Jean Piaget Vs Vygotsky

Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky are both some of the best known scholars in psychology, whose research and work still influences many methods and approaches in teaching that many individuals and facilities use to this day. Both Piaget and Vygotsky has provided much needed research and explanations on children’s cognitive learning abilities, attributes, and techniques. As many people may choose one’s theory over the other, both intellectuals has put forth many investigations and assessments to prove their own theory accurately. Many people believe that Piaget is the most prominent theorist in the history of child development, but Vygotsky was not able to complete his theory as he died at the young age of thirty seven. Jean Piaget believed that

In the year 1920, Piaget became employed at Binet Institute, “Where his job was to develop French versions of questions on English intelligence tests. He became intrigued with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers to the questions that required logical thinking. He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important differences between the thinking of adults and children.”

( McLeod, 2015 ) Which shaped his belief that all those inaccurate answers displayed major differences in the ways of how both adults and children think. Shortly after he has been employed at the Binet Institute, his first daughter was born, then his second daughter in the year 1927, following in 1931, his only son was born.

As the excitement with his children, he began to spend substantial amount of time, with assistance of his wife, both began to observe the reactions of their children and often administer the three to countless assorted experiments. “He looked at the genesis of intelligent conduct, ideas of objective constancy, and causality. He also noted symbolic behaviors such as imitation and play. The main benefit that he derived from these studies was that Piaget learned in the most direct way how intellectual operations are prepared by sensory-motor action, long before the appearance of language.” ( Presnell, 1999

205)

The next stage would be ‘The Preoperational Stage’ which occurs between the ages of two to seven years old. “The Preoperational Period is marked by the appearance of the symbolic function—the ability to make one thing—a word or an object—stand for; or represent, something else.”( Shaffer, 2014, pg. 212) During this period, children began to learn the symbolic meaning of words and objects. Piaget assumed that during this phase children are perspective, illogical, and individualistic, but after countless observations and analysis suggest he miscalculated the intelligence of preschool aged children to perceive and understand another individual’s viewpoint.

The third stage would be “The Concrete-Operational Stage” which occurs between the ages of seven to eleven years old. “During Piaget’s concrete-operational period, children rapidly acquire cognitive operations and apply these important new skills when thinking about objects and events that they have experienced. A cognitive operation is internal mental activity that

Piaget vs Vygotsky Theory