Comparing Piaget and Vygotski - Essay Example

The child learns from adults who behave according to the cultural norms in which the child is reared. The child uses certain adaptive tools for acquiring information from his or her surrounding, language is one such tool (Funderstanding, 2008). Following are some Key Terms of this theory: In Piaget’s approach towards learning, the purpose of education in class room is to provide pupils with opportunities to learn through interaction with the environment. According to Piaget all cognitive learning of a child occurs in stages.

This learning is developed by forming of mental concepts. For this it is necessary for the child to have a supportive and rich environment that allows experiential learning. According to Vygotsky, the child’s primary source of education is the teacher’s personality rather than the school environment. The teacher is the child’s MKO i.e. more knowledgeable other and the child internalizes the teachers values and adopts the teachers traits automatically. So the value of education according to Vygotsky is to present the child with an MKO who will be the child’s role model and will transmit knowledge by demonstrating it in front of the child through his or her behavior and actions (Learning Theories, 2010).

In Piaget’s approach, the teacher is just a supervisor. He or she just provides the child with an enriched environment, facilitates learning process monitors the child’s work and provides the child with countless opportunities to understand the world and develop his or her own cognitions about the world as the child experiences it. The teacher’s role in this theory is highly objective and impersonal. According to Vygotsky, the teacher is the role model for the child. Whatever the child learns is what he adopts from his teacher.

Social cognition is developed in the child by blindly assimilating the teacher’s traits. Intellectual development comes after it. Therefore the role of