The Father of Developmental Psychology vs. the Mozart of Psychology ...

[Pages:2]PSY 111: Introduction to Psychology

Learning Unit 4: Mini-Lecture

The Father of Developmental Psychology vs. the Mozart of Psychology (Piaget vs. Vygotsky)

Speaker: Judy Austin

Leonardo da Vinci is credited with once saying, "Learning never exhausts the mind." How do you feel about this statement? Do you "love" to learn? Are you curious? I read somewhere once that curiosity is the "wick" in the candle of learning. As you may already realize, though, learning and education are not always good friends. In fact, Albert Einstein said, "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education." So my goal in this mini-lecture is to help you learn about "learning" without allowing your education to interfere.

Jean Piaget (the father of developmental psychology) and Lev Vygotsky (the Mozart of psychology) were born only three months apart in 1896. Both men were intelligent, well educated, and curious about learning. Piaget was born in Switzerland while Vygotsky was born in Belarus, part of the Soviet Union (which by the way is where my grandmother and her family are from).

Piaget's learning process was uneventful and fairly painless. His works and writings were accepted and applauded around the world during his lifetime. He had a long life (86 years) as opposed to Vygotsky who was oppressed by Soviet Union leaders, especially Stalin, and didn't live to celebrate his 38th birthday. The communist government did not allow Vygotsky to study philosophy and psychology, so his "education" of those fields was self-taught. His name and works were banned after his death and did not reach the West until the early 1960s. If it had not been for his family, colleagues, and students, especially his students, his research, ideas, and writings would not have survived. (As you may be able to already tell ? Vygotsky is a personal hero of mine for what he went through and accomplished under diverse conditions.)

Piaget and Vygotsky both proposed the "classical constructivist" theories of cognitive development (which is a belief that knowledge is constantly changing because of new construction and its interaction with reality and that knowledge is not preformed).

Piaget considered himself a "genetic epistemologist" and not a psychologist. When we break down the term "genetic epistemologist" we find that it basically means studying the origin of knowledge. Piaget loved biology and studied mollusks. Yes, that's right; he studied shellfish, but was fascinated with what children thought and how they learned. Since he had three children, he studied them closely through their stages of development and wrote about it. He was the first theorist to recognize children possessed different cognitive processes than adults. He truly respected and appreciated the mind of a child.

Piaget had four main stages of cognitive development, which were SENSORIMOTOR (ages birth to nearly 2), PREOPERATIONAL (2 to about 6 or 7 years old), CONCRETE OPERATIONAL (about 7 to 11 years old), AND FORMAL OPERATIONAL (about 12 years old to adult). In the reading selected for this

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PSY 111: Introduction to Psychology

Learning Unit 4: Mini-Lecture

learning unit, be sure to have a firm understanding of each of the "developmental phenomena" such as object permanence, egocentrism, conservation, and abstract logic in each of Piaget's stages.

Lev Vygotsky didn't believe in set stages in the learning of children. He did believe that children's learning first started with them talking to themselves ? PRIVATE SPEECH ? and then their entrance into the zone of proximal development, or ZPD. He also believed children needed encouragement and assistance socially. This term is called "scaffolding" and came from teachers, parents, and peers. So the main difference between Piaget and Vygotsky is that Vygotsky put more emphasis on the "SOCIAL" aspects while Piaget was more concerned with the "intellectual" development.

From your reading for this learning unit you know that Piaget's theory is based on schemas, Assimilation, and Accomodation. The schema is the model, assimilation happens when a new experience is introduced to an existing schema, and accommodation occurs when the schema has to be adjusted to fit into the environment. When the schema adapts to new objects and circumstances and a new schema is constructed, the child reaches a state of equilibrium and adaptation takes place.

Vygotsky, on the other hand, perceived the child much more of a social learner who learned by being next to a more competent individual. This concept of learning from someone more competent is called the ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT, which I mentioned earlier. This zone is the space between what the child could learn on his or her own and what the child could learn with the collaboration of the more competent individual. Therefore, the social interaction would lead the child to a higher level of learning. Vygotsky also was a champion for children with learning disabilities.

Critics of Piaget believed Piaget did not value the importance or influence of parents, teachers, or other children in a child's learning.

Critics of Vygotsky believe his social theory has not been fully developed, which is understandable since he died at age 37 and his works and his name was banned by Stalin. Stalin also banned psychological assessment and the teaching of psychology in schools as well as accusing many psychologists of "paedological pervasion" and shipped them off to labor camps. Psychology as a profession was not reinstated in the Soviet Union until the 1980s. It was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that Vygotsky's ideas were fully introduced to the United States.

Many wonder why Stalin was so tough on psychologists, like Vygotsky, and their work. Maybe it was because Stalin's own son was unable to pass the psychological tests administered to children. What do you think?

? Judy Austin and Indian Hills Community College

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