Description:
It has
long been debated how children develop cognitively: is it through experience,
or does it occur in stages? Is it determined at birth, or is it determined by
experience? Jean Piaget and Lev Semionovich Vygotsky each have a theory that
helps us understand how our students may develop.
Analysis:
Jean
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests that children develop in four
chronological stages, and that each child must pass through each stage, though
children will pass through them at different rates. The first of Piaget’s
stages, the sensorimotor stage, occurs from birth until approximately two years
of age. Babies this age advance from mere reflexes to a “trial-and-error
approach” and then to “a more planned approach to problem solving” (Slavin,
2012, p. 33). During this stage, children also learn that things are present
even though they are not seen. Around age 2, Piaget argued that children
progress into the preoperational stage. At this stage, “children have greater
ability to think about things and can use symbols to mentally represent objects”
(Slavin, 2012, p. 34). During this stage, children develop the cognitive ability
to understand reversibility, and they become egocentric, meaning that they “believe
that everyone sees the world exactly as they do” (Slavin, 2012, p. 34).
However, children still cannot focus on more than one thing at a time (call
centration) and do not understand the principle of conservation. For example,
the same amount of liquid poured into different-sized containers does not
appear the same to children in this stage. Around the age of seven, children
move into the concrete operational stage. Here, children become “very much
rooted in the world as it is and have difficulty with abstract thought” (pg.
36). At this stage, children are able to “form concepts, see relationships, and
solve problems” given that the objects they are working with are familiar to
them. During this stage, children are “able to respond to inferred reality, seeing
things in the context of other meanings” (Slavin, 2012, p. 36) and arrange
things logically. Around the age of 11, children will enter the last of the
four stages, the formal operational stage. This stage lasts until adulthood,
and it is during this stage that people learn “the ability to deal with
potential or hypothetical situations” (Slavin, 2012, p. 37). As a teacher, it is important to remember
that, according to Piaget, not all students can cognitively complete the same
tasks. Paget’s theory does not come without its share of criticism. While
Piaget asserted that the “developmental stages were largely fixed and that such
concepts as conversation could not be taught,” many researchers have debunked
his theory (Slavin, 2012, p. 38). Researchers have shown that some students can
in fact reach these stages at an earlier age, and they argue that “children’s
skills develop in different ways on different tasks and that their experience
can have a strong a strong influence on the pace of development (Slavin, 2012,
p. 39).
While Piaget believed that
environment played only a small part of the development process, Russian
psychologist Lev Semionovich Vygotsky believed that “intellectual development
can be understood only in terms of the historical and cultural contexts
children experience” (Slavin, 2012, p. 41). Vygotsky also believed that the
signs in one’s culture assist in their development (Slavin, 2012). Whereas
Piaget argued that development precedes learning, Vygotsky’s “theory suggests
that learning precedes development” (Slavin, 2012, p. 41). Like Piaget,
Vygotsky broke down his theory into stages. In the first stage of development,
children learn that “actions and sounds have meaning” (Slavin, 2012, p. 41).
Eventually, children learn self-regulation, the ability to use these meanings
to think for themselves. Next, children practice and, then, begin to use the
signs “to think and solve problems without the help of others” (Slavin, 2012,
p. 41). Instead of first reaching the proper stage to master communication,
Vygotsky asserted that children first “mastering cultural communication systems
and then learning to use these systems to regulate our own thought processes”
(Slavin, 2012, p. 41). For Vygotsky’s theory,
children should be able to work with others to complete a task before
completing it individually; he termed this the zone of proximal development. He
also favored the idea of scaffolding and cooperative learning environments,
arguing that children can work together and accomplish a task collaboratively
before accomplishing the same task autonomously.
Regardless
of the theory one subscribes to, there is no question that language and
literacy development for children is essential to their success. Slavin (2012)
states, “Development of language and literacy is a key objective to teaching”
(p. 44).
Reflection:
After
completing the reading and thinking about my experiences, I have conflicting
views on the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky. Rather than subscribing
completely to one or the other, I tend to think that we develop as a result of
a mixture of both theories. I agree with Piaget that children must have a
certain cognitive capacity to perform some tasks. For example, there are simply
some things that my 2-year-old cannot grasp, no matter how much I teach him. I
also agree with Piaget that these abilities come at different times for
everyone; no two people are created alike. However, I find myself agreeing with
Vygotsky’s notions that our environment helps develop some of our abilities. I
definitely think that the situations in which I put my 2-year-old help him
develop at a faster speed. For example, he goes to a babysitter each day with
children who are 3 and 4 years old. My nephew, who is only a few weeks younger than
my son, goes to a daycare with children his exact age. My son speaks in 4 word
sentences while my nephew speaks in sentences of mostly 2 words. Now, my nephew
is also already potty-trained, and my son is not even close to being
potty-trained. The difference? My nephew has an older brother, and he watches
him. I don’t think that one of the two is smarter than the other or at a
different cognitive stage; I simply think they are observant and imitate what
they see. However, neither of them could solve a math problem at this stage no
matter how much they tried; they simply aren’t at the stage of development.
I do
think that teachers should use these theories to help them better understand the
children in their classrooms. However, I can see that it may be a problem if a
teacher subscribes or strongly believes in one of the theories over the other.
Sometimes, belief in something that is too strong, no matter what it is, can
have negative effects. Since I teach high school kids, these concepts don’t
really impact how I run my classroom. All of my students are fully developed
cognitively by the time they reach me, even though they are still developing
skills for sure. If I have a student not grasping a certain skill, this
information would help me think back to how
the student thinks, and this may help me better understand him/her.
These
ideas definitely make me think about early education a little differently.
While I had heard of these concepts prior to this reading, I didn’t know about
them in depth. No matter which theory one subscribes to, I think we can all
agree with many of Slavin’s ideas at the end of the chapter on the importance
of language and literacy. There is no doubt that parents play an integral role
in the cognitive development of children; they must talk to them and read to
them early and often.
Reference:
Slavin, Robert E. (2012). Educational Psychology (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
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