preview

Jean Piaget And Vygotsky 's Theory On Children 's Cognitive Development

Good Essays

Two infamous developmental psychologists, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, have shared their knowledge on children’s cognitive development. Both psychologists had their own vision of what stimulates and helps a child grow. Jean Piaget 's theory was shaped through the thinking and understanding of how knowledge is built through a series of four stages; preoperational, sensorimotor, formal operational and concrete operational. He believed that the development was with the child themselves. On the contrary, Lev Vygotsky 's theory is shaped through adult social interactions and cultural roles. He believed that a child 's development is met based on their social environment and interactions with adults. Though both Piaget and Vygotsky had their …show more content…

In this approach, Piaget and Vygotsky sees the child as conceptualizing information by absorbing what they have learned, to learn for themselves. A non-reductionist viewpoint is also what Piaget and Vygotsky believed. They believed that “human consciousness and intelligence are forms of organization and adaptation neither reducible, respectively, to a set of reflexes, nor to the initial, external manifestations through which such forms appear.” (Lourenco, 2012) This viewpoint is simply one that children can think and explain things at their own pace without there being any justification as to why. With this, Vygotsky’s theory states, “psychology teaches us at every step that though two types of activity can have the same external manifestations, whether in origin or essence, their nature may differ most profoundly.” (Lourenco, 2012) In short, the outcome of the behavior of how a child will respond will not differ because of the activity, but conceptualization of different activities will call for similar

Get Access