Vygotsky and Piaget are theorists in developmental psychology in children, and especially cognitive development. These two theorists studied constructivism in children, where learning happens as a result of actively stacking up knowledge on previous knowledge to build newer and more advanced thoughts and be to perform more complex cognitive operations. These two theorists also had a few opposing ideas when it came to developmental psychology. Piaget mostly stressed an importance on a child being able to learn and grow cognitively based on their own self-discovery without peer or adult help. Vygotsky stressed an importance on how a child needs peer/group interaction and help from adults and challenging/discovering the child’s zone of proximal development to grow cognitively. Both of these theorists studied the importance of internal and external language in the mental development of children. They also studied about whether development or learning comes first: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” kind of concept. Empirical learning is learning that naturally happens with the children experiencing their environment, and some of the knowledge can be false or exaggerated, so it’s up to the teacher to help the child modify the spontaneous concepts into scientific concepts (the reality of the original almost-ideas).
Why are Piaget’s theories on cognitive development so extensively taught, if they are also so extensively criticized?
Piaget believes that development has to come first in order to cause learning to happen. Piaget most likely is saying that the child’s ability to learn certain level of ideas and concepts is limited by what stage of cognitive development they are currently in (based on age: sensorimotor period, pre-operational period, concrete operational period, and formal operational period). Each stage is said to build on each other, and they usually transition from one to the next almost all of a sudden. Because children can’t learn everything all through their own natural experiences/genetics, Piaget is criticized. These stages have to combine with external teachings from adults to accurately show how the child’s cognitive mind develops. Each stage is the framework that provides the child the ability to learn the concepts that are associated with each stage.
You bring up a really good question in this post, one that I sort of had myself! When thinking about it , I realized that while he may have some criticisms, a lot of his ideas have been proven and/or have seemed to work well in the classroom. I don't think Piaget's theory is something to live by and always follow, because sometimes the age range can differ and other factors can attribute to cognitive development, but I do think that despite the criticisms, it's a good topic to think about while creating lesson plans and such. I do think that it's interesting that the book didn't focus more on the criticisms, because I found those to be somewhat valid, but the theory definitely still has some merit, and therefore can be applied to a classroom setting!
ReplyDeleteParticular aspects of Piagetian theory have been criticized and essentially disproven (like the idea that the stages are stable, and always happen at the ages specified). However, it's still used because it IS useful to keep in mind that, generally, all humans do go through those sort of stages during development. It is true that a very young child isn't CAPABLE of thinking about the same sorts of things that an adult can think about or talk about. Piaget does give a good description of what these stages, roughly, look like, and what kinds of tasks are appropriate for younger children. Keeping in mind that these stages can be different for the same child in different tasks, and that children of different ages can be in the same stage, it's still useful to know that asking a 5 year old child a question that requires abstract thinking is not likely to help them (typically).
ReplyDeleteIt's true that a child can't learn EVERYTHING (or, more accurately, everything valued by the American school system) by independent discovery and exploration. The teacher can introduce tasks that cause disequilibrium (look up this term if you forget what that means), which drives learning. You have a lot of control over this as a teacher. You can describe a case or scenario as a kind of puzzle (something that DOESN'T make sense, and causes disequilibrium for the students). In their search to figure out this puzzle, you can make sure they require or encounter content that you want them to learn.