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Vygotsky's Theory of Cognitive Development in Social Relationships

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Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

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Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development is well-known within the fields of psychology and education, but it has also been the subject of considerable criticism. While presented in a series of discrete, progressive stages, even Piaget believed that development does not always follow such a smooth and predictable path.

In spite of the criticism, the theory has had a considerable impact on our understanding of child development.

Support for the Theory

Piaget's focus on qualitative development had an important impact on education. While Piaget did not specifically apply his theory in this way, many educational programs are now built upon the belief that children should be taught at the level for which they are developmentally prepared.﻿﻿

In addition to this, a number of instructional strategies have been derived from Piaget's work. These strategies include providing a supportive environment, utilizing social interactions and peer teaching, and helping children see fallacies and inconsistencies in their thinking.

Problems With Research Methods

Much of the criticism of Piaget's work is in regards to his research methods. A major source of inspiration for the theory was Piaget's observations of his own three children. In addition to this, the other children in Piaget's small research sample were all from well-educated professionals of high socioeconomic status. Because of this unrepresentative sample, it is difficult to generalize his findings to a larger population.﻿﻿

Another issue lies with Piaget's lack of clear operationally defined variables. In order to replicate his observations and objectively measure how one variable leads to changes in another, researchers need to have very specific definitions of each variable. Much of the terminology related to Piaget's theory lacks these operational definitions, so it is very difficult for researchers to accurately replicate his work.﻿﻿

Developmental Variations Exist

Research has disputed Piaget's argument that all children will automatically move to the next stage of development as they mature. Some data suggest that environmental factors may play a role in the development of formal operations.

The theory seems to suggest that reaching the formal operational stage is the end goal of development, yet it is not clear if all people actually fully achieve the developmental tasks that are the hallmark of formal operations. Even as adults, people may struggle to think abstractly about situations, falling back on more concrete operational ways of thinking.﻿﻿

The stage approach is viewed as problematic as well. Stage theories have fallen out of popularity in modern-day psychology for a number of reasons. One of these is that they often fail to accurately capture the many individual variations that exist in development.

The Theory Underestimated Children's Abilities

Most researchers agree that children possess many of the abilities at an earlier age than Piaget suspected. Theory of mind research has found that 4- and 5-year-old children have a rather sophisticated understanding of their own mental processes as well as those of other people.

For example, children of this age have some ability to take the perspective of another person, meaning they are far less egocentric than Piaget believed. Some research has shown that even children as young as age 3 have some ability to understand that other people will have different views of the same scene.﻿﻿

Piaget's Legacy

While there are few strict Piagetians around today, most people can appreciate Piaget's influence and legacy. His work generated interest in child development and had an enormous impact on the future of education and developmental psychology.

Piaget's theory also helped change the way that researchers thought about children. Rather than simply viewing them as smaller versions of adults, experts began to recognize that the way children think is fundamentally different from the way that adults think.﻿﻿

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Piaget's Stage Theory on Cognitive Development

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Piaget's theory was hugely influential, but not without criticism. Learn about Piaget's legacy, including support and criticism for his stage theory.

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Jean Piaget places stages of development as follows:
1. Sensori-Motor Stage: Birth - Two years old. In this stage, we are developing our senses and getting accustomed to how they function, increasing our physical mobility, and gaining a sense of the world in an egocentric way. One of the most important developmental milestones of this stage is object permanence.
2. Pre-Operational Stage: Two - Seven years old. In this stage, we are extremely imaginative and view the world with symbolic meaning. We are developing linguistic skills and practicing them constantly. We are questioning everything around us.
3. Concrete Operational Stage: Seven - Eleven years old. In this stage, we are developing a sense of logic and thought process that can help us draw conclusions without seeing things physically before us.
4. Formal Operational Stage: Twelve and older. We now have the ability to think critically about things such as abstract or problematic concepts. We are developing a deeper sense of identity and can formulate empathy and other mental skills, like philosophical or egocentric thoughts.

Following all stages, a person can develop deeper senses of self, ideas, and the world. While most of this makes sense, anyone who has been around children knows that they do not always stay on such a specific timeline when they are hitting milestones. While that is a given, I have to say that generally, the concept of these developmental stages makes a lot of sense and I have to agree with them. One of the most important things to take away from this idea is that Piaget proclaimed that children think differently than adults. While this seems obvious, I think that the way that he explained in his era was pretty eye opening for a lot of people. This is important in relevance to teaching because it helps educators have a general idea of what children are at developmentally and keeps things at a relative level for the students. One website (which I have listed above) discussed how Piaget had some flaws in his research, being that most of the children he observed were from well-educated backgrounds.

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Lev Vygotsky looked at children’s development much different than other theorists such as  Piaget. Vygotsky saw that children were building their skills through practice and social context. They begin on their own and had the ability to try for themselves, but required help from tools, technology, mentors, educators, parents, or their community to fully master skills. Vygotsky also thought deeply about the ways that children take these skill-building interactions and then think about them personally and the internalization that comes from it.

I think that it is important to take into consideration all the things we learn into consideration while we are learning about them so that we can become better teachers. I think Lev Vygotsky would agree with me on that idea.
Vygotsky recognized the importance of scaffolding, which I now do to. Scaffolding is an incredibly important idea that allows children to continuously build their own framework for learning a specific skill. I can see myself using this perspective as a teacher. I have always thought that the idea of continuously building and expanding on ideas is important for the students to connect all the pieces little by little until they can connect the ideas on their own (expanding their zone of proximal development). Throughout my last term, I learned that I want to correlate each subject lesson plan in a way that ties into the others, allowing children to see the big picture of the world and the importance of learning and why knowledge is power.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6o-uPJarA

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Skinner’s Operant Conditioning: Rewards & Punishments

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One of the first things that comes to mind when I think about operant conditioning is dismissing our three-year old class to centers. Usually, before doing centers, we have our class sitting on our rug following circle time or meals. When it is time to dismiss them to centers, I will usually call them one or two at a time based on who is paying attention and how they were previously. (Important thing to add is that knowing your students baseline behavior is really important and understanding if they struggle with sitting still & keeping that in mind is important. There might be one kid who typically is wound up but on a particular day they are more calm, I reinforce that behavior more). Same with potty-training. If we have a kid learning to do BM in the toilet, we will sometimes reward that behavior. I try to limit rewarding behavior because sometimes they are just seeking out validation instead of doing it for themselves and that is a fine line to pay attention to.

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Bloom’s Taxonomy: Structuring The Learning Journey

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Benjamin Bloom was the leader of a committee of researchers throughout the 50's and 60's. Throughout their research, they developed the Bloom Taxonomy. This has since been revised, around 2001. This taxonomy has become one of the standard measuring tools for teachers across the country, and perhaps around the world.

When dealing with the affective domain, we are ruled by the way we feel. We can further break down the affective domain into five subdomains, including: receiving, responding, valuing, organization, and characterization. When originally reading the prompt, I thought about it in the context with a second or third grade class. If I was going to be using this in a lesson plan, this is how I would go about it

The selection of art I would choose would be classical music. I think this is a wonderful genre, and I think the way that children's brains perceive this type of music is pretty interesting. I would begin by clearing everything from the desks of my students. First off, I would have them receive the music by sitting there and just listening with no stimuli besides just the auditory stimulation. Next, I would have them respond. We could do this by having an open group discussion about the way we felt while listening to the music. Following that, it would be time to value the music. Next is organizing. I might ask the students how they would feel if we left the classical music on during test-taking or other times of the day. Finally, when it comes to characterizing the music, I might spend time playing different composers from throughout the centuries and see what the students like best.

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Bruner’s 3 Steps of Learning in a Spiral Curriculum

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Social Learning Theory: Bandura’s Bobo Beatdown Experiments

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I spent time researching this while I was in highschool, and this was a prime example of why it is hard for me to go along with the violent video game argument impacting people in a negative way. If that were the case, we should ban Dance Dance Revolution forever because the Sandy Hook shooting is arguably the most disturbing school shooting to ever happen.

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0:00 / 9:06•Watch full video

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Every clip of Adam Lanza playing Dance Dance Revolution

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Albert Bandura is most famously known for his “Bobo” doll experiment and his social learning theory. His Bobo doll study was very influential in psychology. The experiment involved a video of an adult hitting a Bobo doll while shouting aggressively to a group of children. After that, the children were placed in a room and told to play. In the room was a Bobo doll. The children that had seen the violent video were more likely to mimic the actions seen by those adults in the video. This pushed many psychologists to experiment with observational learning and highlighted four elements: attention, retention, reciprocation, and motivation. Bandura proposed the idea of the social learning theory.

Based on all of this information, I have a hard time believing that overexposure of violent media can push someone to act that way. I do believe that it can have an impact on human behavior, because it is human behavior to engage in those acts. Just like watching interior design videos for hours straight on youtube makes me want to quit school to become a YouTuber who fixes up houses. When we are exposed to things that we haven't been before, it will open a new path of thoughts and perspectives, no matter what it is we are experiencing. I have been a fan of Call of Duty games since I was in sixth grade and spent long hours (longer than I should have) playing and I have never felt like a particularly angry or violent person. I believe that while overexposure to games like this can definitely impact a young developing mind, I find the biggest factor to take into consideration would be family history or genetic issues.

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When thinking about my own education, I think back to how I learned differently when having different teachers. I never realized in my earlier years of being a student that I was a better visual learner. I think back to when I was in sixth grade. My math teacher was phenomenal and she was the first teacher to show me that I was a visual learner. She actually took a poll in the class asking us in ways what felt most natural when it comes to learning. Some of the kids who were visual learners would get extra graphs or charts.

When it comes to having a setting that is culturally appropriate and inclusive, I have thought over some things that I plan to do. I want to make sure that I have a pretty wide range of levels of reading and genres. In my last term at NLU, we did an assignment called windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors. I think that I would like to do a yearly project that is a similar assignment for my class considering their age and appropriate levels. This assignment was focused on seeing into other peoples lives as windows, seeing into our own lives in mirrors, and having empathetic skills to open doors into other people's emotions. I think that this is a very important thing to do in our society today, since ~40% of students in the classroom fall into a category of a minority.

Taking the first few weeks to really get to know the students is critical to the development of the class as a whole and as myself as a teacher. When we establish this connection with the students and take the time to get to know them, we can understand what they need to succeed and feel like they are learning in the ways that make them understand to the best of their ability.

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Experiential Learning: How We All Learn Naturally

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Kolb’s experiential learning theory consists of a four step learning cycle. This theory heavily revolves around experience in learning and was one of the first for evaluating individual learning. Learning from experience shows how a person is able to grasp the information. Kolb coined a four step cycle that involves the following processes: experiencing (concrete experience), reflecting (reflective observation), thinking (abstract conceptualism), and acting (active experimentation).

As relating to my future career as an educator, here are some connections I can make:
1. Concrete Experience: Teach by being completely hands-on. When looking at suggested ways to do this, one of the best examples I found was "teaching by lecturing". While I don't see myself doing lectures, I can still find this applicable because I am a very hands on person and think that diving right in and being very immersed in my lessons is similar. This will definitely be difficult at first considering I do not have much experience, but as this theory suggests, the more I do it, the better I will get.

2. Reflective observation: One way I have already begun to do this is asking to shadow the other teachers at my center when we have extra staff available. I find this to be a great tool since most of my co-workers have been teaching for many years. I find that when I spend time with them, watching what they do in their classrooms, I can get a better idea on what I could improve on (and also outdated methods to stay away from...) This can be difficult at times because I don't always agree with the ways that older teachers behave. Short-tempered behavior can trigger me, and I often see that from burnt-out teachers. Another thing I like to do is spend time observing my children's behavior before I offer help or support. I like to see the choices they make and which problem solving skills they are likely to chose vs the ones that might not come so natural.

3. Abstract conceptualism: Using the facts I have learned in this class will help me in this step. One of the things that I have caught on to is "You have to Maslow before you can Bloom. Learning the steps of maslows heirarchy has been something I keep in the back of my mind before pushing my kids mentally. This is important! There are many other examples, but this is the best one I can articulate. Challenges faced with this step is that sometimes it is hard for me to base decisions off of logic rather than emotions (I am a big feeler).

4. Active Experimentation: Using all of the previous steps and applying it to my behavior in the classroom. This is what is so awesome about growing as an educator!

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1. Questioning:
For this, I thought of a class in high school where we were prompted each week to answer a survey monkey questionnaire as part of a minimum grade to let our teacher know what we were doing throughout the semester. This is a great idea and I can see myself using a technique like this if I am doing older lev el teaching (even if it was just paper slips at the end of the week, kind of like exit slips :D )

2. Feedback:
Similar to the previous example, I have had many classes that require exit slips at the end of the week each week to let the teacher/professor know how we are feeling and how we are grasping the content. I think (especially with online schooling) this has been extremely beneficial to me as I am the type of person who can often fall behind due to personal issues. Oftentimes, I can see myself trying to stick it out without asking for help, which can backfire situationally. The idea of exit slips usually can prevent me from getting too far out of communication with the teacher/professor.

3. Self-Assessment:
While I was attending junior college, I had a gen-ed class that prompted us to fill out self-assessments throughout the semester. I liked this because it asked questions about our mental health or the type of learner we are. This was a great thing to take time and think about, and I feel like it prompted self-care and personal check-ins when I began to feel burnt out or get on an autopilot-type scenario.

4. Peer assessment:
The first thing that came to mind was peer feedback. In my English 100 class that I took as Dual Credit in high school, for our final paper, we printed it out and would take turns exchanging it randomly with our classmates. Each time, we would use different colored pens as used by the others and correct / write notes throughout the physical copy of the paper. I found that I really enjoyed this type of feedback, especially because it was a physical copy of the assignment. It was also cool to see how my peers would collaboratively write notes and feedback in the margins.

5. Formative use of summative assessment:
I have struggled with this throughout my years of schooling. As someone who has test anxiety, I have always hated the idea of a summative assessment. When I took bio, I dreaded the end of the year comprehensive exam. One of the best experiences I had was my junior year in high school. I had a teacher who had experienced text anxiety himself and his way of combating it with common core was to allow us to use a study guide that covered everything on the test, the catch was that it was optional to complete. If we were to complete the entire (something like 8 pages) study guide, we would be awarded extra credit and the option to keep it with us during the exam. I took full advantage of this opportunity and ended up doing really well on the comprehensive exam.

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Paulo Freire and the Development of Critical Pedagogy

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There are several important components of critical pedagogy. I understood the fact that there is sort of a power struggle happening in the mind of the teacher. They are viewing themselves as better than their students based on the fact that they have higher education than them. The teachers will have a tainted view of their students and see them as nothing more than empty brains needing to be taught. (How sad). The most important component is that teachers and students are equal. The teacher and student should be mutually learning from one another. Teachers have to be considerate of their student's problem-solving ideas and work to implement them in the classroom. There needs to be communication, mutual respect, and understanding between all parties.

As a teacher now and in the future, I have always prioritized my students to understand that I am willing to listen to what they have to say and provide feedback. I also ask them what they need, ask them to use their words, and ask them things like what I can do to help them. Working with children in an early childhood center can be difficult, especially when half of the population there can not fully communicate their needs. With the older kids in my center, I make sure to always listen to what they have to say. There are other teachers that I have seen sort of shut down communication expression and it hurts my heart when I see that. Taking the time to allow our students to not only talk, but to be heard and understood, helps them be stronger and more confident in their futures.

Counteracting " The teacher talks and the students listen meekly.": Keeping an open flow of conversation is one of the most important aspects of teaching in my opinion. When we allow for our students to be heard, they will be more willing to speak.

Counteracting "The teacher chooses and enforces his/her/they choice, and the students comply." : Allowing for a routine in the classroom while also allowing for free choice play and seeing what interests come naturally to the students is very important. Keeping these things in mind will allow the students to continuously be self-interested and engaged.

Counteracting "The teacher chooses and enforces his/her/they choice, and the students comply." : Having Paulo Freire's theory in mind and understanding it allows me to be reminded that teachers and students are equal. My job is to provide them with the materials they need for academic, emotional, and life success.

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I believe in my years as a student, I was often pushed to have a growth mindset. I think that even though I had teachers throughout the years that at times, I did not like (and sadly enough, that I didn't respect) but I can not think of a single one that did not give up on me as a student. Even when I was fighting through terrible mental health issues, I always felt like my teachers saw the positive outcome that I could have and pushed me in that direction. There are some strategies that I feel like helped me develop a growth mindset:
1. Scaffolding. I feel like scaffolding is a great strategy and in hindsight I can see many different circumstances where teachers in my life used this method. Scaffolding promotes interconnectedness and showed me how things are relatable in school to life. This kept me interested
2. Making learning fun. This is one of the most important things I think that some of my teachers did that helped keep me and my classmates engaged. I can remember certain classes in high school where some teachers did a better job making assignments fun or engaging and that was what mattered.
3. Compromise. I think that compromise is a strategy that should be listed here. There have been numerous times when I needed extensions or extra help or even just times when I could not complete certain assignments because of whatever reasoning. The fact that so many teachers (and professors too) were open to letting me have extensions or other forms of compromise when completing assignments meant the world to me and helped me not give up when things felt impossible to complete.
4. Communication. When I think back to the teachers I was closest to, it was the ones who were always open to engaging in conversations about real-life issues I was having. They made themselves relatable to me and opened up in ways that made me realize that they were there for me when I was struggling. This inspired me in different ways. One of them was that I had trusted adults in my life that cared about me when I felt alone in my own world. These teachers often showed me that I had more potential than I saw in myself and that pushed me to work harder and smarter.
5. Patience. I had teachers that took extra time out of their busy schedules just to help provide extra assistance in understanding assignments or the lesson we were working on at the time. One teacher, in particular, comes to mind and I think I probably would have failed statistics.