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Swiss psychologist, whose theory of cognitive development is often considered to be the most influential ever. Living from 1886 – 1980, his work dominated his field during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Considered the most complete theory of coginitive development, he divided human cognitive development from birth to adulthood into four stages that we move through as we age: sensorimotor, preoperations concrete operational, and formal operational.

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Piaget’s mechanism for cognitive development is known as “equilibration”, which is achieves adjustment of cognitive schematics through either assimilation or accommodation. As learners engage with their surroundings their prior notions of the way things are met with new information, which causes “disequilibrium”. In order to achieve “equilibrium”, their prior notions are either must assimilate the new information or nbe adjusted in order to accommodate the new information. These prior notions, or “cognitive schemas”, are either built upon or reorganized to achieve equilibrium, hence “equilibration”.

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Piaget’s theory of development is considered a “discontinuous” model because development is divided into discreet stages by age. On the issue of Nature v. Nurture, Piaget’s theory leans heavily toward the influence of nature. Biological maturation is a driving factor or development, and the stages are denoted by abilities that develop at certain ages.

The first stage is “sensorimotor”, occurring between birth and the age of two, is defined by the accomplishment of “object permanence”, the understanding that objects continue existing when out of sight, and “representational thought”, being able to think about objects that are not visible.

The second stage is “preoperational”, occuring between two and seven years, is defined by the ability to communicate via words, a movement away from egocentrism, and unawareness of conversational give-and-take.

The third stage is “concrete operational”, occurring between seven and twelve, is defined by logiacal thinking about concrete objects.

The fourth stage, “formal operational”, extending from 12 through adulthood, is defined by the ability to operate with both concrete and abstract representations and analogical reasoning, or “higher-level thinking”.

-from textbook Educational Psychology

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Lev Vygotsky, though he died young at the age of 38 in 1934, developed a theory of cognitive development that dominated his field in the 1980’s and 1990’s, decades after his death. In contrast to Piaget’s discreet discontinuous stages, he theorized development as a continuous process that occurs throughout life.

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The mechanism by which learning occurs is called “internalization”. Internalization is learning by observing social interactions and extracting lessons from them. With regard to nature v. nurture, Vygotsky’s theory leans heavily toward nurture because of the emphasis on observing social interactions in the environment. Unlike Piaget’s theory where development is a universal process driven by biological maturation, Zygotsky’s theory frames development as culturally specific and derived from the surrounding environment.

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Scaffolding is an aid provided by teachers to explain events in the learner’s environment without identifying specific lessons or drawing conclusions. The final step of drawing conclusions is left to the learner.

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The zone of proximal development is a concept formulated by Vygotsky that descripes the deffence between what a leaner can do on their own and what they can do with expert guidance. Those things that can’t be done alone but can be done with guidance are in the zone of proximal development, and are things that the learner is close to being able to do on their own.

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Piaget would give children of different ages tasks to complete and then would analyze abilities through observations of and interviews with the students

Vygotsky would place students in situations above their abilities and provided aids that could help them along toward the goal, thus measureing the zone of proximal development

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Piaget

The most important implication Piaget’s theory has for teachers is the need to take children’s level of cognitive development into account. Depending on the age being taught, certain tasks may be beyond the level of the student’s capability.

Vygotsky

The most important implication of Vygotsky’s theories is the need for teacher’s to act as a role model. If children learn from internalizing the social interactions around them, it’s important for the interactions they internalize to be good ones.