JEAN PIAGET (THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT)

1. SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (Birth to 2 years)

 Comes from the word “senses” and “motor abilities” which is how infants gain a basic
understanding of the world.
 Infants acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. Their
experiences occur through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.
 Children go through a period of dramatic growth and learning. They make new discoveries
as their interact with their environment.
 They don’t just learn how to walk or crawl, they also learn a great deal about language from
people they interact with.
 In the final part of this stage, early representational thought emerges—object permanence.
 Once they know that objects are separate and distinct identities and that they have
existence outside of individual perception, they begin to attach names and words to object.
 EXAMPLE:
- An infant like to suck his thumb and he continues doing that because he finds it
pleasurable.
- In a game of peek-a-boo, an infant will believe that the other person vanished and
he’ll be shocked when that object reappears. A child with a sense of object
permanency knows that the other person still exists even though they cannot be
seen.

2. PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 to 7 years)

 The foundation of language development may have been laid out from the previous stage
but the emergence of language is one of the major hallmarks of this stage of development.
 Children begin to engage in symbolic play and learn to manipulate symbols. However, they
do not understand concrete logic yet.
 They struggle with the idea of constancy, as well as taking the point of view of other people,
or in other words they are egocentric.
 EXAMPLE:
- A lump of clay was divided into two. One piece of clay is rolled into compact and the
other is smashed into flat pancake shape. The preoperational child will choose the
flat shape since it looks larger than the other one though the 2 pieces are exactly
the same size.
- Children pretend that a broom is a horse.

3. CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (7 to 11 years)

 Children begin to think logically about concrete events but still struggle at abstract ideas.
 Their egocentrism disappears. They become better at thinking how other people might view
a situation.
 They become sociocentric or, in other words, they are able to understand that other people
have their own thoughts.
 Children begin using inductive reasoning (reasoning from specific to general principle).
  EXAMPLE:
- Whenever a child is around with a cat, he has itchy eyes, runny nose, and swollen
throat. He might reason that he’s allergic to cats.
- If I break a candy bar into small pieces, a child knows that the amount of the candy
when it was smashed is still the same with the amount when it was still whole.

4. FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE (12 years and up)

 Their thinking becomes much more sophisticated and advanced.
 The young adult begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems.
 Children begin using deductive reasoning (reasoning from general to specific principle).
 They are often able to plan quickly an organized approach in solving problem.
 EXAMPLE:
- Children were tasked to balance a scale by hooking some weights to each end.
Children use logic to form a hypothesis on where to place the weights to balance
the scale.

LEV VYGOTSKY (SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY)

1. All learning is social.
- Learning is an essentially social process in which the support of parents, peers, caregivers,
wider society, and culture plays a crucial role in the development of higher psychological
needs.
- Initial development was prompted by child’s individual social interaction. As we grow older,
we learn more about the world around us.
- Therefore, adult or peer intervention is an essential part of the development process.
2. Culture shapes our learning and cognitive development.
- Culture influences development from the moment we are born, making an impact to us as
we grow. Culture can affect how children build values, language, belief systems, and an
understanding of themselves as individuals and as members of the society.
- When children participate in cultural activities, they are introduced to conventional ways of
thinking and acting.
3. Challenge is important to learning.
- Challenge is important to learning because if there is no struggle, there is no progress.
- We learn from our ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development). When children worked with their
ZPD, they can leverage previous knowledge, skills, and strategies to advance their learning.
4. Learning leads development.
- Learning could lead to development if it occurs within child’s ZPD. The ZPD contains skills
and concepts that are not yet fully developed but are on the “edge of emergence”
emerging only if the child is given appropriate support.
- Learning awakens the developmental process through social interactions with peers and
teachers in such a way that it would not occur if the child is in isolation.
VYGOTSKY’S THEORY IS KNOWN BY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. Sociocultural
- Learning is a special process tied to and driven by our specific culture.
2. Sociohistoric
- Learning is a special process tied to and driven by our specific history.
3. Situative
- Learning is tied to the context and situation where it was learned.

EXAMPLE OF VYGOSTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY

A child can’t ride a bicycle unless her grandfather holds onto the back of her bike. The child is in
the zone of proximal development for riding bicycle.

VYGOTSKY’S BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

1. Adults convey to children (formally or informally) the ways the culture sees the world.
- As adults interact with children, they show the meanings they attach to objects, events, and
experiences.
- EXAMPLE: A father reads a book about transportation to his daughter. The book describes
modes of transportations we use in society. By presenting these concepts, the book shows
the little girl how our society classifies modes of transportation.
2. Every culture passes down physical and cognitive tools.
- Physical tools such as pencil, scissors, and computer and cognitive tools such as language,
math, and symbols are connected to learning.
- They should be passed on to children to make learning and development easier.
3. Thought and language become increasingly interdependent in the first few years of life.
- For babies and toddlers, language is a means to communicate not a thought.
- Thought and language intertwine around 2 and self-talk emerges to guide a child through a
task.
- Self-talk emerges into inner self—mentally guiding oneself.
4. Complex mental processes begin as social activities, gradually evolve into dependent, internal
mental activities.
- This internalization process allows children to transform ideas and processes to make them
uniquely their own.
- EXAMPLE: A child and her father are simple reading a book about modes of transportation.
This social activity is transforming the way the child perceives modes of transportation. She
will be able to classify these items herself when she sees cars, trucks, and boats in real-life.
5. Children can perform more challenging tasks when helped by “more knowledgeable others”.
- There are two levels of development:
 Actual development – upper limit of tasks a child can perform individually.
 Level of potential development – upper limit of tasks a child can perform with the
assistance of more knowledgeable others.
 - EXAMPLE: A child is playing with shapes toy. She knew the blocks belonged in the holes but
she couldn’t determine how to exactly put them in. her level of potential development was
being able to put the blocks in with the help of her father.
6. Challenging tasks promote maximum cognitive growth.
- Vygotsky described this as ZPD or zone of proximal development. It is the range of tasks that
a child can perform with the help and guidance of others but cannot yet perform
independently.
- The ZPD is the area where the most sensitive instruction or guidance should occur, this
would allow the child to use his/her own to develop higher mental functions.
7. Play allows children to cognitively stretch themselves.
- Play allows children to take on roles they would normally not be able to perform in real life.
- EXAMPLE: A girl is playing with her friend and she’s the mother while her friend is her child.
Through make-believe play, she exhibits behaviors and be a mommy according to rules of
society.

CONTEMPORARY APPLICATION OF VYGOTSKY’S THEORY

 SCAFFOLDING
- It is the support mechanism that helps a learner successfully perform a task within his/her
ZPD. This process is completed by more knowledgeable other supporting the learning of a
less competent individual.
- EXAMPLE: teacher assisting a student; higher-level peer assisting a younger peer.
 GUIDED PARTICIPATION
- When a child participates in adult activities through support and guidance.
- EXAMPLE: Allowing a child to help in the kitchen through stirring or measuring at first then
as he goes older, he’s allowed to do more.
- Mother singing baa, baa, black sheep then pauses to let her child continue it.
 APPRENTICESHIP
- Intensive form of guided participation, novice works with an expert to learn a task in a
particular domain.
- EXAMPLE: medical intern, student teaching, and internship
 COGNITIVE APPRENTICESHIP
- Mentor provides guidance to novice about how to think about a task.
- EXAMPLE: Teacher talks with a student about a task/problem
 DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT
- Provides information about the child’s thinking process and ability to learn, allowing teacher
to better guide future instruction.
 SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY’S VIEW ON MOTIVATION
- We’re motivated by a particular situation.
- We’re motivated to become part of a group that we see as desirable
- We often join the group through peripheral participation.
“It is through others that we become ourselves.”
- Through interaction, we develop our own knowledge, which we regulate once we try to
consciously express ourselves in a foreign language.
- Through social interactions, an individual realizes the significance of the things and people
around him, the things he does, the things he learns. And in the end, he realizes his worth
and purpose.

“What a child can do in cooperation today, he can do it alone tomorrow.”

- When we are still children, we have our more knowledgeable others who assist and support
us in our learning until we mastered it and become independent of support.
- We may need the help of other people when we were still young but as time passed by, we
learned how to do it on our own.