Jean Piaget Vs Vygotsky

Words: 1247
Pages: 5

The theories of Jean Piaget and Lev Semanovich Vygotsky impacted significantly upon the understanding of cognitive development in early stages through to adulthood. However, the two theories have a vast range of similarities, it is their individual differences that allow them to individually impact both the industry of education and psychology on such a significant scale. For example, Piaget developed a theory based on the individual constructs of his knowledge individually (Lourenco 2012) In comparison to Vygotsky whom developed a theory which only had developer while another participates in various forms of social interaction, this interaction allowed for the utilisation of factors of Vygotsky’s theory which as now referred to as tools (Lourenco …show more content…
Piaget was mainly concerned with how children thought and perceived information, it was due to this (and many years of research) that he developed a theory in regards to cognitive development. Piaget is commonly referred to as a ‘Stage Theorist’, meaning he effectively separated “cognitive development into stages where certain characteristics are displayed and others were absent. His theory was made up by 4 detailed stages, the ‘Sensorimotor Stage’ (birth to 2 years), the ‘Preoperational Stage’ (2 years to 6/7 years), the ‘Concrete Operations Stage’ (7 years to 11/12 years), and finally the ‘Formal Operations Stage’ (from 12 years and on),” (Piaget, …show more content…
Throughout the scernio, the teacher utilises direction instructions as a means to insure the students fully understand each individual instruction. This is further suggesting by Slavin,2005 “As it is increasingly important to insure the teacher has a focus on the progress of their students thinking at any level of cognitive development, meaning that rather than simply insuring the student completes the action for example, breaking into small groups as a means to find different seed types, the teacher should put an emphasize on the students understanding,” (Slavin, 2005). However, due to the types of activities planned for this specific class e.g. “One group studied the rain patterns by going outside to regularly observe and record rainfall data with a rain gauge. Another group would study the impact of rain on ant movements and their burrows,” it is suggested the students in the scernio may have a short attention spans, meaning the teacher must insure activity’s apply to the students learning style and that individuals at the level of ‘Concrete Operational Development” can truly understand and participate in.