Vygotsky Vs Piaget

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When comparing the works of Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget, the simplest analogy would be nurture versus nature. Piaget, a psychologist and philosopher from Switzerland, is very well known in the education field, especially for his Theory of Cognitive Development. He believes that as a child transitions through the stages of development, learning is internally directed due to a child’s natural inquisitiveness. A child is born with and continues to develop schemas, or the mental representation of prior knowledge. As the child explores his environment, plays with peers or adults, and interacts with his world, he forms new ideas while reforming old ideas in his mind. In an opposing view, behaviorists believe that a child’s learning is dependent …show more content…
He believes that child’s social environment affects cognitive development, and addresses the importance of a family and its effects on a child’s development. These factors affect language development, which Vygotsky believes can have one of three roles. The first is social speech which is an external speech intended to control the behavior of others. When a young child is hungry, he may utter, “I want baba!” in order to receive what he wants. The next type of speech is an egocentric speech, which occurs between three and seven years of age. This serves as a bridge between primitive social speech and more developed inner speech. In this stage, the child is able to verbalize what he is doing as an attempt to guide his own behavior. Finally, inner speech is considered a silent self-talk. Its function is to direct our own behavior and promote higher mental functions. Language acquisition in a child is based on Vygotsky’s Behavior Theory, which states that all behaviors are learned and molded through a set of rewards. If a child babbles his first words, and his mother reacts and gives him a cookie, he is more likely to babble the word again and again simply because he enjoys the reward. Vygotsky believes that adults play a critical role and should serve as a model to the child. The child …show more content…
Vygotsky introduced the term Zone of Proximal Growth, or Zone of Proximal Development. This is a theory that argues if you compare two students of the same age, the student who receives more support will probably achieve more cognitive growth than the student who receives less support. Every student has a level of work he can complete independently (inner ring), as well as a level of work that, no matter what type of support he receives, cannot complete (outer ring). The zone of proximal development is the area in between these two levels (rings), which a learner can do with guidance from a teacher or parent. An adult provides tools and support through a variety of structure and activities to help the student make progress toward the outer ring. Otto discusses the strong role a family can provide in order to immerse an infant or toddler in literacy-related experiences and activities. A parent should use scaffolding as they engage children in literature, for example, by modeling how to ask questions about a text, labeling pictures, and activating the child’s prior knowledge about a text. If a parent is receptive to a child’s questions and responds positively to child responses, this will reward a child and encourage him to continue interacting with texts. The child also picks up on an adult laughing or changing facial expressions during a story, and will begin to
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