1. Mental Development Piaget and Vygotsky’s Developmental Theories
Education Foundations, Week 3

2. Overview Piaget: Bio and context Developmental stages
The learning process
Piaget’s classroom
Vygotsky:
Development and social relation
ZPD
The role of language
Vygotsky’s classroom
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3. Piaget: Bio and Context (1896-1980)
Started as a zoologist
Worked with Binet on standardising IQ tests
Clinical method
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4. Developmental stages Sensori-motor thinking Preoperational thinking
Concrete operational thinking
Formal operation thinking
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Importance of biological maturation in cognitive development
Universal stages
Invariant sequence
Individual differences in age limits

5. Sensori-motor thinking (Birth – 2 years)
Developmental milestones:
Object permanence
Goal-directed actions
Immediate and deferred imitation
Emergence of pretend play
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6. Preoperational thinking (2-7 yrs)
Developmental milestones:
Acquisition of language
Emergence of symbolic thought
Blossoming of pretend play
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7. Deficits of preoperational stage
Animism
Centration
(lack of conservation)
Precausal reasoning
“I haven’t had a nap,
so it’s not afternoon yet”
Egocentricism
Top image: psychology4a.com/cognitive_development.htm
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8. Concrete operational thinking (7-11 yrs)
Developmental milestone -- conservation
Identity;
reversibility;
compensation;
seriation;
classfication
Image retrieved from: onno95.blogspot.com/2009/04/development-of-co...

9. Deficit of concrete operational thinking
Concrete specificity rather than abstract reasoning
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10. Formal operational thinking (>11/12 yrs)
Developmental milestones:
Propositional thinking
Hypothetical-deductive reasoning
Not every individual reaches this stage
Context matters
Formal schooling plays a key role
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11. Piaget: the learning process
Schemes: a cluster or structure of ideas organising existing knowledge to make sense of new experiences
Disequilibrium
Adaptation:
1) assimilation
2) accommodation
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12. Piaget’s classroom Students as ‘solitary scientists’
Constructivism; discovery learning; inquiry-based learning
Peers as thought provokers
Teachers as assessors and experience providers
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13. Criticisms of Piaget Research methods Later research findings
Stage-like development
Tendencies rather than potentials
Universal vs differences
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14. Vygotsky: Bio and context (1896-1934)
Born in Orsha and raised in Gomel, Russia
Superior intellect shown in early schooling
Entered university through Jewish lottery
Philosophy, art, psychology
Oppressed by the Stalin regime, his publications were prohibited till 50 years after his death
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15. Developmental process
Teaching and learning lead development; teaching cannot lag behind development
From lower (first-order) to higher (mediated) mental functions
"The central fact about our psychology is the fact of mediation”

16. Development and social relation
Interpsychology -- intrapsychology
"We can formulate the genetic law of cultural development in the following way... Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it appears on the social plane and then on the psychological plane. First it appears between people as an inter-psychological category and then within the individual child as an intra-psychological category... but it goes without saying that internalisation transforms the process itself and changes its structure and functions. Social relations or relations among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their relationships”. (Vygotsky 1978)
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The meaning of ‘Hello’
The origin of the indicative function of finger pointing

17. The Role of Language Enabling thinking development and transformation
The ‘square bamboo’ story
Realising the knowledge potential in apparently wrong, illogical and nonsensical remarks
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18. Zone of Proximal Development
Distance between what students can do independently and what they can do with others
Measuring the size of the child’s mind by the shadow it casts vs. understanding the child’s mind by the assisted light it emits
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19. Vygotsky’s classroom Role of teacher Guide and mentor Role of peers
Dynamic assessment
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