Jean Vygotsky Summary

Brief History
Jean Piaget was a Twentieth century Swiss psychologist and was the first psychologist to systematically study the cognitive development of children. Thomas (2005) wrote that early in Piaget’s career he worked with children and his observations and interactions with the students led him to the theory that a young person 's cognitive processes are inherently different from those of adults (pp. 188-9). According to Ahmad, et al. (2005), Piaget showed that when compared to adults, young children think in differently and he then came to the conclusion that cognitive development was an ongoing process which occurred due to maturation and interaction with the environment (p. 72).
Lev Vygotsky was a Russian psychologist of the early Twentieth

He developed his Cognitive Development Theory to explain the process by which the infant would eventually develop into an individual capable of thinking and reasoning. Ahmad, Ch, Batool, Sittar, and Malik (2016) described how Piaget viewed a child’s cognitive development as being “a work in progress” because it is reorganization of mental processes due to the maturation of the child into an adult and the impact of the environment. He believed that every child has to construct an understanding of the world around him or her and will then experience the differences that exist between what he or she already knows and what he or she will discover in the environment (p. 74). According to Thomas (2005), Piaget 's theory has three basic components to it. First, schemas are the actual building blocks of knowledge. Secondly, the child will, by means of adaptation become able to transition from one stage to another (i.e., equilibrium, assimilation, and accommodation). Finally, there are stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational (pp.

282). Within his sociocultural theory, he stated that there was no single factor to account for a child’s development. So therefore, individual development cannot be understood without referring to the society and culture from which the individual originated (Thomas, 2005, pp. 230-1). According to Clara (2016), Vygotsky placed great emphasis on a child’s culture having an impact upon his or her cognitive development. He also stressed the importance of social factors, such the child’s home environment, contributing to the development of reasoning skills. Vygotsky believed that thought and language were separate entities at birth and would later merge around the age of three, resulting in an internalization of language and then cerebral development. Furthermore, he theorized that the adults in a child’s life are an important source of cognitive development because they transmit their culture 's tools of intellectual adaptation that the child internalizes (pp.