Jean Piaget is best known for his research
on children's cognitive development. He suggested that children are active
and motivated learners. They organize what they learn by sorting the knowledge
that they acquired through their experiences. When new information is acquired,
children adapt through process either assimilation or accommodation.
Assimilation process, children organize that information by into existing
schemas that has been formed previously whereas accommodation is through
revising and existing schema or creating an entirely new category of
information.
In his study
regarding intellectual development of his own three children, he created a
theory that identified the four stages that children experienced in the
development of intelligence and formal thought processes.
Lev Vygotsky focused
on influenced of child's social and cultural worlds on cognitive development.
Cognitive development is mostly results of interactions and experiences. It
involves a transition between elementary mental function and higher mental
function.
One of the
major theories developed by Vygotsky was Zone of Proximal Development
(ZPD). It is a region of sensitivity for learning characterized by the
difference between actual development level when a child is capable of doing
without assistance and potential development where a child is capable of doing
something with assistance. According to Vygotsky, actual development level
determined by determined by independent problem solving and the level of
potential development determined through problem solving under adult guidance,
or in collaboration with more capable peers." Parents and teachers can
foster learning by providing educational opportunities that lie within a
child's zone of proximal development.
What I can't do: not ready or able to learn, do not teach too difficult.
What I can do with help: what the learner can understand with proper guidance, do teaching and challenged.
What I can do with help: what the learner can understand with proper guidance, do teaching and challenged.
What I can do: What is known, do not reteach. Too boring.
Thus,
Vygotsky has been suggested that a child's interactions with the social world
would produce advance thinking.
"The principle goal of education
in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new
things, not simply repeating what other generations have done”.
-Jean Piaget
-Jean Piaget
"Learning is more than the
acquisition of the ability to think; it is the acquisition of many specialised
abilities for thinking about a variety of things."
- Lev Vygotsky, Mind
in Society, 1978
