In the chapter, the main points were Piaget's theory and Vygotsky's theory. Piaget believed that nature and nurture had a large effect on learning while Vygotsky believed that learning was based on heredity and environment and the interaction of the two. While each one differed on what was the basis of learning both were able to agree that play allows children to learn more, and that internalized language helps kids through various functions. A question I did have is that Vygotsky believes that learning occurs in schools which then helps to shape development in the higher levels. My question is what happens before kids go to school using Vygotski's theory? Do they simply not learn until they get into school?
According to Piaget, the difference between learning and development is that development comes before learning. This is due to the fact that people have to be developed enough in their social and mental aspects in order to be able to understand and comprehend learning aspects. According to Piaget, critical thinking happens in certain stages of the developmental process. During the pre-operational stage, students are unable to function larger than a task-at-hand basis. During the concrete operational stage, students are able to focus more on other things and are able to evaluate/think things through critically. I believe you could teach metacognitive theories more through Vygotsky's theory because it doesn't really set an age limit to when student's are supposed while Piaget's seems to have a timeline all built out of when a student is supposed to learn what.
It seems like both theorists believed in nature/heredity and nurture/environment having some interacting effect. I'm not sure what the distinction you're making is--but it's true they each thought both were important.
ReplyDeleteThe book's description of Vygotsky isn't wonderful (he's VERY complex and his book Mind in Society is fascinating--even written in the 30s). He definitely wouldn't say learning happens only in school! We'll talk more about him next week, but he believed learning happened almost everywhere (ESPECIALLY during play in the years before school). If you were in class on Monday, even pretending to be princesses is learning because it displays your understanding of the role of 'princess' as you develop it with a partner, or alone. He believed ANY form of learning is social--even if you're alone, you're thinking in language (created by the culture) or using tools/objects typically created by others and used in particular ways. Hope that helps. The answer is that students learn LOTS before they enter school--probably more than IN school (according to Vygotsky).
For the last part, I mistakenly listed that question when we hadn't discussed metacognition yet (and some of you may not know what that is)--sorry. I've fixed it, but I think you have a great response here, despite that. Yes, (depending on how you define critical thinking--we'll do this in a couple weeks) Piaget would say only certain children are capable of that, and you CANNOT push development further in any way, since it's driven by biology/time. Vygotsky would advocate giving students challenges beyond their developmental level to push them further along their ZPD. He was also a fan of metacognition--and most people don't know that.... More Vygotsky will come next week. :)