Module 7 discusses a model in psychology that is known as constructivism and that is the process in which individuals create knowledge for themselves and understand new concepts by the organization, selection and integration of former knowledge. The two most common categories that constructivism is put into are individual and constructivism. When one gains knowledge from past experiences rather than learning about someone else's it is known as individual constructivism. Jean Piaget, a swiss theorist and philosopher particularly liked to focus on how individuals discovered meanings while the Russian educational philosopher Lev Semenovich Vygotsky found that social experiences were the primary factor in an individuals cognitive development.
Piaget's theory states that a child's thinking process is a result of biological maturation, Active exploration of the physical environment, social experiences and equilibration. Piaget believed that knowledge is created through four stages which includes the sensorimotor stage, pre-operational stage, concrete stage and formal operational stage. Vygotsky thought that brain development resulted from interactions between ones heredity and environment. He took cultural factors into account the most and felt that social interations played a huge role in an individuals cognitive development.
Did Piaget agree with all of Vygotsky's works or did he just simply choose not to critique them?
Development is when an individual receives concepts through everyday experiences and learning is something that takes place when the new cognitive structures are applied to a situation. Piaget believes that development comes before learning and the reason is because an individual has to be developmentally prepared to learn. One must have knowledge of the stage a child is currently in before teaching them because the stage development of the children is crucial to the amount he or she can learn. Each and every child learns differently and at a different pace and that goes back to Piaget's stages of cognitive development. There are four stages and each stage consists of cognitive development that allows them to move onto the next stage of their learning cycle. Sensorimotor takes place between the ages of birth and two years old and it consists of infants using their senses and motor actions to explore their environment. The major attainment necessary for the next stage, pre-operational stage, is object permanence. The pr-operational stage takes place between the ages of two and seven years old and the main characteristic is the childs one-way thinking which allows the child to do such things as sort blocks by color or shape, but not by both. Between the ages of seven and eleven years old a child should enter the concrete operational stage in which the student is able to use logical thinking before entering the last stage which is the formal operational stage. The final stage that goes into ones adulthood deals with abstract, logical and mathematical thinking.
Piaget did not critique and of Vygotsky's work because he did not read any of it (Page 125). Piaget was a Swiss scientists and philosopher (an important guy). He was after the philosophy side of development and learning. Vygotsky was an educational psychologist (Page 119). He was after the educational side of the issue. He needed research to test, but I doubt Piaget really did.
ReplyDeletePiaget did not critique and of Vygotsky's work because he did not read any of it (Page 125). Piaget was a Swiss scientists and philosopher (an important guy). He was after the philosophy side of development and learning. Vygotsky was an educational psychologist (Page 119). He was after the educational side of the issue. He needed research to test, but I doubt Piaget really did.
ReplyDeletePiaget didn't see Vygotsky's works. Vygotsky was familiar with Piaget, and is clearly somewhat influenced by him. Vygotsky did his work in the 1930s, but because of the cold war, the rest of the world (US and Switzerland) didn't see his work until the 1970s (in 1978, Mind and Society was published in the US). Piaget died in 1980, so there wasn't much time to familiarize himself with Vygotsky.
ReplyDeleteThe stage of development isn't relevant to the AMOUNT a child can learn, but just the kinds of things they are CAPABLE of thinking about.
This post is written very much in the language of the book. I took out the 'big ideas' prompt for future weeks because I prefer to not see these kind of summaries, but a description of what the chapter means to you, or what you feel is most important or useful to know for future teaching and why.