the student independent performance (b) those that could not be performed even with help and (c) those that fall between the two, the tasks that can be performed with help from others assisted performance (Santrock, 1994).Vygotsky believed the concept of ZPD recommended a better move towards to education and allowed a better understanding of the learning process. (Flanagan 1999 P. 73) Bruner built on Vygotskys idea of the ZPD, by introducing what he described as scaffolding. hold is the help, which is given to a child that supports the childs learning. Scaffolding is similar to scaffolding around a building it can be taken away after the need for it has ended. When a child is shown how to do something he can now accomplish this task on its own.(Jarvis and Chandler 2001 P. 154).Vygotsky believed that the history of the child and the history of the childs assimilation needed to be understood because it overrides the cognitive schema process that Piaget described (Santrock, 1994). Piaget believed that the sequence of how children experience the stages was universal, but acknowledged the rate at which each child moved through these stages was flexible and relative upon factors such as maturity, social influences, and other factors.Because of the difference in the skills needed for each level, Piaget believed that children should not be strained into learning the knowledge of the next stage until the child was cognitively ready. (Flanagan 1999105) However, Vygotsky believed that instruction came before development and that instruction lead the learner into ZPD. Piaget and Vygotsky had many contrasting views which included Piaget believing that cognitive changes precede linguistic advances, unlike Vygotsky who proposed that language allowed the child a far greater freedom of thought and lead to further cognitive development.(Flanagan 1999 P. 59)Piaget believed in the development of thinking and that language moved from individual too social (Ginsburg, Opper 1979 P. 84). However, Vygotsky believed that language moved from the social to the individual. (Jarvis and Chandler,2001150). Vygotsky, like Piaget, believed the relationship between the individual and the social as being a necessary relational. However, Vygotsky believed that it was adults and the Childs peers, which had the responsibility in sharing their greater collective knowledge with the younger generations.He did not believe it was doable for a child to learn and to grow individually and the culture and the environment around the child played a big part in their Cognitive Development. (Flanagan 2001 P. 72). He also believed a child was unable to develop the way he or she had without learning from others in the environment in which they were raised. In contrast, Piaget maintain that children were naturally i nquisitive about their own abilities and about their environment (Jarvis, Chandler 2001 P. 129) and that children advanced their knowledge because of biologically regulated cognitive changes.(Flanagan 2001 P. 57). Whereas, Piaget believed that a child was only possible of learning the processes in each stage at any time (Flanagan 1999 P. 60) and overlooked the role of the childs activity with relation to thought processes. For Piaget, children construct knowledge through their actions on the world. By contrast, Vygotskys stages, unlike Piagets, were that of a smooth and gradual process. That understanding is social in origin. For Vygotsky the cultural and social aspects took on a redundant importance which is much less symmetrical than Piagets theories.Vygotsky was critical of Piagets assumption that developmental growth was independent of experience and based on a universal sign of stages. Vygotsky believed that characteristics did not cease at a certain point as Piaget did. When one thing was learned, it was used from then on. It did not stop just because a child entered another stage of development. Everything was progressive. Vygotsky also disagreed with Piagets assumption that development could not be impeded or accelerated through instruction.(Flanagan 1999 P. 57)Vygotsky believed that intellectual development was continually evolving without an end point and not completed in stages as Piaget theorized. Piagets stages only approach up to, and end with, approximately age fifteen. This theory does not seem to have any major factors after approximately age fifteen. Due to experiences Piaget had over the years he changed the way he thought and modify his techniques of research to include a greater emphasis of the role of the childs activity.Vygotsky although critical of Piaget, realized the importance of the information that Piaget had gathered and in spite of his criticisms, Vygotsky built his educational theories on the strengths of Piagets theories. Af ter examining Piagets and Vygotskys theories on how they complement each other cognitive development there is still more which we can continue to learn and build on with both Piagets and Vygotskys ideas and theories, especially when applied in education construction. Piaget proposed many applicable educational strategies, such as discovery learning with an emphasis on activity and play.However, Vygotsky incorporated the importance of social interactions and a co-constructed knowledge base to the theory of cognitive development. In conclusion, a teachers focus should be to provide assistance to students in need, and provide cultural tools as educational resources. Teachers should provide for group and peer learning, in order for students to support each other through the discovery process. Especially in todays diverse classroom, the teacher needs to be sensitive to her students cultural background and language, and be an active participant in his knowledge.