Piaget and Vygotsky emphasise different aspects of cognition. What are the educational implications of their ideas? How have the criticisms of writers such as Donaldson affected the standing of their theories?

The core theory of Vygotsky’s concept is the zone of proximal development that provides an explanation for how the child learns with the help of others. The ZPD is the distance between the child’s actual development level and his or her potential level of development under the guidance of more expert adults or in collaboration with more competent peers. Unlike Piaget, Vygotsky did not wait for the child to be ‘ready’ instead he argues being influenced by people who are more informed, benefits the child’s learning. The expert intervention should be at a level so that it provides some challenge but not too far ahead. This is when the child learns from experience to do something they could not have done by itself. Vygotsky also produced stages for speech, pre- intellectual, social speech (0-3), egocentric (3-7) and inner speech (7+).

The educational implications of Piaget’s ideas have been notably for child centred learning methods in nursery and infant schools, for mathematics curricula in primary school, and for science curricula at the secondary school level. Though his theories may have criticisms now, Piaget’s approach provided the most comprehensive account of cognitive growth. Most notably Piaget initiated that a teacher should make an effort to adapt to the child and that active learning ideas a key component in the development of a child. A teacher must recognise that each child needs to construct knowledge for him or herself. In today’s classroom, the government expects of a teacher that all the pupils should reach the average for that age. This expectation conflicts with the findings of cognitive development. Those at a higher stage of cognitive development e.g. formal operations should be attaining a higher level than the average. In this respect the government is restricting the learning of children. However ‘various arrangements are being tried to facilitate this, e.g. taking GCSE a year early or narrowing the range of National Curriculum subjects to allow the brighter pupil to take more options.’  The child must initiate the activity, but choose from tasks set by the teacher. For example, nursery school can provide children with play materials that encourage their learning, such as play areas like the Wendy house where children can develop role taking skills through imaginative play, and materials like water, sand etc, that can help children make their own constructions and create symbolic representations. A teacher’s role is to create the conditions in which learning may best take place. Piaget felt that nursery teachers had the biggest responsibility as he felt that for the performance of those pupils later on in junior and secondary schools the stage of pre-operational must be maintained. A teacher should be concerned with process rather than end product. For example, the teacher should look at the reasoning behind the answer that a child gives rather than just whether it is correct or not. In Piaget’s view, ‘knowledge is not something to be transmitted from an expert teacher to an inexpert pupil’. In mathematics and science lessons at primary school, children are helped to make the transition from preoperational thinking to concrete operations through carefully arranged sequences of experiences, which develop an understanding. Learning should be individualized, so that tasks are appropriate to individual children’s level of understanding.

The views of Vygotsky is that the adult and child can work together to construct new schemes, the difference with Piaget is that the role of the teacher is to stand back and allows the child to find out knowledge for his/herself. The more the teacher’s behaviour is contingent on the child’s behaviour, the more able the child becomes to work independently. In general Curriculum planning should be concerned to enhance learning as an active and problem solving process. This scaffolding function supports the young learners to direct them to the relevant way. Bruner who like Vygotsky thinks teachers should be actively recreating distinctive ways of thinking.  

The similarities between the two are, that they both have the view that action is important in cognitive development. But where they differ is that Vygotsky believes that instruction is an essential part of learning where Piaget believes that it is more the motivation of the child and less adult participation.

With the ZPD, some situations may inhibit the learning, for e.g., when the teacher asks too many questions or where the child is in a group of dominant peers. In the classroom there is less opportunity for activity in which the teacher can test the individual child’s ZPD. Donaldson criticised Piaget’s claims that the pre-operational child cannot cope with tasks like conservation, because they lack the logical thought processes. She found that the if worded differently, and using equipment or situations that were more relevant to that child’s life then the experiments would show different results- results that prove that a pre-operational child was more intelligent than Piaget had previously published. Rose and Blank (1974) and Samuel and Bryant (1984) also carried out experiments that considered the forming of questioning. McGarrigle and Donaldson in 1974 carried out an experiment using a character called ‘Naughty Teddy’. This experiment was to show that when an adult asks if something has been altered a child is more likely to say yes, when it is not the case but if naughty teddy was to alter something then the child would usually come up with the correct answer as it was not be influenced by trying to answer what the adult wants it to hear.    

Other research has found that children develop certain cognitive structures earlier than Piaget claimed. Bower (1981) found that infants 5-6 months old showed surprise when an object that had been hidden behind a screen was no longer there when the screen was lifted. He also demonstrated that babies of eight weeks tracked an object when it moved behind a screen by showing with their eyes where it should emerge.

I believe that critics to Piaget and Vygotsky have encouraged more people to examine their theories, however I believe that Donaldson at the time of her publication, blew Piaget out of the water. She argued that ‘children are not at any stage as egocentric as Piaget has claimed…children are not so limited in ability to reason deductively as Piaget and others have claimed and…his (a child’s) language-learning skills are not so isolated from the rest of his mental growth’.

Due to theorists such as Donaldson who challenged Piaget’s theories, Piaget is now looked at as more of a pioneer of his time rather than for his accuracy in his stages of development, however there are Piagetian theorists that follow the main ideas of Piaget, such as Doise and Mugny but they take account of the social context of peer interaction within which the child operates. Vygotsky, like Piaget is appreciated immensely for making huge advancements in the field of cognitive development, theorists like Bruner have included their ideas but moved on to base his own conclusion. I believe that criticisms have affected the standing of their theories, however the majority of present day theorists base their ideas loosely from either Piaget or Vygotsky, so even nearly a hundred years later after Vygotsky’s writings they are still as relevant today as they were then.  

Bibliography

Bee H, Boyd D, (2000), The Developing Child, London: Pearson Education Inc.

Curtis A., O’Hagen M., (2003), Care and Education in Early Childhood, London:

  Routledge Falmer

Donaldson, M, (1978) Children's Minds, London : Fontana.

Flanagan C, (1997), Letts Study Guide Psychology, London: Letts Educational

Smith K.P, Cowie H, Blades M, (2003) Understanding Children’s Development, Oxford:  

   Blackwell Publishing

Sutherland P, (1992), Cognitive Development Today, London: Paul Chapman Publishing

   LTD.

 

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