If the students in “The Breakfast Club” were actually all assigned together as an academic group, it could have been assigned by Piaget AND Vygotsky in my opinion for several reasons:
- Piaget would have also formed this group because all of the students are all about the same age, so that means they’d all be in the same stage of Piaget development: formal operational. Piaget would have possibly also assigned such a group to foster self-discovery by experiencing such different people from different cultures and backgrounds.
-Vygotsky would have assigned the “The Breakfast Club” group because the students vary in abilities (heterogeneity), personalities, interests and reasonably contrasting cultural backgrounds, and they would all learn off of each other with each other being the external factors that promote learning and development, and expanding each other’s zone of proximal development.
Most modern teen movies (or at least teen movies in the late 90’s and and 2000’s, even up to some modern day teen movies, usually stress cliques and how the cliques battle each other. These cliques are homogeneous groups, and would support Piaget’s theory, but not Vygotsky’s theory because of the lack of variability, causing the zones of proximal development to not be pushed or challenged.
I really like how much thought went into this and that you pointed out how and why both Piaget and Vygotsky would have assigned "The Breakfast Club". It was pretty obvious to me that Vygotsky would have assigned the club because all the students were so diverse. He believed that people advance better and faster when working together. I never thought about the fact that all the students are in the same stage of Piagets developmental theory and that he may recommend the club for that reason.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy your marriage of the two theories. I had some trouble deciding between Vygotsky and Piaget, and I really agree with your compromise. But my favorite part of your post has to be your analysis of modern teen movies that involve homogenous cliques. I think this points to the most important element of these theories of cognitive development, and that is that diversity within groups is an absolute necessity for learning. In most modern teen movies, diversity truly drives learning, and it takes an experience that shakes up the cliques to advance the development of the characters.
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