Introduction
Researches performed by Jean Piaget (1955) and Vygotsky have made substantial participation to the development of teaching. This paper will lay the distinctions evident from the two theories.
Similarities
Basically, it is precise that the two researchers established theories to facilitate concrete learning strategies by allowing teachers to understand cognitive development.
Moreover, their constructivist character allowed them to identify that students attain knowledge by instilling new information to preexisting knowledge.
This implies that uninformed individuals cannot learn efficiently. For instance, understanding a language could facilitate perception of information from the educators.
However, Kandel (1967) argues that students who do not understand the language applied in teaching might misunderstand their educators.
The two theories depict that the limitations of cognitive growth were manipulated by the society. Precisely, the theories depict a centralized attention from challenges, preparedness and social relations.
Differences
Primarily, these theories presented divergent contribution that cannot be applied by educators in a simultaneous manner. For instance, Piaget presented a cognitive development perspective where children device new ideas from actions.
In the contrary, Vygotsky and Rieber (1997) believed that learning has a social influence enabling children to learn from historical occurrences. In essence, Vygotsky & Rieber (1997) argued that learning occurs before development.
They acknowledged the participation of environment in children perception. The other distinction lies between learning and development where learning is preceded by development according to Piaget’s model.
On the other hand, Vygotsky’s model assumes an opposite link where development is preceded by learning. Furthermore, the socio-cultural perspective argues that social speech shifts to inner speech whereas egocentric speech changes to social speech in Piaget’s model.
Educational Implication
Piaget’s theory allows educators to assess the capacity of perceiving in learners (Smart, 2010). It facilitates the construction of learning ideas that fit the learner’s thinking capacity.
It focuses on developing education across adverse and diverse factors that alter the ability to develop physically and cognitively. Moreover, some strategies that are applied by instructors during curricula activities are based on this theory.
On the other hand, Vygotsky’s theory has revealed instructive implications where learners perceive information through grouping and assisting each other. Also, this theory plays a vital role of advancing instructional practices through manipulation of the prevailing differences in education.
The education systems have incorporated the growing branch of information technology to change the printed strategies into multimodal techniques.
Effects to Children Education
There are various effects on the instructional techniques that arise from these theories. The list below presents four aspects about educating young children.
- The two theories create confusion about the best theory to consider when delivering instructions to children.
- The strategies of teaching children have been made interactive by allowing children to meet and raise ideas from their actions.
- Classifying the thoughts of children together with those of adults might cause confusions. Therefore, children are made to discover ideas at personal level.
- Finally, educators work hard to present activities at individual and class/group levels.
References
Kandel, I. L. (1967). Conflicting theories of education. New York: Russell & Russell.
Piaget, J. (1954). The child’s construction of reality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Smart, J. C. (2010). Higher education handbook of theory and research. Dordrecht: Springer.
Vygotsky, L., & Rieber, R. W. (1997). The Collected works of L. S. Vygotsky. New York: Plenum.