Vygotsky's And Piaget Analysis

Comparing Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s view on Cognitive development

The concrete operational stage is the beginning of logical and operational thinking and is also characteristic of overcoming the limitations of thinking of the pre-operational stage (Ntshangase, 2011). Children understand the principle of reversibility when they realize that an action can be reversed by another and the principle of compensation when two changes to compare something, saying that changes in one will compensate for the changes in the other. When children realize that the properties of objects or substances, as a result of strain, do not change, they understand the principle of conservation. This knowledge requires that the child understands the principles of reversibility

Adolescents use their individual experiences and knowledge to try to make sense of the world around them (Piaget, 1960). According to Kellough and Kellough (2008) are adolescents also able to start nuance of metaphors to understand and to derive meaning of traditional wisdom. Kellough and Kellough (2008) also believes that adolescents also meta-cognition, begin to experience the knowledge and control of mental activities during learning processes. The development of formal-operational thinking, according to Piaget’s development is the framework to adolescence. It is a more abstract conceptualization like solving mathematical problems, with the ability to form hypothesis and to argue logically (Shefer , 2011). The logical component, which Piaget called the hypothesis - deductive reasoning, is manifested in adolescents' ability and desire to actively plan in the process of problem solving (Shefer , 2011. A component of formal operational thinking well documented in the literature, critical thinking (Shefer , 2011) , explained that theorists distinguish between convergent and divergent thinking, where the former to the formation of a correct answer to a problem link and the latter to the attempt to find as many possible answers to a problem,

However, Vygotsky believed that it was adults and the child’s peers, which had the obligation in sharing their greater collective knowledge with the younger generations. He did not believe it was feasible for a child to learn and to grow individually and the culture and the environment around the child played a major role in their cognitive development (Flanagan, 2001). He also believed a child was unable to develop the way he or she has without learning from others in the environment in which they were raised. In contrast, Piaget maintained that children were naturally inquisitive about their own particular abilities and about their own environment (Jarvis, Chandler , 2001) and that children advanced their knowledge because of biologically regulated cognitive changes (Flanagan, 2001) . Whereas, Piaget believed that a child was only possible of learning of procedures in each stage at any time (Flanagan, 1999) and overlooked the role of the child’s activity with relation to thought processes. For Piaget, children construct knowledge through their activities in the world. By complexity, Vygotsky’s stages, unlike Piaget’s, were that of a smooth and gradual process. That understanding is social in origin, For Vygotsky the cultural and social aspects took on a special importance which is substantially less symmetrical that of Piaget’s theory.

Piaget and Vygotsky