Compare Vygotsky And Piaget's Theory Of Learning

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Recommended: Comparitive of Jean Piaget vs Lev Vygotsky

This essay will outline two theories of learning in-depth and will mention the differences between Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget’s theory of learning. This essay will also indicate and explain the implications for teaching and learning that can be drawn from Vygotsky’s theory of learning. Learning theories are frameworks that describe how information is absorbed, processed and retained during learning. These are cognitive, emotional, environmental influences. Educators that embrace cognitive theory believe that “learning as a change in behaviour is far too narrow” so they prefer to study the learner rather than their environment. Those who support constructivism believe that “a learner’s ability to learn relies to a large extent of what he …show more content…

Vygotsky and Piaget’s theory of learning
Lev Vygotsky developed his theories right around the same time as Jean Piaget started to develop his ideas. Lev Vygotsky’s work was the foundation of research and theory in cognitive development it is now known as the social development theory. His theories stress the role of social interaction in the development of cognition. Cognitive development is the process of acquiring intelligence and increasingly advanced thought and problem solving ability from infancy to adulthood. We started learning in various ways just as soon as we came out of the womb. That is a special characteristic of cognitive development is that it keeps on going. Vygotsky worked very hard to develop the social development theory. He says “we learn through interactions and communications with others” what he is saying is that everything that we do causes us to learn from one and another. When we are in the classroom we are not just learning about maths, English or science, we are learning about how to relate to different people or how other …show more content…

Vygotsky stated “learning happens because we interact with our environment”, this means that we do not learn because we have developed, it is we develop because we learn. In order for us to learn we must be presented with tasks that are out of reach of our current ability, tasks that are too simple or already within our current abilities do not promote learning. Tasks that are too complex become frustrating and also do not promote learning. The tasks in the Zone of Proximal Development are things that we can almost do by ourselves but we still need help from others to accomplish the task. After the help from others, we should eventually be able to do the tasks on our own. For example, there is a boy named Johnny who cannot swim. If he tried himself to swim, he would most likely drown. However if Johnny had the help from the swimming instructor he will soon be able to learn to swim. In this scenario swimming will be in Johnny’s Zone of Proximal Development, because it is a task that he cannot accomplish on his own but he can accomplish within the encouragement and guidance from someone else. However in contrast to Piaget, he stated that cognitive development stems towards “independency”. Where children can construct knowledge on their own. Vygotsky has said that the environment that children grow up in will always have influence on what

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