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What Is The Difference Between Piaget And Vygotsky

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Jean Piaget and Vygotsky are both influential psychologists who focused on cognitive development mainly in adolescence and childhood. Piaget theory states that children develop through stages of adaptation and the experiences in one stage form the foundation for movement to the next (Berk, 1977). whereas Vygotsky believed that our knowledge is acquired through culture and interacting with others. This essay will focus on Piaget’s theory of childhood and adolescence development looking at how one adapts, assimilates and accommodates new and existing schemas through childhood and adolescence development. Jean Piaget is a Swiss Zoologist who spent most of his life focusing on child development. His theory states that we “progress through and …show more content…

Piaget states that we are born with basic schemas, which involve sucking and touching. As we become exposed to the environment, our internal representation develops as we are exposed to more concepts.

By the process of assimilation, which is the “integration of external elements into evolving or completed structures” (Piaget, 1970, pg. 7). We are able to introduce a new category into our current schema, which allows children to develop their internal representation of the world as they come across new concepts that are then accommodated into their current schema or view, which allows for development.

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development consists of four stages; Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. Cognitive development refers to the changes in age that occur via attention, learning, thinking and perceiving.

In this essay, the period of middle childhood and adolescence will be dissected. Middle childhood falls under the concrete-operational stage, which is age 7-12 and adolescence, falls under Formal operational, which is from adolescence through …show more content…

In this stage, children are likely to be more creative thinkers and problem solvers. Piaget tested the formal operational stage in many ways, one being asking the children if they had a third eye and where they would they put it. Younger children would simply answer, “in the middle of their head” whereas older children would logically think about it, giving creative answers such as, “on my hand, so I can look around corners” (Piaget, 1970) "The formal operational thinker has the ability to consider many different solutions to a problem before acting.” (Salkind,

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