Vygotsky's Theory On Child Development

Bruner

Piaget influenced Bruner on his research about Child development, he believed that learning is an active process and that learners need to develop their own knowledge and ideas using their current or previous knowledge. The effective instruction includes:

• Personalized: instruction should relate to learner’s experiences that motivates the student to learn from within one’s self.

• Content Structure: Content must be designed so it can be easily grasped by the student. He also called this aspect a “Spiral curriculum” building thinking and learning skills over time to make it deeper and more complex, builds on itself.

• Sequencing: An important aspect of material presentation.

• Reinforcement: Selecting appropriate rewards and punishment.

Vygotsky believed that cognitive development was limited at any age and based on social development. He took everything into consideration, how the child is raised, their culture, and also how they learn to think.

His theories stress over the necessary role of social interaction in cognitive development, Vygotsky argued with Piaget’s and strongly believed that social learning comes before development. Unfortunately, he developed a sociocultural approach to cognitive development but passed away at 38 of age without finishing his theories.

Lev Vygotsky theories are closely connected to Piaget and Bruner. His theory was the child first socializes to gain knowledge then s/he will naturally have the ability to learn or unconscious assimilation. Children pick up on everything, they observe and determine whether these actions are appropriate then

Similarities

Even when Bruner was following Piaget’s theories, his research only linked to Vygotsky with both their insistence that there’s no separation between the mental and social aspects of growth.

The similarity was that Bruner’s belief is that learning is an active process and that learners need to develop their own knowledge and ideas using their current or previous knowledge. While Vygotsky belief was the necessary role of social interaction in cognitive development. The bottom line is; socialization increases the learner’s knowledge because they will have intrinsic motivation to the social interaction.

Differences

One significant difference between Bruner and Vygotsky is that Bruner believes that students learn better if they obtain information and knowledge themselves through active participation and teacher only giving support at the right time. Conversely, Vygotsky believes that students face challenges when teachers left too much work for them to do independently. He thought students learned better when they communicated, interacted, shared and discussed with one another.

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